Shinedown labels its sound as 'super rock'

Like the band they've been opening for, Shinedown also hails from the Deep South. But instead of coming from small-town Mississippi, Shinedown has its roots in a large Southern city with an established tradition of music, Jacksonville, Fla., the home of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

"There's a lot of heritage in Southern rock," said singer Brent Smith. Smith, while not from Jacksonville himself, still hails from the South -- Knoxville, Tenn.

"You've got these great bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers" said Smith. "There's just a balance and an understanding of music down in the swamp. Music is an extremely vital and necessary element of life in the South."

Shinedown's sound can't be classified as Southern rock, though. It's more akin to the hard crunch of new metal. The band calls it "super rock."

"It's not in the same vein as a lot of the stuff you're used to hearing," said Smith. "A lot of critics group us with Tool or Creed, bands like that, and no offense to those bands, but our sound is different."

More than anything else, says Smith, what defines "super rock" is the size of the sound. "We want to believe the songs we're writing belong in an arena," he said. "We want them to sound larger than life."

That big-rock sound is accompanied by a big-rock stage attitude, said Smith. "There's a lot of attitude and crowd interaction," he said. "There's a lot of intensity on the stage. Blank stares are not a favorite of mine. We like to see the crowd get into it."

Their inspiration comes from a wide variety of influences, claim Smith and company, including the classic rock of Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd as well as the heavy contemporary metal of Tool and Staind.

"Brad is a big grunge kid," he said speaking about bassist Brad Stewart. "Barry (Kerch, drummer) is into funk and Jasin (Todd, bassist) likes stuff like Jeff Buckley and Blind Melon."

Smith credits his own style to what he calls the "power singers," people like Chris Cornell, Axl Rose and Robert Plant. "No matter what you think about those guys, you have to admit they're great singers," he said.

But his biggest influence, said Smith, is the great soul singer Otis Redding. "Before him I'd never heard a man bleed through a speaker," he said.

Smith said he likes the honesty and power that Redding conveyed in his recordings.

"When I'm writing, it's all about the conviction that Otis Redding taught me," he said. "The biggest thing is the honesty."

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, ext. 226