“We felt unstoppable…” From falling apart to becoming hard rock heroes, Eric Bass tells the story of Shinedown

Having been Shinedown bassist’s since 2008, Eric Bass has spent nearly two decades at the top of the hard rock mountain. Now, releasing his first solo LP Eric Bass Presents: I Had A Name, he tells Kerrang! how each recorded output – for better or worse – has shaped him as an artist and songwriter. Plus, what else is still to come…

“Interestingly enough, I wasn’t around for the first two Shinedown records, neither was Zach Myers. I joined the band on The Sound Of Madness. That said, Leave A Whisper is the sound of a band becoming itself. Brad Stewart was the bass player, and Jasin Todd was the guitar player. There’s a lot of fire in those records, man, and I’ve gotten the privilege of playing songs like 45 and Fly From The Inside pretty much on a nightly basis. Although we don’t play it much anymore, the band’s first Number One song was Save Me from Us And Them.

“It was an interesting venture coming into a band after it was formed. Every time that I have to learn a song I didn’t write, I learn something about the person who wrote it. Being able to play Brad’s bass parts, and pick up some of his flavour, incorporating his playing style, that stuff really helps me a lot, as a player.”

“I had been in a few bands with mild success at this point but had stopped to produce records and write songs with mostly indie and hardcore bands. Through this I knew Steve ‘Stevo’ Robertson who was Shinedown’s A&R rep at Atlantic Records, he called me up one day and asked if I’d want to write with Shinedown and Brent Smith, I said I’d love to. The first thing I did after that call was phone my friend Rick Beato, who had worked with Brent before, and asked him what he was like. ‘Man, he’s super intense,’ he said, and kind of gave me the rundown.

“I remember picking Brent up at a Holiday Inn in Charleston, South Carolina where I live. He looked like he hadn’t bathed in a few days. We went out to a club that night and went to a rock show. I forget who was playing and we got absolutely annihilated. I had to call my wife to come pick us up, and that was sort of the beginning of our relationship.

“We wrote some songs together, but at the time it was obvious to me that the band was very dysfunctional. Barry was spot on, but Jasin and Brent obviously had a substance dependence with each other. Stevo asked me to join the band and I declined initially to focus on my studio career. Stevo sent me Second Chance, Sound Of Madness and Devour once the record was finished. Chris Cheney from Jane’s Addiction filled in on bass. I just couldn’t believe how great it sounded. Stevo told me that Jasin had left the band and Brent was trying to clean up, so I was persuaded to audition as the permanent bassist and everything just clicked.

“Again, I learned about myself as a musician by playing Chris’ bass parts, but probably more from the 430 or something shows on that cycle. We wrote the song Diamond Eyes on that tour and I got to produce it, the same with My Name Is Alice for the Jonny Depp Alice In Wonderland movie. Those were really my first foray into writing with Brent and the band and Diamond Eyes went on to be a huge Number One song for us and both tracks ended up appearing on the re-release of The Sound Of Madness.

“Not to be disrespectful, but in the band we talk about how The Sound Of Madness is our first record. And for the current iteration of the band, it is.”

“Rolling into Amaryllis, this is where I felt like I was first able to put my flavour into the band. I wrote quite a bit – songs like I’ll Follow You, Unity and Enemies to name a few. While I wasn’t involved in the production, it really solidified Brent and I, and our friend Dave Bassett’s – who regularly writes with us – writing partnership. I felt like an asset to the band for the first time. The bass playing is all my own, and I play some guitar. Zach and I would begin to share the guitar player role in the studio a bit more as we moved forward.

“And then that tour we did after that record, we were like a machine. I mean that. Without a doubt, the most unstoppable I feel like our band has ever been – we were all in shape, everyone was sober, and we were full of energy and passion. It was a good time.”

“Threat To Survival – that record is called that for a reason. Our band really fell apart after that Amaryllis tour. Brent fell back into drug use very heavily. My depression took over my life and was taking pills behind my wife’s back to make myself feel better. I think stopping after all that momentum really took a toll on all of us. We dug ourselves a pit that we had to dig out of.

“I wrote Black Cadillac, and solely produced and wrote Cut The Cord with Brent – probably the biggest song we had on that record. I actually wrote less on Threat To Survival than I did on Amaryllis, but I took way more of a studio role. Dave Bassett produced a lot of those tracks, and I spent a lot of time in the studio with him, helping with things outside of just my instrument and turning knobs. I had this real natural progression with him into more of a studio person.

“I haven't really thought about it for a while but Threat To Survival was really good, it was very organic and cathartic. What happened over the touring cycle is kind of a blur, but Brent got sober and we all cleaned up our shit pretty well.”

“And then that takes us to Attention Attention. I’ve never felt such a sense of purpose in my life as I did going into that record. We were all bringing so much music to the band at that point, all writing with each other together and separately. We had so many good songs going in and we just had a handle on it from the beginning. I wrote more on that album than ever before, songs like Monsters, Devil, Human Radio and Get Up. Zach and I began sharing guitar duties and blurred the lines of our roles, with Zach playing bass on some songs and me playing guitar on others, a dynamic we’ve kept up since.

“We took the record to a very renowned mixer… and it wasn’t happening, the mixes weren't coming together the way we wanted to them to. Brent and Stevo suggested I mix it, which at the time, I wasn’t in the headspace for after producing and engineering it. Eventually, I came around and mixed the record and it turned out really, really great. It really made me feel as though I could accomplish anything. I proved to myself that I could produce my own band and have it not be an abomination. I felt very accomplished at the end of that record.”

“Working between my home of Charleston South Carolina and California, Brent, Zach, Dave Bassett and I started writing what would become Planet Zero. We wrote maybe 13 songs straight out the gate for that one most of which made the record.

“Planet Zero taught me a lot about imperfection in music. I think, as producers, sometimes we have a tendency to want to fix everything and make everything right. I really love it now, but at the time, I didn’t think it was my best work. I wasn’t in the healthiest headspace, which made it difficult for me to produce. It was an exercise in trusting the people I’m in a band with – trusting them when they say, ‘Hey man, this is really good, you shouldn't be so hard on yourself.’

“The album became an unintentional concept record, with synth interludes and a voice we called Siren added in the final days of production. I created them all in just a few days, scripting and producing the transitions myself. It was a great challenge and proved I could deliver under pressure.”

“We were touring Attention Attention in Europe in 2018, and I was in a hotel room in Milan, Italy, when I got this idea for a story. A voice in my head that didn’t belong to me said, ‘You might want to write this down.’ I started writing down this story, and somewhere along that tour, I started putting together pieces of music on the Pro Tools rig I have on the road. I went to the band and said, ‘Hey, are y’all ready to start writing a record?’ They weren’t, but with their blessing, I started putting together my debut solo record, I Had A Name.

“Throughout this process of writing about these characters – kids that are in a prison camp, this girl who has abandoned her faith to become an assassin to avenge her mother’s death, this ancient protector who used to safeguard this world but is now the last of his kind, the evil dictator who has overthrown the world and mind-controlled everyone – as I was digging into their experiences, I was unintentionally writing the most autobiographical record I’ve ever written. Writing in first-person, it was only after the record was finished that I realised the characters’ struggles mirrored significant struggles in my own journey.

“I created a concept record that isn’t overtly narrative – more than just storytelling, it allows listeners to see themselves in the lyrics, much like a traditional album would, yet still has qualities of a rock opera. While the songs tell snapshots of these character’s stories, the whole story will be told in a graphic novel that hopefully by the end of the year, is being written by my good friend Rob Prior.

“So that’s how I Had a Name was born. The album was entirely self-made – I played all the instruments, wrote the lyrics and sang everything. I recorded drums uniquely, playing them by hand and overdubbing cymbals. I learned a lot about myself as a vocalist, lyricist and drummer, pushing myself in ways I haven't before as a musician.

“I hope everyone enjoys this record because it’s a huge piece of me that I’m putting out into the world. It’s scary, but that’s what it’s supposed to be. Art isn’t complete until you give it to somebody. It feels good to have it out in the world.”

“We’re working on the eighth Shinedown record. We’ve already done a fair bit of writing, recording and mixing. Two songs, 365 and Dance Kid Dance, are out now and the UK can see us performing at Download Festival in June this year!”

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