Second Cup Café: Shinedown

Hard Rockers Perform Their New Song, "Second Chance," From Their Latest Album, "The Sound of Madness"

(CBS)  Shinedown's front-man, Brent Smith, isn't afraid to tell it like it is -- or take his time doing it.

The Knoxville, Tenn. native and lead of the Jacksonville, Fla.-based hard rock band, is showing his true colors more than ever on their latest album, "The Sound of Madness."

"Lyrically, these songs are the most blunt that I've ever written," Smith said on the band's official Web site.

Although it's been a while since the band's first two albums -- 2003's platinum "Leave A Whisper" and 2005's gold "Us And Them," the band believes it was well worth the wait.

Shinedown produced "Fly From the Inside," "45," the chart-topping "Save Me," as well as a cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man," which made the top five rock and alternative radio hits.

Shinedown visited the The Early Show Saturday Edition's "Second Cup Cafe" to perform "Second Chance" off their latest album, "The Sound of Madness."

The band gets political for the first time in "Devour," which Smith says "was inspired by Shinedown's visits to troops in Iraq and his feelings about the end of George W. Bush's presidency."

Shinedown shows their softer side with "If You Only Knew," an homage to Smith's girlfriend Ashley, with whom he had a son in 2007.

The band credits producer Rob Cavallo for helping them explore different sides of themselves emotionally and lyrically.

Cavallo has a stellar track record of producing Grammy-winning bands, such as Green Day, My Chemical Romance, the Goo Goo Dolls and Kid Rock.

"I said, 'You know what -- when I'm dead and gone, when everybody in this band has passed or what have you, I want the world to remember this as a record that needed to be made, and that there was a reason for it.' That was the motivation behind this album," Smith said.

[sam-kiley]

bonjour le groupe hard rock shinedown..superbe bravo

bye..

[jbresee]

Nope, the engineer missed it again. Only one of the two guitars could be heard in the mix for the encore over the closing credits. If this were only a rare occurrence, we could just chalk it up to bad luck, but someone has made a beginner's mistake like this almost every time I've tuned in on Saturday mornings for the past several years.

[jbresee]

There are two things for which the Second Cup Cafe segment can be counted on: Interesting and diverse musical acts who are worth hearing, and sound engineering that is bad to the point of incompetence. Without fail, someone's instrument or voice gets left out of the broadcast mix. Today it was the guitarist at stage right (played a Taylor GS with and Expression pickup system - the guitar without the cutaway). The sound engineer had _two_ signals to work with - the guitar's pickup and a microphone in front of the guitar, but the signal from neither of these sources ever reached the broadcast. At the time I'm posting this comment, that engineer still has about 15 minutes to fix this latest screw-up. It would be wonderful if just once on the Second Cup Cafe, we the broadcast audience could hear what the artist meant for us to hear.