Shinedown guitarist Zach Myers recently appeared on the “Beardo & Weirdo” podcast hosted by Five Finger Death Punch bassist Chris Kael and comedian Craig Gass. Myers was asked about the emotional connection fans have to Shinedown’s music and if surprises him.
“Yes. But it also at times doesn’t feel real, because it’s true,” Myers said. “Your music does mean as much to you as Bruce Springsteen meant to me or U2 meant to me or Stevie Ray Vaughan or whatever. But when it’s you, it’s hard to… I get a lot of imposter syndrome, so it’s hard to go, ‘Oh.’ Like when people say, ‘Dude, your song saved my life,’ the computer just stops working for me. And I go, ‘Oh, man.’ And I don’t want it to make it look like it goes in one ear and out the other, ’cause the truth is people saying those types of things to me are the reason we stop doing meet-and-greets.”
Myers went on to explain that the stories he would hear from fans became too difficult to take just prior to taking the stage for a performance.
“We would do ours very different,” he said. “Some people just do a photo line. It’s, like, quick — in, out. We’ve toured with bands — they do 150 people in 30 minutes. It took us 90 minutes to do 40 people. ‘Cause me and (singer) Brent (Smith) would start at one end, (bassist) Eric (Bass) and (drummer) Barry (Kerch) at the other, and we would just chat for five minutes with each person.”
Myers continued: “And you’d get these people, and they would go, ‘Man, I’ve got a seven-year-old boy. He died of cancer.’ And I’m, like, under my shirt, texting my wife, like, ‘Take our kid to the hospital right now.’ She’s, like, ‘What? He’s on the trampoline.’ I’m, like, ‘He might have cancer.’ And God bless those people, and I want our songs to help them. I am man enough to admit I don’t have the emotional barricade to not walk on stage with that. By the end of it — I think 2019 when we stopped doing meet-and-greets — I walked out of 11, just walked out. Because I was literally, like, I would start to tear up. And you go to the guy next to you, and he’s, like, ‘Dude, I’ve seen you guys 25 times, bro. Stoked to be here.’ And you’re, like, ‘Sorry, man. I can’t turn this off. I’m gonna think about this kid for a year.’ And you feel for the families. But now what it’s done for us, I think not doing them, is when you meet people out on the street, it becomes more real. It’s not this formulative thing, the construct of a meet-and-greet. It’s, like, they get to see the real you.”
Myers’ full interview can be viewed below.
