Shinedown’s Brent Smith on EI8HT Album, Loss, and the State of America

Last month, Shinedown frontman Brent Smith said goodbye to the strongest woman he knew, his mom Patricia, who died on Jan. 19 at age 72. “I remember my mother putting her hands on my hands and looking me in the eyes just saying, ‘I want you to know that I love you and there’s no way that I could ever measure it, because my love for you is forever.’”

The singer, speaking over Zoom from a midtown Manhattan hotel room, chokes up. “Now more than ever, I know she’s watching me,” he says. “I also know that she’s cheering me on. She’s cheering the band on. She’s cheering my dad on.”

The timing is inopportune because Smith, 48, must now transition into promo mode as the wildly popular, long-running hard-rock band now has a world tour dubbed Dance Kid Dance Act II, kicking off in May, and a new album, EI8HT, due May 29. “I just really, really want to make her proud, and in the situation, there’s a lot of people involved. You’re juggling a 20-plus–year career. We’re getting ready to release our eighth studio record, and I hear her from time to time say this to me: ‘Hey, get to work. Let’s go, kid. You know what to do. Just do it.’”

And Smith does. The hoodie-clad vocalist, whose Knoxville accent adorns his speaking voice, sounds genuinely enthused when discussing the 18 songs Shinedown recorded over the past year and a half, including their recent hits, “Searchlight,” “Three Six Five,” and “Dance, Kid Dance.” He’s anxious about how the tunes, a variety of chest-thumping hard rockers, tender ballads, and dance-rock numbers, will resonate with millions of fans who have followed Shinedown since their debut, Leave a Whisper, established them as Billboard’s winningest Mainstream Rock hit makers with 21 Number Ones to their credit. His definition of success is the number of people who’ve told him Shinedown’s music has saved their lives.

“People have said, ‘It’s time to give Shinedown their flowers,’ but don’t give us the flowers,” he says. The Banksy-esque pastel bouquet on EI8HT’s cover belongs to Shinedown’s fans, he says, not Shinedown. “That’s us giving the audience the flowers for sticking with us, for believing in us, and allowing us to be ourselves.”

They’re also rewarding fans with a heavy new number, EI8HT’s anthemic call to arms “Safe and Sound,” which Smith says is “about standing on business,” to quote Justin Bieber. But it also represents something else: “I know certain people are like, “‘Can they still rock out?’” Smith says. “And I’m like, ‘Yeah.’”

But of course the song is just one side of EI8HT. They also hit four-on-the-floor beats on the dance ditty “Burning Down the Disco,” gothy brooding on the keyboard-adorned “Deep End,” romantic balladry on the country-esque “Dizzy,” and pensive folk on “The Pilot” — all with the quartet’s requisite catchy hooks (the “na-na-na” refrain of “Imposter” may prove unforgettable) and Smith’s cutting voice binding the disparate sounds together undeniably into Shinedown songs. “No A.I. was used in the making of this album,” Smith beams.

Still, as much as Smith volunteers about his work life — detailing Shinedown’s core crew of around 20 people, the roughly 78 folks it takes to put on arena shows, the importance of terrestrial radio to bolstering the band’s longevity — it’s the moments when he veers off script that say the most about EI8HT. Smith feels for bassist-producer Eric Bass, who lost his father, an aunt, and a sister-in-law while making the record. He’s also mourning the recent death of “one of my dearest friends in the music industry, just one of my dearest friends ever,” Three Doors Down singer Brad Arnold and shaken by the loss of actor James Van Der Beek, who was the same age as Smith. “I think that one thing this record represents is that life and time is very, very precious,” he says. “We all have a date with destiny.”

On top of that, Smith and his bandmates also had to remove themselves from the culture wars recently when they saw fans arguing online about the group’s place on Kid Rock’s MAGA-adjacent Rock the Country festival. “We saw infighting that we had never seen before, and for us, it was our job to diffuse it,” Smith says. Even though Shinedown drummer Barry Kerch had called Ludacris a “coward” for exiting the bill, the group decided they, too, needed to drop off the bill.

“I just want to remind everybody, it says the ‘United States of America’ – united,” Smith says. “And a lot of people right now don’t feel united.”

Smith credits his parents with raising him not to discriminate against gender, skin color, religion, and sexual orientation. “That is what makes you who you are and we are all on this planet, and we occupy it together,” he says.

Although Shinedown doesn’t “stand on any politics” and Smith identifies neither as a Democrat nor Republican (“I’m an American,” he says instead), he wishes Congress would listen to the people they represent. His idea to fix American politics is to have both a Republican and a Democrat in the Oval Office. “If you’re a Democrat, why can’t you have a Republican for your running mate?’ he says. He points to Republican Abraham Lincoln who ran with Democrat Andrew Johnson in 1864 as an instance where a balanced ticket like that worked.

Dropping off the festival didn’t ultimately quell all of the unrest in Shinedown’s fanbase. “There were certain people that were not happy about [pulling back],” Smith says. “I will say that there was an overwhelming amount of people that agreed with the decision … You’re entitled to your opinion 1,000 percent in this country, and that’s one of the beautiful things about it.” And it’s not like fans are missing out on seeing Shinedown live. “We’re getting ready to launch and release a lot of dates, man, and at the end of the day, we’re still who we are,” he says.

At the other end of the spectrum, Smith drew inspiration while making EI8HT from watching his son, Lyric, grow from a 16-year-old into a legal adult, recalling illuminating existential conversations. “[I told] him, ‘Man, I think the meaning of life is to live it,’ so he’s kind of figuring out his journey,” Smith says. Echoes from those chats informed “Wide Open,” a country-esque hard rocker, on which he sings, “I might be scared of what I’ll miss, but I’d rather take the risk, out here in the wide open.”

“With everything that’s going on, it could be terrifying to become an adult,” the singer says, “but you have to look at the world as, ‘It’s wide open, and it’s a level playing field.’”

Smith is proud of how EI8HT spans an emotional gamut. “It is a gift to be alive and to be here right now,” he says. “And when I think about it, a lot of these songs… The whole definition of Shinedown is sometimes you shine, and sometimes you’re down. There’s a yin and a yang. Everything that’s good has a little bit of bad, and everything that’s bad has a little bit of good. It balances itself out.”

EI8HT track list:

1. “At the Bottom”
2. “Dance, Kid, Dance”
3. “Burning Down the Disco”
4. “Three Six Five”
5. “Young Again”
6. “Dizzy”
7. “Imposter”
8. “Machine Gun”
9. “Outlaw”
10. “Safe and Sound”
11. “Searchlight”
12. “Bear With Me”
13. “Deep End”
14. “Killing Fields”
15. “Back to the Living”
16. “Wide Open”
17. “So Glad That You Asked”
18. “The Pilot”

Shinedown North American tour dates:

May 13 – Green Bay, WI @ Resch Center
May 15 – Columbus, OH @ Sonic Temple Festival
May 16 – Madison, WI @ Kohl Center
May 18 – Sioux Falls, SD @ Denny Sanford PREMIER Center
May 19 – Wichita, KS @ INTRUST Bank Arena
May 22 – Austin, TX @ Moody Center
May 23 – Oklahoma City, OK @ Paycom Center
May 26 – Jacksonville, FL @ VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena
May 28 – Estero, FL @ Hertz Center
May 30 – Tampa, FL @ Benchmark International Arena
June 2 – Biloxi, MS @ Mississippi Coast Coliseum
June 5 – Norfolk, VA @ Chartway Arena
June 6 – Hershey, PA @ GIANT Center
July 11 – Mt. Pleasant, MI @ Soaring Eagle
July 13 – Toronto, ON @ Coca-Cola Coliseum
July 15 – Quebec City, QC @ Centre Vidéotron
July 17 – Uncasville, CT @ Mohegan Sun Arena
July 18 – Albany, NY @ MVP Arena
July 20 – Manchester, NH @ SNHU Arena
July 21 – Newark, NJ @ Prudential Center
July 23 – Philadelphia, PA @ Xfinity Mobile Arena
July 25 – Knoxville, TN @ Food City Center
July 30 – Lubbock, TX @ United Supermarkets Arena
July 31 – Colorado Springs, CO @ Weidner Field
Aug. 2 – El Paso, TX @ UTEP Don Haskins Center
Aug. 4 – Tucson, AZ @ Tucson Arena
Aug. 6 – Ontario, CA @ Toyota Arena
Aug. 7 – Las Vegas, NV @ Michelob ULTRA Arena
Aug. 9 – Sparks, NV @ Nugget Event Center
Aug. 10 – Boise, ID @ ExtraMile Arena
Aug. 12 – Billings, MT @ First Interstate Arena at Metrapark
Aug. 14 – Spokane, WA @ Numerica Veterans Arena
Aug. 15 – Vancouver, BC @ PNE Pacific Coliseum
Aug. 17 – Edmonton, AB @ Rogers Place
Aug. 20 – Fargo, ND @ Fargodome
Aug. 21 – Welch, MN @ Treasure Island Resort
Aug. 23 – Springfield, IL @ Illinois State Fair
Sept. 4 – Dyersville, IA @ Velocity  Festival
Sept. 10 – McHenry, IL @ McHenry Music Festival