Celebrity Jobber REWINDS - Brent Smith from Shinedown

Celebrity Jobber Podcast with Jeff Zito

In this rewind episode of the Celebrity Jobber Podcast, host Jeff Zito revisits his conversation with Brent Smith, lead vocalist and primary

Key takeaways

• Brent Smith has been passionate about music since birth, never considering a career outside of it.
• He began performing at age 14 and held various odd jobs like bagging groceries and landscaping before fame.

Main topics

• Brent Smith's early life and musical beginnings
• First jobs before fame

Notable quotes

"You're allowed to have as many human moments as you need."

"The worst thing that you could do... is be quiet. If something's going on, you got to talk to somebody."

Conclusion

Brent Smith's journey from a young musician in Knoxville to frontman of

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:03) Hey, it's Jeff Zito. Thanks for listening to the Celebrity Jobber Podcast. New episodes drop every Friday, and this week's guest will be sports journalist Susie Colbert, currently number three on the Apple Podcast Music Interviews chart. streaming on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Please hit that subscribe button. Would love a five-star rating. And if you could, please leave a comment and or a review. Plus, you can listen to past guests and episodes on celebrityjobber.com. Wednesdays, we release an earlier episode that you might have missed, which leads us to today's Celebrity Jobber Rewind, which was originally published on November 10th of 2023, episode number 59. You know him as the lead singer of the band Shinedown, and I'm talking about Brent Smith. Hey Speaker 3 (1:04) Jeff, how are you? Brent, Speaker 2 (1:05) how are you, man? Speaker 3 (1:06) It's been a minute. Speaker 2 (1:07) Like a long minute, but Speaker 3 (1:08) it's good to hear your voice. Speaker 2 (1:10) I will say this. You know, you've always been the kind of guy, you know, over the past, you know, 20 plus years, we've had this, you know, kind of working relationship and we don't see each other often. But when I do run into you, you are just always, you know, super pleasant and you make a guy like me feel quasi important. So I do thank you for that. Speaker 3 (1:32) Well, you're not quasi-important. You're very important. And the feeling is 100 % mutual. Over the years, you've been such a huge supporter of the band, and I just have an immense amount of respect for you. So it's awesome to be able to talk to Speaker 2 (1:47) you. Oh, man, thank you so much. Coming up, we'll talk about Brent's first job before Shinedown and maybe some business stuff that he's involved with outside. of music. Maybe Speaker 3 (1:58) me and you will just partner up and we'll just like, you know, we'll corner the market. Man, Speaker 2 (2:02) if you would allow me to ride any type of your coattails, I would jump. add it in a heartbeat. I won't hold my breath, but I definitely, you've got a guy who would quit everything he's doing and jump on board. So Brent Smith from Shinedown, my guest this week on Celebrity Jobber. The Speaker 1 (2:24) Celebrity Jobber podcast with Jeff Zito. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, give a five-star rating and leave a review. Check out all our past episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pause. What if these celebrities weren't famous? What would they have become? What was their first job? We're about to find out. Speaker 2 (2:43) Brent, I'm watching the video for this song, Symptom of Being Human. And I can't help but think that you are singing this song. Is this like autobiographical by any means? Speaker 3 (3:02) I mean, in all reality, the song and the record, Planet Zero, obviously, yeah, there's a lot of it that's autobiographical, because I write about what I know. Being the main lyricist in the band for the better part of two decades, I've always been honest in the songwriting. But, you know, we wrote Planet Zero, the album, and that's the album that A Symptom of Being Human is on. We wrote it in the midst of a pandemic. Speaker 3 (3:30) When we wrote Symptom, it was a real gift in a lot of ways. And when you're writing a record, You don't necessarily get a gift on every album. What a gift is, is kind of a song that utilizes you as a vessel. And it almost writes itself because it's very necessary and it wants to be born. But just taking on the frustration of, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic, when everybody was angry and upset and frustrated and scared, and there were all these emotions going around, we wrote Symptom. It was one of the very first songs that we wrote for the record. And really, the song is about understanding that You're allowed to, in this lifetime, and your life is a journey, which is exactly what life is, is a journey. You're allowed to have as many human moments as you need. Speaker 2 (4:13) What I really love about this song and what you do is you kind of normalize, you know, mental health or people that are struggling with some kind of mental thing. It's like, hey. I've got this too. And I think the pandemic actually kind of helped that bring, bring it like center stage for a lot of people to say like, Hey, I think everybody's got this. Do you agree? Speaker 3 (4:41) Yeah. I mean, the point of the song is the fact that we're all a work in progress, right. You know, with or without a pandemic, like life is a journey, like I was saying, but. The normalizing of mental health, I mean, we've known each other for a very, very long time, and I'm in a band that's been talking about mental health for the better part Speaker 1 (4:59) of two decades before it was Speaker 3 (5:01) like in the forefront and people were talking about Speaker 2 (5:04) it. Speaker 3 (5:04) And for the longest time, I dealt with the insecurity of people asking for help because they wanted – I think there was an insecurity because people were afraid to tell someone that they were struggling mentally or that – because they thought that they were either going to be – made fun of or they were going to be embarrassed by or that the person they were talking to was thinking that they were just trying to get sympathy for something and what have you. Listen, man, this world that we're in right now, especially now with technology and communication, it's an interesting place to navigate. The worst thing that you could do, though, from a mental health standpoint, at least from my experience, is be quiet. If something's going on, you got to talk to somebody. It's probably the bravest thing you could do. Speaker 2 (5:46) And I do think that the pandemic helped a lot of people realize that, you know, even if you feel like you have it together somewhat, you go through that pandemic and you realize quickly that you didn't have it together as much as you thought you did. I could be the first one. I mean, look, I've dealt with some anxiety and stuff like that over the years. So I kind of know a little bit about what. you know, what troubles me, but there's, you know, those guys, you look at the captain of the football team, the good looking guy and the super successful guy. Like we all are human. We all have like something, there's something that we're all dealing with. I think that song is just very important that you bring that message to people like, Hey, even me, I got some of these issues too. And I think that helps people to, to hear stuff like that. Speaker 3 (6:39) Absolutely. Also, too, just the community that we are in and music in general. Listen, the most powerful music is extremely powerful, especially when you're talking about songs, because they can evolve for you in your lifetime also at different points in time. Yeah. Yeah. The dynamic, like rock and roll for me, I know that people put that as a style and a genre, but... Really, rock and roll is a way of life for people. And the rock and roll community has got to be, listen, in that community, anyone from anywhere at any time is welcomed all the time. And we're all on this planet together. So it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman, whether you're younger, whether you're older, the color Speaker 1 (7:23) of your Speaker 3 (7:23) skin, that's irrelevant. Your religion, that's your business. That's what makes you an individual. We are all connected. with each other. It's called the human condition and we should be there for each other. But I mean, sometimes we get into this world that we're in and there's so much going on at such a fast pace. I tell people all the time, I'm like, listen, that Speaker 1 (7:49) device that you're... attached to, please remember something, that Speaker 3 (7:55) you need to be in control of the device. The device doesn't need to be in control of you. Speaker 2 (8:00) Right. So Brent, when you were growing up, grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, I didn't know that you were an only child. Did you have a lot of friends growing up? Was this something maybe that you have dealt with on and off for a little