A Look Backstage: Val’s Incredible Night With Shinedown in Albany

I will once again start by acknowledging how ridiculously lucky I am that I work in a field that affords me these opportunities. I have been working in commercial radio for 21.5 years now, a wide-eyed kid when I started back in 2005, trying to wrap her head around the fact that she got to sit behind the microphone of a radio station she grew up listening to...

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Saturday night I was given the incredible opportunity to join other media professionals backstage at the Shinedown show in Albany with Coheed & Cambria and From Ashes To New. Now, if you listen to my show, you're probably well aware of the fact that Shinedown happens to be my favorite band on the planet, and all i've heard, well, from pretty much everyone in the radio/music industry, is how incredibly awesome they are to talk with. Well Saturday night was my turn, I finally had the chance to learn just how real everyone was when they told me 'just wait, you're going to be blown away with how amazing they are to their fans, and to radio.'

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WRRV-IP With Val at the Shinedown Museum Experience

Mike from Newburgh and his lovely wife Lisa were our big winners for the WRRV-IP contest for tickets to the show along with a pre-show trip to the Shinedown Museum Experience.

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Along with Mike and Lisa, my daughter and I had the cool opportunity to check out stage-worn outfits from Shinedown tours past, get up close and personal with Zach's sneaker collection, see drums, guitars and even platinum records.

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Shinedown also requested that everyone who came through the museum sign their giant banner, so of course we had to make sure they knew WRRV was in the house, and of course, had to send some love to Shinedown's Eric Bass.

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Quality Conversation With Shinedown's Brent Smith

Shortly after 6pm, my daughter and I were able to head backstage into the 'Radio Room' which is a space dedicated for industry members to hang out, and mingle, and meet up with Brent Smith. I was pretty nervous (shocker, ha), as it isn't every day that you get to meet your favorite musician. My kid, cool as a cucumber, me, struggling to keep it together....as perfectly captured below.

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I'm pretty sure in this moment I was trying to decide if I should be super weird and show him the Shinedown Daylight lyrics tattoo on my wrist.

Brent was EVERYTHING that everyone said he was going to be, and then some. He spent time talking with each and every person in the room, reconnecting with those he'd known for years, and getting to know those he was meeting for the first time (us).

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We talked about WRRV Sessions back in 2019 (and don't worry, I asked them to come back), WRRV playing the new single Young Again, the power of radio, and he was shocked to hear my 10-year-old tell him this was her 13th Shinedown show (I told you, we are superfans!).

Brent and the Shinedown team set the bar VERY high when it comes to engaging with radio staff and their fans, I am blown away.

Hudson Valley Meets Albany at Dance, Kid, Dance Act II Tour

As if the night couldn't get any better, our friends Coheed & Cambria were opening for Shinedown, so it was cool to bump into the guys in the hallway backstage before the show, and watch their killer set. Given the band's Rockland County roots, this was the closest to a hometown show for this leg of the tour.

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Shinedown took the stage right at 9pm, and literally lit the place up for 2 hours.

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21 songs, classics and new tracks from their latest album Eight, pyro that you could feel up to the rafters, a tribute to Brad Arnold from 3 Doors Down, an introduction to Josh Sturm and Zack Mack who are filling in for Eric Bass at the moment, and a night 'at work' that i'll never forget. How damn lucky am I?

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To all the WRRV listeners who won tickets to the show, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and especially to those who joined the Shinedown family for the first time that night, I hope you turned to your neighbor and said hello, to Mike and Lisa from Newburgh, thank you for joining me at the museum, for a wonderful afternoon and dinner, great conversation, and for calming me down ahead of the biggest moment of my professional career, and to Brent Smith, the best in the business, thank you for making this super-fan (who in the moment was trying to remember that she has been doing professional radio for 20+ years and knew how to speak) and her to-cool-for-school kid's dreams come true.

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When I don't feel like talking, you make sure I always see the daylight.