"WE'RE BROTHERS FIRST AND A BAND SECOND"
With Black Stone Cherry it’s a case of a band that stays together plays together, rather than the other way round. We profile the four men who are almost a family affair.
Across the American south, Chris Robertson tells us, bonfires are “kind of a thing”. After a storm the dead limbs of trees are gathered and set alight. People roast marshmallows. They cook out and have a few drinks, uniting in a primal, cathartic act of communion over fire.
It was this image, on the back of a testing period for Black Stone Cherry, that gave Robertson the idea for the title track of their next album, Screamin’ At The Sky. “I just had this idea of the four of us in the band,” the frontman explains, “and our friends and families gathered around a bonfire and simultaneously screaming all of our pains and worries into the sky.”
In recent years there’s been a bit to scream about. A pandemic that derailed tours, plans, lives. The death of Robertson’s father, a huge supporter of the band. Their first experience of a band member leaving – bass player Jon Lawhon, who called time amicably in 2021. Today, in July 2023, we meet them up a mountain in Wales, a few hours before they headline Steelhouse festival. The weather is not good. Drummer John Fred Young is holed up on the bus with a sick bug. Nonetheless there’s an air of optimism as they prepare to perform new material, much of it conceived in parking lots across the US, with new bassist Steve Jewell Jr. in tow.
“We’re parking-lot pirates,” Young says with a laugh. “We’ll go to a mall, pull up, and it’s easy because there’s bathrooms, stores, places to eat. Then Chris brings out his computer, we sit there and somebody will come up with something. We normally have mall security coming by at least seven times an hour, but once they find out we’re good old Southern gentlemen they normally want to hang out and talk about music.”
Screamin’ At The Sky is a heavy, emotionally direct record with a few twists. One of the first things they wrote together was Show Me What It Feels Like, a sexy, funked up strut that feels genuinely different from anything they’ve done before. The album was recorded in Young’s spare room and the beautiful old Plaza theatre in Glasgow, Kentucky, locations that plant it firmly in the territory that unites them all.
“We have so much in common,” Young says. “Obviously music, but here’s so many things we share the love of. But also we are so spaced out in different directions. That’s what makes it interesting.”
Classic Rock sat down with each of them.
Chris Robertson exudes the calm of someone who’s been to hell, with a clear sense of his priorities.
