We had the pleasure of sitting down with Shinedown frontman Brent Smith at our Setlist.fm studio in Los Angeles. We talked to the singer/songwriter about some of his favorite live music memories as a fan. Watch our Marquee Memories episode below:
Tool & Melvins
"They were playing at Pacific Coliseum in Knoxville, Tennessee- where I was born and raised. Everybody was so excited because there hadn't really been a show like this in Knoxville in quite a while. They didn't get a lot of rock shows. There were like protestor outside- the whole nine. A lot of what I learned from these two artists is you can have odd time signatures, you can talk about things that are kind of other worldly. It's just a different perspective, just push boundaries- you know don''t be complacent with things. See how far you can take something. The beautiful thing about music- in all honest- in melody, in song and all that- there's no handbook. Just go."
Garth Brooks
"Anybody that says "I don't know Garth Brooks songs" - dude, you probably know 20 of them. It's just mind-blowing. Just a true showman. One of the things I learned from him as I watched him was his genuine graciousness towards the audience. There was nothing that came off as contrived, prefabricated, scripted. It all was very genuine. Those three hours, you know this guy who is just a mega star making it about the audience, man. And making sure they knew that it was about them. Pretty amazing."
KORN
"With Korn I always listened to them and I respected the fact that I believed the intensity because of the vulnerability was there also. It isn't always about everything's awful the world sucks. I think in a lot of ways people will sometimes use that as an excuse in their day to day life. Korn, when Jonathan would sing, Jonathan would emote and he's not joking. You can't go into that place, you can't go up here and go to that place and it not be real. And when you listen to that guy's tone, you listen to the anguish, the intensity, the fear, the aggression, the release - it's all genuine and that's something only Korn can do. And a lot of bands owe their sound to Korn. They know who they are, we're one of them."
