SHINEDOWN's BRENT SMITH: 'Right Now The Smartest Thing To Do Is To Listen To The Professionals'

SHINEDOWN singer Brent Smith spoke to Medium about the coronavirus pandemic that is sweeping the world and how it might affect the band's touring plans. He said: "We're in the middle of a creative year with the band and were actually in the studio working. We came up for air when we started getting text messages telling us that we would have to start looking at our tour. That's when we started looking at our phones, social media and the news and realized that just in that short time we'd been in the studio, shit had hit the fan.The first thing we did was remain calm and try to get an overall picture of what was happening."

He added: "We had 30-plus dates of touring to do this year, with a lot that was scheduled for April and May. Our booking agent had the foresight to know how serious this was going to be and rescheduled the tour to August and September. We're optimistic, but right now the smartest thing to do is to listen to the professionals."

Last month, SHINEDOWN reached into its vault to make available a never-before-heard song called "Atlas Falls". The track will benefit Direct Relief, a non-profit humanitarian aid organization that is currently working to provide personal protective equipment and essential medical items, including protective masks, exam gloves and isolation gowns, to U.S. and international health workers responding to coronavirus (COVID-19). The song is available now for download with the purchase of a special T-shirt. 100 percent of proceeds will go to Direct Relief, one of the largest providers of humanitarian medical resources in the world whose mission is to improve the health and lives of people affected by poverty or emergency situations by mobilizing and providing essential medical resources needed for their care.

SHINEDOWN has spent much of the last two years touring in support of its latest album, "Attention Attention", which came out in 2018.