Shane Smith and the Saints Survived Fires, the IRS, and Actual Snakebites to Become Red Dirt Heroes

By any measure, Shane Smith and the Saints are in the midst of a career-changing breakthrough that launches Texas bar bands into auditoriums, music halls and the top rows of festival posters.

Start by browsing. This spring, the Saints will play the Grand Ole Opry, headline Red Rocks Amphitheater for the second time in a year — with 49 Winchester and Hayes Carll on the bill — and spend a week touring Europe opening for Tanner Usrey.

There is also the record. North wind Hits stores and streaming on March 1st. It is the band's first studio album in five years and their fourth overall. Written and recorded in fits and starts over the past two years during breaks on these increasingly popular tour dates, the album is Smith at his most introspective and the Saints at their musical peak. The first single, “The Grays Between,” released in November, puts one foot in a modern, twisty love story and the other on stage with a band that has never had a genre to call its own.

Bigger crowds and next-level music come after a series of musical performances Yellowstone — starting in late 2021 in an episode titled “All I See Is You” after the Saints song of the same name — and a primary opening for that band's Whiskey Myers in 2022 Tornillo tour.

“It's all very exciting,” says Smith Rolling rock. “But I honestly feel more pressure right now than ever before. We have all these opportunities that the vast majority of people never have. We have to introduce ourselves. We have to deliver this new record. It's our first studio album in five years, and that's crazy to say, because everything that's going on for us happened without new music.”

Whether real or just in Smith's head, the pressure is well-founded.

Formed in 2011 by Smith and fiddler Bennett Brown, the quintet began playing clubs around Sixth Street in Austin, eventually opening for rising stars like the Turnpike Troubadours and Texas icons like ZZ Top. Their first two albums, Coast and Geronimo, established them as Lone Star State barnstormers, finding reliable crowds at local bars and making headway out of state. Along with Smith and Brown, guitarist Dustin Schaefer, bassist Chase Satterwhite and drummer Zach Stover rounded out the Saints and together they followed the independent path of growing their fan base.

But a series of increasingly disturbing brushes with dangers as diverse as the IRS, poisonous snakes and even death brought the Saints to what could – and possibly should – be the end of the road.

“We did our job, building an organic fan base across the country. Unlike many of our peers in Texas, we would actually leave the state and try to tour the country,” says Smith. “We've played in almost every state except Hawaii and one or two others. We'd go out there and really do the work.”

In 2017, Satterwhite broke his leg in a motorcycle accident. He toured and performed for about six months in a wheelchair. The Saints traveled in an RV at the time, with a broken step. At every gig, rest stop or hotel, band or crew would lift Satterwhite in or out of the RV.

In the wake of Satterwhite's recovery, Stover was bitten by a rattlesnake and narrowly avoided losing an arm. Not long after, Smith and the band were hit with an IRS audit, racking up a tax refund bill for a struggling band.

“I just didn't have any of my stuff together,” Smith says. “No evidence or anything, and that was when we were hemorrhaging money. We were not profitable by any means. We weren't close to anything at the time.”

Somehow, the Saints even raised the money to buy their first tour bus. Quarters were tight, but it still felt like you were leveling up. That respite lasted “a few months” according to Smith, before the situation worsened again.

On November 21, 2019, en route to a show in Lubbock, the bus caught fire. That every band and crew member survived is amazing, because so few survived.

“It happened while we were going down the road,” says Smith. “We had a fire in the engine and it burnt the whole bus. We were out of this small town. The trailer keys were in the burning bus and we couldn't get back in to get them. We couldn't break the locks to get our gear out. We had to sit there and watch it all burn.”

By pre-pandemic 2020, the idea of ​​selling all of the band's remaining merchandise and moving on had gained enough momentum for Smith to seriously consider it. In the wake of the fire, Koe Wetzel—who at the time had suddenly gone from club headliner to arena headliner—had an extra bus he let the Saints use. They took it to Denver's Mission Ballroom, where Smith found a crowd and a friend. Broke down.

“We sold about 900 tickets in one night in really bad weather,” says Smith. “There was snow everywhere. I had a friend – Danny Sax, who works for AEG and promotion for Red Rocks – come on the bus and ask me how I was doing. I said, “It's not good.”

“Instead of just lying, I finally broke down and said, 'I'm going to stop music. There's no way I'm going to keep doing this,” Smith continues. “And let me talk about it.”

In Smith's mind, what his band needed most was leadership away from the stage and the studio. Sax had a local friend: Brian Schwartz of 7S Management, who managed Dawes and Lucero but hadn't handled any Texas folk or country artists. A few weeks later, the Saints were a surprise addition to the newly formed Mile 0 festival in Key West.

“That year, Charley Crockett canceled and we got in the lineup at the last minute,” says Smith. “That was our first break. We had managed — by accident, by fate, by luck — to get into this shape. Mile 0 went amazing and they raised almost $10,000 for us.”

On the way to Florida, Schwartz called and said he wanted to meet the band. After catching a show at Smith's Olde Bar in Atlanta, he came on board to manage them.

The fortunes of the Saints had turned. Despite the hiatus of live music during the pandemic, the band continued to make music and recorded Live from the Desert – a live album without an audience – in several locations around Terlingua, Texas and released it in 2021. Shortly thereafter, they took it Yellowstone call and the Whiskey Myers tour slot.

North wind puts a cap on this journey.

“I am very slow with my writing. I'm not a fast guy. I'd be awful as a Nashville writer or someone who's meant to get songs out fast,” says Smith. “I just had a catalog of about 20 songs that were half-finished when it became clear that it was crunch time and we had to put out an album, like last year.”

They booked time at Modern Electric Studio in Dallas and signed with Beau Bedford, Paul Cauthen's producer. They recorded in one and two day stretches before returning to the shows. The only part of the process that never felt disjointed was the music itself. The track “Navajo Norther” gives the record its title. Unlike the other 12 songs, it came quickly to Smith. His refrain — “Were you the earthquake that set us free?” — is fundamentally appropriate.

“I put pen to paper and drew a blank when I was trying to come up with lyrics,” says Smith. “Then, I just started writing up a storm. And it just went, and it never stopped.”

On stage, the Saints project an imposing presence. Smith's voice is strongly baritone and he describes his musical influences as “all over the map”. Stover's drums and Brown's fiddle play in a rhythm that matches the depth of Smith's voice. It's slower and boggier than most of its contemporaries. If a genre could somehow combine Celtic folk and Texas country, there might be a word to describe the Saints sound. It may not seem intuitive, but it definitely – eventually – catches on.

“For so long, we were a DIY band,” says Brown Rolling rock. “It's great when you're in your 20s and single without kids. But now that we're in our 30s, it's been nice to get a paycheck, fly in and out to see our kids. I have two daughters and my wife. It's been a huge blessing to have the flexibility that comes with newfound success.”

Having played alongside Smith since the beginning, Brown still sees in Smith the same drive he saw when they started in Austin.

“In a very good way, he's the same guy who was on Sixth Street,” Brown says. “That's why we're still friends, because we haven't changed our minds.”

In January, Shane Smith and the Saints were once again at the Mile 0 festival. This time, there was no luck. They were headliners, ready to play right after Silverada (formerly Mike and the Moonpies) debuted under the new name and had the Friday night crowd in a frenzy.

On a stage behind the Cafe Butler Amphitheater, Smith gathered his band for a pre-show prayer, followed by a “Saints on three! A! Two! Three!” mess break.

Smith and Brown practiced Jimmy Buffett's “A Pirate Looks at Forty” while waiting for their cue. It was the band's first appearance in Key West after Buffett's death, and Smith wanted to cover the tune. When Schaefer told the band he was taking the song out because he didn't learn it, Brown couldn't help himself: “Brother, you been on a boat all day in Key West and you didn't hear Jimmy Buffett? ” The band then raised a toast and took the stage.

Smith and Brown nailed the “Pirate” cover. The Saints rocked and rolled for 90 minutes, closing with a three-song encore and their original Yellowstone contribution, “All I See Is You.” The crowd ate it up and asked for more.

This scene is now becoming the norm, for a band that, despite snakebites and audits, is somehow still standing.

But Smith holds on for a victory lap until North wind it's out in the world.

“I'm nervous and excited at the same time,” says Smith. “I want to show up and deliver, and I want to stake our ground.”

Josh Kratsmer is a journalist and author of the book 2020 Red Dirt: Roots Music Born in Oklahoma, raised in Texas, at home anywhere and the 2023 book The Motel Cowboy Show: On the Trail of Mountain Music from Idaho to Texas, and the Side Roads in Between.