‘In rock ’n’ roll, there are plenty of show dogs… but we’re f***ing feral,’ says Black Crowes singer Chris Robinson
“Well, I guess it’s a brother thing.”
The Black Crowes singer Chris Robinson is reflecting on his rollercoaster relationship with his younger sibling, guitarist Rich.
Their explosive chemistry once earned the outfit a fitting accolade — “The Most Rock ’n’ Roll Rock ’n’ Roll Band in the World”.
Chris is first to admit they’ve had their ups and downs since forming in 1984 under their original name, Mr Crowe’s Garden, as schoolkids in Atlanta, Georgia.
“Rich and I, for better or worse, were stubborn and arrogant but always strong believers in the art,” he admits.
“This has always been our path and, no matter what, we have to do it like this.
“In rock ’n’ roll, there are plenty of show dogs, pure bred and beautiful. We’re f***ing feral.”
Following in the footsteps of other warring brothers — Ray and Dave Davies or Noel and Liam Gallagher — the Robinsons weren’t on speaking terms for five years after their so-called “contractual obligations” tour ended in 2014.
“Sometimes, you have to take your lumps,” continues Chris, employing that very American phrase for suffering setbacks. “But, right now, we’re in the zone. The chemistry is 100 per cent there.
“The way we feel goes right back to when we started — it’s f*** it, just play it — even if we are more well-mannered.”
The Black Crowes’ big reunion began in late 2019 with warm-up shows for a planned 30th anniversary tour of their debut album, the seminal Shake Your Money Maker, the following year.
But the pandemic slammed on the brakes before the dates finally happened across the US in 2021, uncorking the band’s celebrated freewheeling energy.
Back to the live arena came Jealous Again, Hard To Handle, She Talks To Angels and Twice As Hard, songs that somehow bottled up the band’s influences — Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones and Little Feat among them — but still refreshingly their own.
In 2024, with their creative juices flowing, The Black Crowes released their first album of original material in 15 years, Happiness Bastards.
Now the Robinsons are back again — with a bang.
The follow-up, A Pound Of Feathers, comes tearing out of the blocks with the rocket-fuelled, riff-driven Profane Prophecy, setting the tone for another of The Black Crowes’ “love letters to rock and roll”.
The album arrives with some sound advice — “This isn’t a record you play on Sunday morning, this is a f***ing Saturday night burner!”
In a world where smoothly produced pop dominates the airwaves, The Black Crowes are unashamedly sticking two fingers up at it.
“None of what’s going on in that world is relevant to me,” decides Chris, “and rock ’n’ roll is still huge for millions and millions of people.”
He is talking to me via video call from Aspen, Colorado, the premier ski resort in the States, playground of the rich and famous.
“My wife is an avid skier. She’s the Franz Klammer of the family,” he reports with a reference to the Austrian downhill legend.
“I get to do the cooking, the reading and the hanging out.” (And talking to people like me about The Black Crowes). Brother Rich is at home in Nashville and begins his call by apologising for being under the weather.
“I’m going to be coughing randomly,” he says. “I’m in the middle of flu that’s going around.”
After clearing his throat, Rich, the less flamboyant one who lets his guitar wizardry do most of his talking, gamely picks up on Chris’s theme.
“When we got back together, we both agreed we needed to do it properly,” he affirms.
“We knew that bringing back a toxic dynamic wouldn’t be healthy for anyone.
“We couldn’t have the overarching idea that when Chris and Rich get together, it’s a bad thing.
“We’ve always written all the songs, we own the name so coming back with a more mature approach has been very helpful.”
Rich acknowledges that the music landscape for the older, wiser Black Crowes is vastly different from when they started out. “There’s a bunch of people in the industry who like to think rock ’n’ roll is dead,” he says.
“But then there’s a bunch of people trying to keep it alive. Guns N’ Roses, the Rolling Stones, Metallica and Def Leppard are still selling out stadiums.
“Tens of millions of people still want to see bands like them. Rock ’n’ roll is one thing that no one could tame.
“And it’s still like that for us. We can go into a studio with almost nothing and, in a week, make a record.
“There’s a human, organic quality to rock ’n’ roll. We don’t have auto-tune and we don’t have to set our s**t to a grid.”
Looking back at their unfettered past, Chris exclaims: “I have to say I’m so f***ing proud of The Black Crowes, man!
“Rich and I started this band when we were teenagers in Mom and Dad’s house, as a vehicle to write songs.
“And we found our way to being musicians and performers.”
Yet the creation of A Pound Of Feathers has still blown Chris away, most notably because of the stellar contributions from Rich.
The album was made in double-quick time, carried along by the brothers’ spontaneous fusion of riffs and lyrics.
Chris says: “I’ve been on stage and sat in studios my whole life with my brother playing amazing guitar.
“But, with this album, I sat there with my mouth hanging open.
“Granted I’m very close to the flame but everything he did, I was like, ‘Wow, this guy’s taking it to a new place.’”
During the sessions, The Black Crowes were visited by Chris’s friend, Todd Snider, the singer/songwriter who died last November from pneumonia aged just 59.
Chris cherished the chance to hang out with Todd — and to get some memorable feedback from him.
“He was a storyteller, a real poet, and he and I had a great friendship. He also really liked The Black Crowes.
“He asked if he could come and check out the recording. I went, ‘Dude, yeah fine, but you’re going to be the only one here’. So he sat there taking in me and Rich putting music together.
“At the end of the day, he said, ‘Are you f***ing warlocks? Is this some kind of ESP or is it a parlour trick? You don’t say anything yet, 30 minutes later, there’s this massive song blasting out of the speakers’.”
For Rich, the studio is his happy place. “I’ve always loved being in a studio,” he says.
“It’s where you bring to fruition all the things you have in your head.
“With this record, we came in without any concrete ideas. By allowing ourselves just to play in the sandbox, it became fun and exciting.”
Rich gives a shoutout to producer Jay Joyce, who also helmed Happiness Bastards.
He says: “Nine and a half times out of ten, he agrees with us when we’re excited about something.
“He’s there with us, not bogging us down by trying to insert himself when its unnecessary.”
So what of the songs? There’s the aforementioned opener Profane Prophecy which captures the unvarnished sound of The Black Crowes’ live mayhem, yet recorded in the calmer confines of a studio.
You hear Chris nodding to past rock ’n’ roll excesses by hollering, tongue firmly in cheek, “My pedigree in debauchery is my claim to fame.”
He smiles, “Of course I have to embrace that life. That’s why I sing, ‘I eat casino breakfast off the kitchen floor’.”
But he maintains that while giving “a vision of a debauched rock ’n’ roller”, he’s also “confusing fact with fiction”.
The four-minute shindig concludes with the ensemble chant of the phrase that yielded the album title, “a pound of feathers or a pound of lead”.
Chris got the line from In Here The World Begins, a song by long-defunct British electro-pop band Broadcast.
“I loved the phrase and what it could mean because a pound is a pound,” he says. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s lead or feathers. There’s some weird wisdom to it.”
We turn our attention to Cruel Streak, pounding rock underpinned by funky rhythm.
“I’m adjacent to funk at all times,” says Chris. “Growing up in Atlanta, there was this multiracial band called Mother’s Finest who played heavy funk with ‘Baby Jean’ Kennedy as lead singer.
“There’s a lot of Mother’s Finest in The Black Crowes.”
On the R&B-flavoured It’s Like That, which comes with heavy basslines and a hint of reggae, the brothers employed an amphibian guest, which, as Chris explains, fits with their anything goes attitude.
“I was staying in Nashville, and the doors were open. I heard this frog, so I recorded him. That’s my Nashville rasta frog on the solo.”
Rich says: “There are tree frogs all over the South. They were blaring one night and Chris said, ‘Man, I want to use that sound’.
“So he took his phone and pressed record. We found the right space for it on the song.” On the loose, laidback country-tinged Pharmacy Chronicles, recalling the vibe of the Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main St., Chris sings “let the demons find you” because, he insists, we mustn’t think everything is “sugar-coated, glossy and gorgeous”.
“Especially something as messy as a 40-year career in rock ’n’ roll,” he adds. “I can’t believe some of the s**t I was doing. Get some surgical gloves and get to it!”
But Chris is not one to dwell on the past, with all its euphoric highs and crashing lows. “I am devoid of nostalgia,” he says.
“I like to think I interact with the world as a poet. I’m always writing — it could be because I overheard a conversation at an airport check-in.
“I’m no Bruce Springsteen,” he confesses. “But I connect with the world through whatever inspires me.”
And, as he puts it, “a lot of the darkness that is the United States right now” informs A Pound Of Feathers.
It explains why final track Doomsday Doggerel with its line “a front row seat to the end of times” is in stark contrast to the closing song on Happiness Bastards.
“On that last record, Kindred Friend was a beautiful pastoral thing with harmonica, about me and Rich, the band and our audience,” says Chris.
“Doomsday Doggerel is much darker. We haven’t remembered lessons from our past and the f***ing racism means we’re operating at a very low frequency.
“I just hope that someone can play this record on a Saturday night, keep out the low frequency and get a better hum going.”
As Pharmacy Chronicles ebbs to a close, you hear a defiant chorus of “the good times never end”.
As far as Chris and Rich and the rest of The Black Crowes family are concerned, rock ’n’ roll is the perfect antidote to personal and universal turmoil.
“We’re loud, we can be sloppy but we are like an old cartoon of two people fighting on a train,” says Chris.
“The train goes round a bend, leaning all the way over a cliff, but then it comes back up. That’s us.”
