SHINEDOWN’s BRENT SMITH Says New SMITH & MYERS Album Will ‘Knock People Back In A Good Way’

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SHINEDOWN frontman Brent Smith spoke to Australia's Silver Tiger Media about the forthcoming album from SMITH & MYERS, his collaboration with SHINEDOWN guitarist Zach Myers. Regarding what fans can expect from the follow-up to 2014's "Acoustic Sessions" EP, Brent said: "We did this back in 2014 as a request from the fabase, so we just called it SMITH & MYERS, and literally, what we did was we did two EPs — each one was five songs a piece — and they were all cover songs from other artists and we never really thought it was going to be anything. Then, all of a sudden, there was a high demand for it, because a lot of the promotions that we do. We're doing radio tours and things like that. Sometimes it'll be me and Zach, and we'll do a lot of things acoustic, and just in regards to the SHINEDOWN material as well, because a lot of the SHINEDOWN songs could be transferred to acoustic or piano and what have you, so we'll go out and do those types of promotions. So we decided to do this for our fan base and we called it SMITH & MYERS. It just kind of caught on. We did a tour in 2017 and it went really well. We told people we can do an album and next time we're going to do 10 covers that are going to be picked by the audience, and that happened. We got those songs and then for the first time we were going to write new material, original just for SMITH & MYERS. So it's not SHINEDOWN — it's Zach playing guitar and playing piano and it's my voice, but it is a different type of thing. I think what we've done here with this new one, to be quite honest, it's actually kind of surprised me in all the right ways. It's very adventurous in a lot of ways, and I think it's really gonna knock people back in a good way. I'm really excited for it to come out I think people are going to really dig it." As previously reported, SHINEDOWN's 2012 song "Atlas Falls" arrived on digital services on Friday (May 22), after being available since March only as part of a charity T-shirt bundle sold through the band's merch site. One hundred percent of the proceeds from the bundle, totaling $300,000, has already gone to non-profit medical supplier Direct Relief. The band also donated $20,000 of its own money. Direct Relief supplies healthcare workers with crucial protective items and equipment. "Atlas Falls" was recorded during the sessions for the band's fourth album, "Amaryllis", but was left off the final track list. The song is currently at No. 18 and climbing on the rock radio airplay chart.