The last few years have brought on a sea of change for all of us, but few have dealt with it more than Shane Smith & The Saints.
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Despite a tour bus fire, a band employee stealing $30,000 during a tax audit and COVID-19, the band has persevered to have arguably its most successful stint yet as a group, culminating with appearances on "Yellowstone" and performances at prestigious venues including Red Rocks and the Ryman Auditorium.
Now the band is channeling that change — positive and negative — on Norther, its first new record in five years. Referencing a storm front that frequents Smith's native Texas and nearby Oklahoma and is known for its massive amounts of energy, the album title serves as a perfect metaphor for the momentum The Saints have built up in recent years.
The project features some of the band's boldest soundscapes yet, ranging from riveting rock to pleasant piano ballads that can be traced back to its producer, Beau Bedford. A member of supergroup The Texas Gentlemen, Bedford was brought in on the recommendation of Smith's longtime friend Jonathan Terrell after the plan initially was to self-produce. From there, Norther's 13 songs came together in the studio over the course of a couple years, with the band escaping to the studio whenever it could between tour dates.
"We would fly into Dallas, record, then fly back out to meet the bus wherever it was in the country," Smith recalls to Wide Open Country. "It was really stressful, and most of the guys were hearing these songs for the first time in the studio — because for most of them, I was still finishing the writing well into the sessions, so we were never able to get any demos together.
"I'm hoping in the future that we'll be more prepared than that, but in a way the pressure helped to create something that's pretty special. I think we'll look back on this album for a long time with a lot of gratitude."
David Wells
That gratitude is amplified on songs such as the nostalgic "Fire In The Ocean" — which the band debuted last year during an appearance on the Season 5 premiere of "Yellowstone" — and "Fire In The Sky," the latter which focuses on two brothers going off to war and trying to survive so they can make it home to their family.
"We get to have a lot of interactions with veterans, servicemen and servicewomen at our shows, so a lot of the song's inspiration comes from that," explains Smith. "Our conversations with them backstage after gigs was instrumental to the song, so it's been fun playing it live and seeing how much it resonates with them."
Although it originally had a different meaning, an even more personal war story follows about a family member who served in World War II, "Field of Heather." According to Smith, the lines "Was it the wild weather in a field of heather, so scared we had to pray" actually stem from an experience the band had decades later.
"That line was originally from me and the guys when we played a wedding in northeastern Oklahoma near the Kansas border," describes Smith. "There were seven tornadoes that had touched down nearby and were moving directly toward us. We were stuck at the top of this three-story barn just praying while everyone around us was acting like this was business as usual. We ended up getting drunk and trying to forget about it and thankfully ended up being safe, but that's where the line came from. As the years went by, I'd come back to the song until it morphed into more of a rock song about a veteran."
That veteran happened to be his mother's Uncle Bill, who served in the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division at the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. According to Smith, his entire platoon was wiped out, leading to local farmers hiding him in their barn from the Nazis until they were ambushed in a "field of heather." On the brink of death, the song mentions Bill praying he wouldn't get shot dead as the Germans marched through.
"He was begging for his life to the powers that be and essentially made a deal that he would devote his life to the ministry if he got out of there alive," says Smith. "Sure enough, a guy walked over him and didn't pull the trigger before moving onto the next person and shooting them point blank. It's a crazy story that holds a lot more weight than my tornado one."
Another familial connection takes place a couple songs later with "All The Way," a ballad about a couple's sacred bond that he co-wrote with his wife, Lauren. Intentionally featuring stripped-back piano arrangements in a nod to the song's innocence and vulnerability, Smith says it came together over a meal after the two had each just returned home from long work trips.
"Within 10 minutes of sitting down, she told me how she'd dived back into Johnny Cash's last record and thought it'd be cool to do a baritone, gospel hymn type love song like a lot of that album is," Smith says. "She mentioned the line 'all the way' and one thing led to another, and by the end of our meal we had the blueprint for the song."
"All The Way" also leans into The Saints' devoted fans, whom the group enlisted to send in video clips of them with their significant others to be featured in the song's official music video. It's that interaction and camaraderie with fans that have helped to set the band apart as they continue to relish in their hard-fought success.
"As long as you continue to put good into the world, people are going to want to see good things happen to you," Smith says. "Even when we've gone through difficult times, our fans have been there to pick us back up. It's truly been a team effort. If you're relentless in your work ethic and continue to work as hard as you can, then you can bounce back no matter who you are or what you do."
