On Monday April 3^rd Shinedown kicked off their 2023 The Revolutions Live Tour in Saginaw, MI. The Band is bringing along Three Days Grace and From Ashes To New on this run that goes into May. Fans were lined up outside hours before the show.

Opening the night was From Ashes To New, formed in 2013 in Pennsylvania. The band performed a powerful and energetic 7 song set. Showing off their biggest stage production to date their performance was a perfect fit to kick off the show. Their set started with Nightmare the first 2023 single and was soon followed by Hate Me Too, their most recent release. Lead vocalist Danny Case teams up with founding member Matt Brandyberry to form a great One-Two punch on the mics. The set would
also include their hit Panic and was closed out by the 2015 release Through It All.

Up next was Three Days Grace. Their show started with their hit So Called life, from their most recent 2002 record “Explosions”. This high energy start led right into two of the groups biggest hits, I Am Machine and Animal I have Become.  Frontman Matt Walst made note to say this is now his tenth year with the band since taking over for former vocalist Adam Gontier in 2013. With the band situated at the back of the stage, Walst spent most of his time out on the catwalk with the crowd.  His stage presence grabs the crowd and his execution of the songs that existed before he was part of the band is top notch. The ten song set also included their top hits Home, I Hate Everything About You, and Painkiller. The band would close their set with Riot, the perfect ending to get the crowd pumped up for Shinedown to take the stage.

Shinedown came out absolutely on fire with an action-packed set including tons of pyro. The stage setup and production for this tour is top notch.  The stage features a catwalk out to the middle of the crowd but what is different about it is the entire band spends the whole set out on it.  The drum riser featuring Barry Kerch is at the beginning of the catwalk and not back on the traditional stage.  The sides are lined with mic stands and keyboards.   This allows the band to give everyone a front row type view at some point. Guitarist Zach Myers and bassist Eric Bass spent the entire show alternating sides and giving everyone that up close vibe. Brent Smith a true “front man” controls the tempo of this show and has total control over the crown like an orchestra conductor. It truly is something to step back and watch this.

They opened the show with Diamond Eyes from their 2008 record “The Sound of Madness”. Next the band quickly rolled into the live debut of Dead Don’t Die from their latest release “Planet Zero”.  This song featured a good amount of pyro and you definitely couldn’t tell this song had never been played live before. Then a surprise occurred, as a piano was lowered from the rafters down onto the end of the stage. The beauty of a new tour is no one really knows what is coming next.  There are no videos to watch ahead of time and there is no peeking ahead of time at setlists. Eric Bass took to the piano for the song which featured a Zach Myers guitar solo from atop the piano.

Smith and company then continued along with some of their biggest hits including Bully, State of My Head and Enemies. The pyro show continued as the band began to perform, also for the first ever time live, A Symptom of Being Human. Smith began the song under a curtain of sparks spilling from above like a waterfall and it was an amazing sight to see. This of course wouldn’t have been a ballad if Smith hadn’t asked everyone in the crowd to shine their lighters and cell phones in the air.

After the ballad Smith showed his true control at the start of Sound of Madness.  Starting with demanding each fan put all hands in the sky, make a fist, raise then up, hold, hold, and jump!  This leads to an amazing start to the song with a nice pyro blast to kick it off.  Following the energy of that song Smith slowed it down a notch to talk about May 27^th of this year being the 20^th anniversary of their debut record “Leave a Whisper”. Thanking the fans who have been with them since the beginning and that he couldn’t think of that without thinking about Michigan. The lighting rig lowered to almost an arms reach above the catwalk creating a very intimate tunnel of blue lights as Smith requested everyone’s singing voices for 45.

Following Devil, Smith would exit the stage and let Myers and Bass have a few moments.  Talking to the crowd and referencing their dad jokes, the duo led into a 90’s song they hoped everyone could sing along to.  A great cover of Oasis’ Don’t’ Look Back in Anger gave the crowd that taste of 90’s nostalgia.

Every Shinedown show is going to end with a heart-pounding heavy rock song and this one was no exception.  Monsters from the 2018 album “Attention Attention” was followed by 2015’s Cut the Cord from the “Threat to Survival” record.  Before the 2 heavy hitting songs the band performed Simple Man, their 2003 cover of the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic. About halfway through the song Smith paused, asking each person to sing the next line.  He requested they “sing it so loud that Gary can hear you, that all of them can hear you”, referencing Gary Rossington the last original and founding member of Lynyrd Skynyrd who passed away recently.  Smith was visibly emotional performing this song, constantly wiping away tears from his eyes. There is a long history with Lynyrd Skynyrd and the song Simple Man along with what led Shinedown to cover the song.  Do yourself a favor and look up the story.  One thing you can take from the performance and lyrics is the life advice:  be a simple kind of man / be something you love and understand.  Shinedown lives and portrays this. They are some of the classiest guys in the business, the Skynyrd guys would be proud.

~Steve