RIP Magazine interview Black Crowes- Good Ol' Southern Arrogance by Chris Morris RIP Magazine September 1992 " To all you people over there playin' pool- fuck you!" The site is Dupree's, an Atlanta pool room/bar, and the voice is that of Mistuh Chris Robinson, lead lip of the Black Crowes, chastising the eight-balls who are continuing to shoot as the band plays at their album-release party. The few chumps persisting in their games are missing the main deal: an opportunity to watch the Crowes revel in the coming-out for their new record, the archaically titled The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion. Viewed from a vantage point ten feet from the makeshift stage, the boys are smokin', whipping through such new toons as "Sting Me," "Remedy" and the gospel-ized, insistently dynamic "My Morning Song" with roadhouse energy. Besides the new firepower supplied by guitarist Marc Ford and keyboard maestro Eddie Hawrysch, a listener can't help being struck by the ambition of the band's new songs and the anted-up soulfulness that's found its way into the playing of rythym guitarist Rich Robinson, bassist Johnny Colt and drummer Steve Gorman. And, as Mistuh Chris' address to his distracted listeners makes plain, the Crowes' formidable, capital-T 'Tude is still in full effect. Flash back a couple of months to a wet, late-winter night. As a deluge washes the streets outside Def American's Burbank offices, Chris Robinson debuts Companion for me, handing me the song lyrics page by page as the album blows up in my ears. Clearly, I think to myself as the cassette unspools, my boys the Crowes felt they had something to prove after a two-year run that saw their debut, Shake Your Money Maker, climb into the Top Ten, yield up hits like "Twice As Hard" and "Hard To Handle" and sell three million copies. The new songs are sprawling, filled with gospel-style vocalizing, by turns fierce and darkly reflective, and often resolutely "uncommercial." As Chris, sporting a wispy goatee and clad for the occasion in a flowing silk shirt and patched bell-bottom jeans, quickly makes clear to me, the Crowes were determined to make their second record their own goddamn way. We wanted to get in and show everyone, you know, fuck it, man," he says in his customarily emphatic manner. "In an age where everyone is so worried about demographics and marketing consultants- who the flying fuck gives a shit about consultants? I don't give a fuck if you play my record on Top 40 radio. I won't edit these songs for Top 40 radio. Top 40 radio plays Marky Mark! You think this record and my thoughts and feelings have anything to do with that? "This record also, in a way, is saying, 'Hey, man, we really went out of our way to the best of our abilities on this lost weekend to pull it together and give you these songs that tell you what's going on with us.'" Before the Crowes could embark on their "lost weekend" in the studio late last year, some changes were in order. The first involved the replacement of the group's original lead guitarist, Jeff Cease. As Chris explains it, his departure was precipitated by the band and its axeman occupying virtually different planets, musically speaking. "He just couldn't play- flat out," Chris says. "He just couldn't play the way Johnny and Steve and Rich and I were. When you got on the road, and when it started turning into that chugging down the tracks, I think he maybe wanted to be sitting on couches and living off people and having a good time playing in the clubs. It's really cold of us, I guess, but it sort of turned into, there were the Black Crowes, and there was this guy who traveled around with us and fiddled around onstage. We really wanted someone who was going to add to the vibe, 'cause we were creating a vibe, even with this fiddling." Ultimately, the prime candidate to replace Cease was Marc Ford, who developed his own incendiary style as the frontman for Burning Tree, an L.A.-based group that opened several East Coast club shows for the Crowes in late 1990. Chris says, "I'd heard their albume and met Marc, actually, before any of it. We'd met and hung. He basically kept the same hours, whereas most of the musicians I'd met out here [in L.A.] didn't. So I dug those guys. I was out here, and he had a gig with Burning Tree. They rocked the house big. I was way into the record by then. We were just friends for about a year and a half. then Jeff was- whatever, no one really cared anymore- and we knew we had to find someone. "I loved Marc's playing. I happen to think he's a really gifted guy, and he's the best. Who it came down to, though, is Rich, 'cause the band does nothing without Rich. It comes to a grinding halt if Rich doesn't say, 'Let's do this.' He said, 'Marc Ford is great. I think he would sound great with what we're doing.' It's nice. Rich doesn't have to cover that solo. He can be more expressive in what he does, and that's write songs. That's why these songs sound much more open to me and have more dimension. Rich really stepped out on his own as a songwriter." The arrival of keyboard man Eddie Hawrysch, a veteran of James Cotton's and Albert Collins' blues bands, predated Marc's. He played with the Crowes on their '91 cross-country trek. Chris recalls, "I met him when we did those gigs at the Center Stage [an Atlanta club] that Chuck [Leavell, of Rolling Stones and Allman Brothers Band fame] played. I'd talked to Chuck and my friend Reeves Babrels, from Tim Machine, and said we wanted to find someone. They both recommended Eddie. He flew back down before the tour started, did one rehearsal, and said, 'Let's go.' He's been on the road with us ever since." (Over lunch some time later, Eddie would tell me that the Crowes were impressed by his performance during a brawl involving a certain bandmember at an Atlanta strip joint, and Chris reputedly said, "If he can play as good as he can fight, let's hire him.") With the band lineup secure, the Crowes turned their attention to planning the next record, which didn't turn out to be what they originally intended. "We had written an album on the road, basically; an album called Souled-Out," Chris explains. "We were ready to go do it. We got off the road [in late '91], and Rich and I got together and started songs, and this record came out. We said, 'Fuck that other record; this is the one we want to do.'" The songs were written over the course of a couple of weekends and recorded in a week of sessions, with the Crowes laying down much of it dead live. but, I ask Chris, doesn't that method fly in the face of the highly manicured productions of today? "Highly manicured to us is the most choking, vile, depressing sort thing there is," he responds, with no little heat. "In an industry that's supposed to be based on emotion and creativity and spontaneity, you can't really say that that's an overabundant thing. So many people are so calculated and cautious that I really think greed is the motivation, maybe. People play it so safe. You try lighting up a joint in the record company. They'd toss you out on your ass and call the cops on you. You pay the bills, yet the'll toss you out. It's fucked up." With more than a hint of his trademark cockiness, Chris adds that they weren't really worried if this loosely recorded set put the noses of their business associates, or anybody else for that matter, out of joint. "With success, we understand one thing- that whether people respect what we do or not, it doesn't matter, because we made people a lot of money. They have to do what we say. That's how it's done in the industry today. It's not done because everybody thinks you're good at what you do. Now people are so jaded, and apathy runs so deep, no one really wants to believe that here I am, 25, and Rich will be 23 soon, and we call the shots and do what we wanna do. Here's the record, plays this, edit this- that's the attitude. "But," I say with a very loud laugh, "you guys were that way two years ago!" "It seems more relevant now," Chris replies. "At that time it was easy for us to be that way, because we were nothing; we hadn't sold record one." I note that the record features gospel-like harmonies by two female vocalists, identified on the album as Barbara and Joy. This seems like an unusual stylistic tack. Had Chris been listening to a lot of gospel material at the time? "I always listened to it," Chris says. "Like anything else, it's gonna come out in what you do. Not this record, and maybe not the next one, but maybe sometime we'll be able to do a bluegrass tune, or we'll do a Woody Guthrie song. It's pat of something right now that we want to touch on. I don't know if it's going to be part of it forever." Touching on the dark mood of many of the songs, Chris says, "I think it's very realistic. One of my favorite records of all time, that really affected me in a big way, is the first Little Feat record. Every one of those songs is so sad." It strikes me, I tell Chris, that some observers might think that the Black Crowes, with their arrogance and their determination to pursue their own creative vision, are a bunch of punk ingrate shitheads. "Well, the people who say that are the people who are in it for the wrong reasons," Chris says. "The people who say that are the jaded masses. The people who say that are the people who have let apathy cloud their judgement. I'm fully aware of that, and I'll take it on in any manner. And if that's the case on a global scale, we won't sell record one, and I'll still be happy, because I know that what we did was really therapeutic for us and very good. If anything, it's very logical. We knew we were going to get off the road and make this record. We're not going to let fears and other people's fucking baggage, for lack of a better word, stand in the way of me getting to make some of the music I want to make. That' when I really feel good- when we're playing, and the band is turning people on. That's when I really feel good, and I want to do that more. It's the difference between frat-boy, college-guy weed and really good, high-grade, on-the-cover-of-High Times kind of weed." He guffaws loudly as another puff of smoke fills the air. "We knew we were going to take our music to a more diverse level. We knew that. Why play music? Also, we went out and did some outlandish fucking things. We better back it up, or we're gonna get our asses kicked, you know? I wrote this song called 'Wiser for the Time,' and I think that's what it is- just a little wiser. You see a lot more places, have a lot more temptations put in front of you. And when it's all over and done, some people just like to testify about what temptations you took hold of and what temptations you let go of. "I like to call it 'Curses & Clues' or T.S. Eliot and Willie Nelson on acid."