Quick Facts
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Biography
Brad Smith (born 1968, Mississippi) is the bass player for Blind Melon.
Early life
Smith was born on September 29, 1968, in West Point, Mississippi. He was introduced to the classic rock of the seventies by his mother and uncle. He soon began practicing and playing saxophone and drums before eventually turning to the guitar.
He attended Oak Hill Academy in West Point, where he started playing with another booming guitarist, Rogers Stevens, the future co-founder of Blind Melon.
Career
After graduating from high school, he and Stevens decided to move to Los Angeles, California, with the goal of forming a group.
While in Los Angeles, the two did odd jobs to pay the bills while playing music in their free time. The duo discovered Indiana-native vocalist Shannon Hoon one evening when he played his song "Change" and hired him immediately. Not long after, they were joined by their second guitarist Christopher Thorn and by drummer Glenn Graham. Thus Blind Melon was formed in 1990. They produced a four-song demo tape and subsequently signed a $500,000 recording contract with Capitol Records. The group released two albums on Capitol Records: Blind Melon (1992) and Soup (1995). They are perhaps best known for their 1993 hit "No Rain," and enjoyed critical and commercial success in the early 1990s with their neo-psychedelic take on alternative rock. The song "No Rain" was written by Smith years before the band was formed.
Shannon Hoon died of a drug overdose on the band's tour bus in New Orleans on October 21, 1995. After four years of unsuccessfully searching for a replacement for Hoon, Blind Melon officially dissolved in 1999. After Hoon's death, Smith retreated to his Seattle home and his in-house recording studio, Stank Face Laboratories. Around that time, he embarked on a solo career and appeared on friend Joe Tullo's 1997 solo debut, Scoundrel's Waltz. He also reunited with Christopher Thorn to form a new band Unified Theory, issuing their critically acclaimed self-titled album for Universal in 2000.
In May 2002, he released his debut solo album titled Mercy under the alias Abandon Jalopy. In 2012, he released his second album titled Death and Joy, under the same alias.