Southern Harmony The Black Crowes Hit Their Stride -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chris Robinson, Rich Robinson and Eddie Harsch (l-r seated) Johnny Colt, Steve Gorman and Marc Ford (l-r standing). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- by Steven Batten Don't say the "R" word around the Black Crowes -- not if you want the conversation to extend beyond "hello" and "goodbye." The Georgia-born ensemble has never denied a fondness for the sounds of the Rolling Stones and the Faces, but for some reason, a majority of narrow-minded rock scribes across the country can't help themselves when it comes to branding the Black Crowes as retro-rock throwbacks to another time. Whatever. But guess what? Seven years and four albums into their career, the Black Crowes are still doing their thing, as only they can. Brothers Rich and Chris Robinson, bassist Johnny Colt, guitarist Marc Ford, drummer Steve Gorman and organist extraordinaire Eddie Harsch have weathered storm after storm, surviving highs (headlining last year's H.O.R.D.E. tour) and lows (nearly breaking up just prior) inherent with being a preeminent rock and roll band, and achieved a perfect balance of sorts with their latest release, THREE SNAKES AND ONE CHARM, produced by the band and Jack Joseph Puig (Jellyfish). The Crowes, who bring their one-of-a-kind rock and roll party extravaganza to Music Hall this Sunday, October 13, also just finished a segment for VH-1's "Storytellers" series, airing this month, as "Blackberry," the second single from THREE SNAKES, works its way up the charts. Rich Robinson speaks candidly about the life and times of the Black Crowes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SCENE: Back on the road again, huh? Rich Robinson: Yeah. It sort of seems like you just never leave. SCENE: With the Crowes, that's pretty much the case, isn't it? RR: Yeah (laughs). We do take some time off, but we're always doing something. It's not like a shock to be back on tour, but it's cool. We love playing this record live. Everyone's been really happy with the shows. SCENE: The Crowes are constantly saddled with this throwback tag, but it seems you're only a throwback in that you don't take three or four years between records. RR: That's like being an athlete and saying "I'm going to play in this World Series once, and then I'm gonna take three years off." If you go see a band, it's because you're a fan. You want to sort of celebrate what's going on with that band, what you like about them. A lot of people like records, but what we do live is sort of recreate something different every night. Every show's different. I think people want to see, at least our fans, see us do what we do differently every night. Sort of grow -- everyone's playing better, everyone's playing together, everyone's taking it somewhere. That's why music is in such a f**kin' lull right now. Shit, we're in '85 again. SCENE: You've got an approach similar to the Grateful Dead in that you change things up every night, jam a lot and keep things really fan-friendly. RR: I liken it more to being closer to being a jazz band. That's sort of where it came from. There's a set song that you can play, and then you can take it somewhere. If you just had a CD of your favorite band, and you just sort of rearrange the songs, then that's a different record. Just by changing that is totally going to change the feel of the record. When you do that every night, and then throw in new songs that no one's ever heard or jam or do all these different things -- there's so many different variables that you can throw into this, you create a new thing every night. That's what's so funny about it -- people who, like you said, write us off as a throwback band or whatever . I mean, we're making music in the '90s. I know it's 1996. I wasn't even born in the '60s, but for some reason it's this big focus. SCENE: I'm sure you're pretty much used to that by now. RR: That's basically what our career is sort of strewn with. You sell a lot of records, people build you up and then they want to break you down. Then they want to see how much shit they can f**kin' get on you, because, "Oh, that person shouldn't be succeeding." "That singer, he's a wild mouth. He smokes pot and wears bell-bottoms." That's all they see. And then the album cover for AMORICA was really dumb, and that's all they see. It's never about, well shit, What is music? Where has music been? Where is music going? SCENE: How was it doing the "Storytellers" series? RR: It was sort of cool, because Chris spoke about the lyrics that he wrote, and what they meant to him, for the first time. No one's ever asked him, you know what I mean? In the sense of, what does he mean by certain things, which I think is cool. We were watching a rough cut of it, and I was watching "Thorn In My Pride." I heard Ed play [hums a figure in the song]. He plays it like Sunday, like gospel. To throw that into the middle of everything that's going on in that song -- which is natural for us; but I was going, "Holy shit." I mean, who does that? And then you look at every song and every record, and you see traditional movements thrown together where they shouldn't be, logically speaking. But they fit. To me, that is where bands go forward. That's how music expands and progresses. If you go back and look at every band that you love -- historically speaking -- go back and listen to Zeppelin records, or listen to the Beatles and the Stones. Shit, look at the Stones. Look at Little Feat. Look at Sly Stone, everything that he's ever done. He took jazz and he took rock and roll, and he took the epitome of both of those things, and turned it into this insane funk thing. That's what's funny about the whole, "Oh, they're a throwback thing." Because, in actuality, we really are making strides to change music. SCENE: And you get next to no credit for doing that. RR: The industry has convinced itself that it's come up with a formula for success. But it's not. There was no formula for us, in the midst of Skid Row and f**kin' Warrant. We put SHAKE YOUR MONEY MAKER out and sort of helped to bring down the whole heavy metal thing. Look at Nirvana. There wasn't a formula for them. If you look at things like that . you can never formulate it. SCENE: Did you learn anything about the songs doing "Storytellers"? RR: Yeah. Chris talks about "Remedy," which is about AIDS. Most of the time, I pay attention and he explains it to me -- but for whatever reason, I never really paid attention to that song, and what it meant to him. To me, it's sort of more important what people get out of it than what Chris or I mean when we write something. So that song in particular, I was like, "Oh shit, I didn't know that." SCENE: The Crowes headlined the H.O.R.D.E. tour for a stretch last year. Was that a productive experience? RR: Yeah, it was productive for us, because we'd been doing that kind of thing for a long time. Even on SHAKE YOUR MONEY MAKER, when we were opening for Aerosmith, we were playing new songs and extending songs and stuff like that, and everyone would go, "What the hell are you doing. You're supposed to be promoting your record." We were like "What, this is just what you do." So we'd been sort of jamming and doing things like that since '90, when we sort of got started. We've been building on that for a long time. SCENE: As usual, you guys did the tour on your own terms, using your people and taking out who you wanted. Did it work out? RR: We sort of took over, and chose all the bands that we wanted on it, and it turned out to be very cool. It was always known for being this big jam thing, supposedly, but no one ever did. We had Taj Majal play with us almost every night. The guys from Wilco would come up and sing with us. Ziggy [Marley] and his whole band would come up. That was a really cool thing, and that's what we thought it was all about. But nobody else did. Everyone else, like Blues Traveler, for the most part, would play and they'd all solo and that was it. SCENE: Going from that right back into the studio for THREE SNAKES, what did you bring with you? RR: We always write whenever there's something relevant that pops up, Chris and I. It's not like a faucet -- it comes when it comes. I had written a lot of songs on the last tour. I wrote "Under A Mountain" and "Blackberry." "Evil Eye" we had written for AMORICA, but it didn't really suit AMORICA. We re-wrote some songs. >From the start of the tour until two-thirds of the way through, no one ever talked. I didn't talk to Chris -- we just yelled at each other. I was on my own bus, because we just can't ride together. We didn't not love each other as brothers or whatever, but we just didn't talk. SCENE: When I talked to you after the Cleveland show at Music Hall, you guys were all off in a different corner, kind of ignoring each other. RR: Yeah, that's how it was. It sort of starts with Chris and I and just sort of spreads out. Chris and I really hadn't spoken for three years, other than to yell at each other. Generally speaking. Every once in a while, we'd get along for a day. That's just where we were. I think all bands go through it, and that's sort of a pivotal point in all bands' careers, where you sort of say, Is it worth it? SCENE: You either get past it or you don't. RR: Either we fix this now, or we blow it off because it's not doing anyone any good to be out here and be miserable, just to live like this. So, we took a month-long break between legs, and everyone -- at least I -- got over a lot of shit. There's always baggage, but you just sort of let it go. This band's more important to me than ego or baggage or whatever it may be. Chris and I talked about it, and he and I started getting along. And I think that we affect everyone in the band in that sense. Once he and I started getting along, it sort of pulled a big weight off of everyone's shoulders. Once we sort of cleared it up -- it took work -- but everyone else sort of fell in place and it sort of turned out really positive. And to answer your question, that sort of led into how we made this record. SCENE: There is a general positivity to THREE SNAKES that you don't necessarily see on AMORICA. RR: Yeah. There's more of a focus, and there's definitely more of a positive vibration, so to speak. Even the way the songs are written, chord structures and things like that, are more positive. I think that's cool. It just sort of goes to show that sometimes tension can really add to making music. But sometimes, so can positivity and focus. AMORICA, when we finished it, I thought that was my favorite record. But listening to this is like, "Wow, this is what also can happen. This is a really cool direction." I think it surprised everyone in the band and made us go forward. SCENE: AMORICA seemed to have caught a lot of people off guard -- in the process, the band seems to have narrowed its fan base to the people that really get what the Black Crowes are about. RR: I think that everything's cyclical, and our records -- we had a lot of people who liked "Hard To Handle," and that's all they liked. "I really like that song and it's a big hit, so I'll go see them." But I don't think we're that kind of band. There's more to us than hits. So in some instances, that put people off. I think we have narrowed our audience in that sense, but I think we're rebuilding it now. I think you sort of have to do that -- you have to go through ups and down. It's really rare -- well, not any more, not in the MTV age --to come out and sell five million records your first shot. I was 19 when I recorded SHAKE YOUR MONEY MAKER, 20 when I went on tour for 18 months. You do this, and then everyone has these expectations. Out of stubbornness or whatever, we just said, "Well, tough shit. This is what we're going to be." I just think that it focused the people that were really into what we were doing. That's really cool, because when you go to the shows now, you know that everyone in the crowd really gets what we do and likes what we do. I think that's where you want to be as a band.