INTERVIEW: Barry Kerch – Shinedown
Releasing their sixth studio album ATTENTION ATTENTION is SHINEDOWN. With the album set to be their most personal to date, it follows an individuals journey through life’s emotional and physical battles that we can all relate to. Ahead of the release, we spoke to Barry Kerch about the album concept, the pitfall of social media, the production and more.
You’re on tour prior to the release of your upcoming album, ATTENTION ATTENTION. how is it going?
Barry: It’s going really well, we’re actually in Orlando at the moment at a big festival called Earthday Birthday, we’re having a great time, kicking this off and we’re excited to release the new record so, everything is going well.
You’ve already released a couple of singles from the album, what has the reception been like?
Barry: So far, the reception has been good, lots of comments and things. There’s always going to be detractors but there’s been the overwhelming thoughts on it are that the people are excited for the record and therefore the songs.
Your first single DEVIL was directed by Bill Yukich (Beyonce, Marilyn Manson) – what was it like working with him on what is an introduction to your most personal album to date?
Barry: It was really nice working with him because he’s got a unique vision and kind of took idea it is for the record and made it his own. He’s a kind of cinematic video director and he does his own editing, so he had a clear vision. Working with him was easy, he made it very easy, he was like “just trust me I’ve got this” and we were looking like we were wondering what it was gonna look like and he was like “don’t worry!”. Then he shows you all the final edits and the idea behind it we were like, “Oh wow that’s cool! We didn’t know it was going to look like that!” When you show up on a set it looks very different there than what it does through the eye of a camera. It was a lot of fun to work with him and he also did THE HUMAN RADIO video, cause the ideas to do a video for each one of these songs to tell the story of the record and hopefully he will be doing all of them.
Were you nervous putting so much trust into someone who wasn’t behind the scenes in the making of such a personal album?
Barry: There’s always some nerves but you have to put your trust into their art. That’s what he does, we don’t make videos, that’s what he does, we make records and write music. At some point you have to trust in their vision and to be honest if it didn’t work out we wouldn’t have put it out there, and that does happen. That’s with anything, if it’s not up to our standards we wouldn’t have put it out there, but he nailed it, hit it out of the park so we’re very happy to use him and hopefully use him again in the future.
ATTENTION ATTENTION is a concept album that follows an individual’s journey with life’s emotional and physical battles. Can you tell me more about how the idea come about?
Barry: It is that because it is what we went through over the past four years. It’s a very introspective record on us that we put we put upon that character, that person that walks into a room and sits down and has to come to terms with themselves. It’s no secret that Brent has dealt with addictions over the years, our bassist has depression issues and also myself and Zach went through some depression, between before we did Threat To Survival and after that just trying to deal with we were off for two years. It’s life, life happens and we all have our issues, but we really took all our issues and problems we had within the band and put them upon this character and into the songs. It’s really kind of auto-biographical of the four of us put upon one character.
Was it a difficult for you to reflect on those feelings to get that rawness for the record?
Barry: Yes and no, it’s hard to put yourself out there for the world to look at and go ‘we don’t like it’, that can be painful sometimes, or that they like it, but I think it’s very cathartic to let go of that and go ‘this happened’ and you can have a deep breath and move forward. If anything, it was therapy for us to put it out there and really be real and raw about that. I think putting ourselves out there was the best thing to do for the record.
Eric [Bass] produced and mixed the album in its entirety for the first time ever. Did you feel like because you know each other so well, that if someone else come along to do it, it wouldn’t have felt the same?
Barry: Absolutely. We had full trust in Eric and he’s done other songs, produced and mixed other songs for us like Cut The Chord and Her Name Is Alice, things that major, so the trust was already there. When he came into the band he was a producer, when we were doing Sound of Madness we went to his studio to do some writing, so we knew him in that world and when we needed a new bass player, we said, “we’ll ask that guy” and he said yes. So, his first and foremost talent was producing, and bass is his secondary. Even when he was able to put that head on for us, he was able to separate himself and push us as a producer should, but he was also able to be objective outside of the band because he is a producer first and foremost. It was a pleasure to work with him because he knows our strengths and weaknesses so he’s able to pull those out of us or he sees something he can break it down for the sake of the studio, that way he can be that therapist for us and say, “let’s do this direction for a second.” That’s a very special talent to be able to have.
Eric made the album feel dangerous. It makes the emotion real, these battles aren’t safe. Nothing is stripped back. You’ve done a great job in telling the story.
Barry: Thank you, thank you.
The album does act as a reminder to people to remember their human side, to ask how someone is face to face. Do you think this message will be interpreted by listeners?
Barry: I hope it is. That’s the neat thing about this art because people are going to interpret it as they perceive it and put it upon themselves, for better or for worse. Hopefully, they can get that out of it and make them feel positive and the record. It’s very dark to begin with and heavy mentally, so it’s going to take you on a journey, but I hope when they listen to it they can realise there’s that light at the end of the tunnel, that you can go out there and do what you need to do. The cool thing about music is that I’ve had people over the years say “well, this song means this to me” and I’ve listened to it and gone “wow, that’s interesting because it had nothing to do with whatever they were meaning on there”, but if does that for them and it makes them listen to it then that’s great. I’m sure there’s songs I’ve listened to over the years, whoever wrote them, maybe I’ve misinterpreted some of those, but they mean something to me. That’s the cool thing about music.
KILL YOUR CONSCIENCE is about the pitfall of social media. Do you feel that people are too reliant on it now and forgetting how to be in touch with their human side?
Barry: Yes. Absolutely, I think it’s become a natural addiction that is just as bad as other things. People want social acceptance, people want other people to like them, that’s just nature. Now it’s under a microscope 24/7, now you can wake up and see if people have commented on a stupid picture you have put out there and they’ll say things and that will affect you. That to me is ridiculous, you know who your friends are, you don’t need tens of thousands of likes off people you don’t know and even more, I don’t care what people think when they hate on you, you don’t know who they are, they can just hide behind a computer from their moms basement, it’s ridiculous. I think social media is not a thing that means anything. I do it because it’s what people do, especially as a musician in a popular band and you have to keep your social media out there and I’m being yelled at to keep my socials up, put posts out there, but I really don’t care. I think it’s more important to be around the people you know and look them in the eye, contact them even if it’s just a phone call and say “hey, I was thinking about you”, and had a conversation, that’s much more important than social media.
Do you feel that with so much social media it contributes to people’s mental health, depression etc?
Barry: Unfortunately, I do. From first hand experience watching Eric, because he has actual depression issues he quit social media, he stopped using Twitter, Instagram and his phone and Facebook, just to give himself a break. It was affecting him because he’d get on there and everything he’d look at was negative, everything is negative, it would be ‘I hate this person’ and ‘Your president sucks, should have been this’, and all this craziness out there really affects people, it affects your day and mood and everything else. I hate it, but it’s a necessary evil nowadays.
You’re always pushing yourself as a band, testing the limits. Can it get tedious knowing you want to keep evolving to be the best version of the band and yourselves?
Barry: That’s the whole idea, to push ourselves and be the best we can. If we didn’t try anything, if we didn’t work harder on this record than we did on the last one, it’d be all for nothing, it wouldn’t be worth doing. We do this because we truly love it, not for the pay check, not because we want to be away from our families touring all the time, but because we truly love making music and seeing how people react to it. We’re always going to push ourselves and do something new and to hopefully outdo what we’ve done in the past.
You’ve got Download coming up in a couple of months, but aside from that what is coming up for SHINEDOWN?
Barry: More touring! There’s going to be a lot of that. We’re excited that we’re playing Download, especially as it’s because it’s the biggest and best spot we’ve had at Download. Going before Marylin [Manson] and Ozzy [Osbourne] is huge for us, we’re excited. Thank you to IRON MAIDEN for giving us that position basically. I think that tour we did with them last year really gave us a whole new level in the UK and Europe, so we’re excited about that. We’re gonna be touring, touring and touring some more. We’re gonna do some festivals in June over there, then we’re gonna come back and do another run and co-headline with GODSMACK here in the States and then we’ll be back over there sometime in the fall to do a headlining run which we haven’t done in a while. We’re very excited and coming up next year, there’ll be more international touring and maybe another summer run here.
It’s non-stop basically.
Barry: Non-stop, we are booked through until November and they’re still adding!
You were great on your run with IRON MAIDEN as well.
That was hard, IRON MAIDEN fans are very die-hard and they’re there to see IRON MAIDEN and not the support band. It took a lot of work on our part to win them over, but I think we did win quite a bit over.
Was it a lot of expectation for you to open for such a huge name?
Barry: I think it was more nerves and the fact we wanted to steal as much as their audience as we could, the best that we could as an opening band. Our job as a support band is to support IRON MAIDEN and get the crowd warmed up and I think we did that for the most part, but it was difficult. We had fun though.
You’ve raised your status high in recent years, so how important is it for you to start taking more breakthrough bands out on tour with you?
Barry: I think it’s really important. I love having the younger bands open for us and show them the ropes, show them how to tour properly. Every band when they’re starting out makes many mistakes. We were lucky when we toured with 3 DOORS DOWN when we were a baby band with the mistakes that we made, they would laugh at us and say, ‘don’t do that again’. We try to do that for the younger bands on tour with us because it’s tough out here. Touring is rough on you, you’re going to make mistakes and do dumb things, hopefully you can have somebody who will be the big brother and help you along.
ATTENTION ATTENTION is out May 4 via Atlantic Records.
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