Shinedown drummer Barry Kerch played a critical role in supporting singer Brent Smith through his struggle with withdrawal during the Threat to Survival tour, Smith told Rick Beato.
Smith was asked about the album cycle during that difficult period in his life. The Threat to Survival record marked Shinedown’s fifth studio album, and Smith has spoken about the connection between that release and his personal battle with addiction.
Smith explained the toll the experience took on him. “That album cycle was my withdrawal, like two years of being on it,” Brent Smith said. “It’s interesting when I think about that album because it was the fifth record. It was literally called Threat to Survival.”
Smith credited his band for helping him survive that time. “But the only reason I was able to get out of it was because I had such a support system,” he continued.
One moment stood out in his memory. “I remember Barry saying to me at one point in time during that tour … ‘I don’t want to watch you die,'” Smith recalled.
Smith’s comments came during his discussion of the Threat to Survival tour and the period surrounding that album. His bandmates—Kerch, bassist Eric Bass, and guitarist Zach Myers—formed the support system that enabled him to overcome that difficult chapter.
Smith’s battle with addiction had roots in the years before the Threat to Survival tour. He first achieved sobriety in 2011 ahead of the release of Shinedown’s album Amaryllis, which went gold with the RIAA, but he relapsed in 2014 after that tour ended because he struggled with what to do with himself during his downtime.
The Threat to Survival album arrived on September 18, 2015, and the tour began on October 16, 2015, in Wichita, Kansas, as a co-headlining run with Breaking Benjamin and Sevendust. During the tour in 2016, Smith was clean but still dealing with withdrawal symptoms that made survival feel uncertain. One particularly difficult moment came during a show at The Mayan Theater in Los Angeles, where the withdrawal made him feel like he was going to die.
Smith’s sobriety held from March 2016 onward. His next album with Shinedown, Attention Attention, became the first record that Smith was fully sober for throughout the entire writing, recording, and touring process.
