The members of Shinedown expect a full year of touring to precede the group’s fourth album, though a live DVD is likely to come from its time on the road and several movie soundtrack contributions will give fans some fresh material from the Florida-based rockers.
“We’re going to be touring for the rest of this year,” drummer Barry Kerch tells Billboard.com. “We’ve been doing some writing on the road; we’ve been doing a lot of that, actually. But at the same time we still have two or three more singles to release off this record (2008’s gold-certified ‘The Sound of Madness’), so it won’t be until 2011 that we’ll get the next album out or even start working on it.”
After a current North American swing with Puddle of Mudd wraps on Feb. 13, Shinedown will head to Australia to be part of the Soundwave Festival, then play a few more U.S. dates in March before hopping on Nickelback‘s spring tour, along with a five-day run on VH1’s Best Cruise Ever in April. Kerch says Shinedown is also planning to play European festivals and make another headline run through North America, possibly with an acoustic tour to wrap things up.
“It’s definitely on the table,” Kerch says. “When this record’s finally waning and it’s time to do another one, we thought it might be fun to go and do an acoustic tour and hit all our major markets. It’s not set in stone yet, but that’s what we want to do.”
The drummer says Shinedown also hopes to film some of its shows with an eye towards putting out its first concert DVD since 2005’s “Live From the Inside.” “The fans have been begging for a DVD,” Kerch notes. “We haven’t done one since the first record, but the label looks at the numbers and…then it becomes politics. But we don’t care. We just one to put one out there, so we’ll see what happens.”
Shinedown — which launched three consecutive No. 1 Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks hits and one Top 10 Hot 100 single (“Second Chance”) from “The Sound of Madness” — will also be putting out some new music via film soundtracks. It’s contributed a song to the upcoming Sylvester Stallone movie “The Expendables,” and the group is particularly excited about “Her Name is Alice,” which it cut for Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland.”
“To have Disney approach us and say, ‘Hey, you wanna do a song for a Tim Burton-Johnny Depp movie?’ — absolutely!,” Kerch says. “We’re huge fans, of course, and what a cool story, anyway. When we first wrote the songs, Brent (Smith) put lyrics on it based on the book, ’cause we hadn’t seen the trailer or anything yet, or even a script. And then when it came time for Brent to lay down his vocals, the trailer was out and he realized it was Tim Burton’s version of the story, where Alice is going [i]back[/i] to Wonderland, so he changed all his lyrics. But it turned out really good; it’s a slow rocker but it’s not a ballad by any means. It’s really heavy, and Brent sang some really powerful vocals.”