Author: samuel

Passion, love and a lack of fear defines The Black Crowes’ first album of original material in fifteen years – Rich Robinson details how it all came together, to Samuel J. Fell

[COVER STORY – Originally published in The Music (online), March 2024]

The record begins in what is now, after four decades, signature style – a searing, electric slide riff, equal parts rhythm & blues and rock ‘n’ roll, the rumbling vocal over the top instantly recognisable to those in the know. The song is ‘Bedside Manners’, and it kicks off Happiness Bastards, the first album of new material from The Black Crowes in fifteen years. 

A decade and a half is one hell of a long time between drinks, particularly when placed within the context of a forty year career (the band’s eight other studio records were released over a nineteen year period), but then, The Black Crowes have never followed any one prescribed path, the well-documented waxing and waning tensions between founding brothers Rich and Chris Robinson seeing the band wax and wane itself.

When the band split for the third time in 2015 then, many would have anticipated an eventual reunion given it’s what the band had done twice previously, but there were never any guarantees. It took, as Rich Robinson says, a coincidence and that crafty old devil, fate, to bring the pair back together in order to release an album they never knew would exist.

“The way we got back together was very synchronistic,” Robinson muses. “One of the songs on the record, ‘Wanting & Waiting’ was the first song I had for the record, and it was from before I even knew we were going to get back together, I just had this song. 

“I mentioned it to a mutual friend that Chris and I know, and I said that I’d love to hear Chris sing on this song, because it’s really suited to him. And [this guy] said, Chris said [a similar] thing to me, like, two days ago – I was like, that’s cool, but you move on… then I was in New York, and he was in New York, and so we talked and… it flowed, there was nothing forced, there was no agenda, and I know it may sound sappy or weird, but the universe kinda brought us back together in a very gentle way.”

This was in 2019, and the band essentially picked up where it left off: they toured extensively for the 30^th anniversary of debut Shake Your Money Maker (1990), ground to a halt with the rest of the world through the pandemic, went back out on tour releasing a live record and an EP of covers, writing all the while, and it was from this ‘gentle’ way of being, that the band built itself back up. “[It was] really cool, really positive, really mellow,” Robinson says of the time. And it was from this time then, that Happiness Bastards grew.

And it grew slowly, organically, without agenda or stipulation, helped in large part by the time the pair had to themselves while the pandemic raged, unchecked, about us all. “[When the pandemic happened], it was like someone just plopped down a year and a half on your lap, and you’re like, ‘Oh shit! The world just shut down, that’s weird’, so the writing wasn’t for any purpose, which is what I like about it,” Robinson says. 

“It was like, fuck, OK, we have a year and a half, I’m just gonna start writing and sending stuff, Chris was like, yeah, just do it.

“So there was no stress, there was no deadline, I had a studio in my house with all the instruments so I just built all these demos and I’d send them to Chris to sing on, and it was just a really cool thing. And everything was done with that same sense – nothing was off the table… I was just doing what I do, I’m not trying to write this kind of song or that kind of song, they just kinda come and they dictate where the record is gonna go. So the core of the record came from that spirit, you know?”

The resulting Happiness Bastards is a quintessential Black Crowes record – a multi-limbed rock ‘n’ roll beast quite obviously informed by the blues and the grooves that permeated through that ancient genre, equally at home chugging along or reigning things back in, introspective and pithy. It is, as Robinson is quick to point out, a very cohesive unit, despite the peaks and troughs that define the album’s ten tracks. “Chris and I have always had ideas and concepts as to what kind of record we make,” he explains.

“Southern Harmony (1992) was a live record, we went in and made it in eight days, done, a lot of those songs were one take. Amorica (1994) was different; we wanted to make a studio album, a studio sounding record. But the interesting thing is, there’s always been… a journey on all of these records, but they always did maintain, whether they were commercial or not, there always was a cohesion, because all these things filtered through Chris and I. 

“So by the time we got to this record, there are elements of Shake Your Money Maker and Southern Harmony on this record, there is a cohesion to it. There’s still a journey, there’s still a trip you take, like from ‘Bedside Manners’, you go to a song like ‘Bleed It Dry’, or ‘Follow The Moon’, and then there’s a punk rock kinda song in ‘Flesh Wound’, and then you have this, [and that] and all these things, but it is a Black Crowes record – ultimately, that’s what it is, man, there’s a thread that runs through the whole thing and that’s what makes it that.”

In the accompanying press material for the album, Chris Robinson opines that Happiness Bastards is the band’s love letter to rock ‘n’ roll, something brother Rich agrees with emphatically, adding that for him, the record is one that exudes passion, like after fifteen years, he’s fallen in love with making Black Crowes music once more. “[Oh yeah], one of the feelings I get from this record is that there’s a passion behind it, there’s rock ‘n’ roll behind it,” he smiles.

“I loved Chris’s explanation that it’s a love letter to rock ‘n’ roll music, and it really kind of is,” he goes on. “Rock ‘n’ roll to me is and has always been the broadest of genres, you know – in the day, you had the Stones and Zeppelin, but Joni Mitchell was rock ‘n’ roll, so was Neil Young and Bob Dylan and Sly Stone and Joe Cocker, Bob Marley was rock ‘n’ roll and everyone kinda fit under this massive umbrella and there was a uniqueness to everyone, and the uniqueness was celebrated, instead of stamped out.”

Robinson goes on to bemoan the state of rock ‘n’ roll today as he sees it – “Man, I can’t even tell who the fuck is singing, there’s no uniqueness anymore” – which he cuts short with a self-conscious laugh before returning to the business at hand: rock ‘n’ roll as the Crowes are creating today.

In the creation of this particular piece of rock ‘n’ roll, there were more hands involved than just the brothers Robinson. The pair reunited with long-time bassist Sven Pipien, who features prominently on the album, as well as joining forces with renowned producer Jay Joyce, whose resume reads like the proverbial ‘Artists Anyone Would Like To Be Stranded On A Desert Island With’ – Patty Griffin, John Hiatt, Emmylou Harris, The Wallflowers, Amos Lee, Keith Urban, Zac Brown Band, Eric Church, you name it (he’s also played guitar for Iggy Pop, Crowded House, John Hiatt and Macy Gray, among others).

Both brothers are more than adept at working on the other side of the desk, having produced numerous other bands over the years along with their own side-projects, as well as having a hand in the production of many of The Black Crowes’ previous albums, but as Robinson explains, in this instance they were keen on having someone a bit further removed from the project than they were.

“Yeah, we knew enough to be like, we thought we should have someone come in and have, not a dispassionate view, but a 10,000 foot view without any baggage,” he reasons. “Someone who can come in and look at what we’re doing and be like, OK. So we made a decision, we need someone to come in and do this, so we were cool with it. And the minute we talked to Jay, I was like, I like this guy. And Chris and I agreed instantly on his energy, on his vibe, what he was talking about, just a really cool dude, and that was it.”

Where Joyce was invaluable to the band then, was in that 10,000 foot view – it’s worth mentioning again how long Rich and Chris Robinson had been working on these songs, and it’s a fair assumption to make that, when it came time to head into the studio, they’d have been having trouble seeing the wood from the trees, a common affliction affecting anyone involved in a creative endeavour.

A prime example was the song ‘Cross Your Fingers’, which begins with a slow and melodic acoustic guitar with Chris Robinson’s vocal riding rough over the top, before breaking down into a heavy, slow-nodding stoner rock-esque electric riff. “Yeah, when I wrote that, [it was all fine] and the chorus was the same but it wasn’t lifting,” Robinson says. 

“And so a producer like Jay can come in and say, well how about instead of trying to push it forward, we pull it back, and it lifted. And he did it in a way that I wouldn’t have thought of because that chorus kinda mellows and does this other thing, and I was like, wow, that’s fucking cool… so just those little things. And he knew when to push us, and when to not. And that is the hallmark of a great producer.”

Another who was involved in Happiness Bastards was multi-CMA and Grammy winning country artist Lainey Wilson, contributing vocals to the track ‘Wilted Rose’, one of the slower songs on the record and one which almost defies sonic description, crossing as it does seemingly multiple genres lines, all while retaining exactly the vibe required for its particular place within the track listing.

Wilson, who since recording her vocals for ‘Wilted Rose’ won Best Country Album at the 2024 Grammy Awards for her fourth record, Bell Bottom Country, came to be involved through the band’s connection with Darius Rucker, whose old band Hootie & The Blowfish they’d toured with before, prior to Rucker striking out solo and “going country”, as Robinson says with a laugh. “Darius would sing ‘She Talks To Angels’ (from Shake You Money Maker) every night during his set,” Robinson says, “he loved the song, he grew up loving the song. And he was like, [come and sing it with me] at the CMT Awards or something, and so we went and did it.”

“We’d never been to a country music awards, we never really crossed with the country world, we just did our own thing – but the outpouring of love for the song and for the band, it was a really amazing thing. And Lainey was there, and we met her and she was a sweetheart and her voice is so authentic and amazing, and we were like, this would be really cool for this song; it seems like her voice would really fit, the vibe of the whole thing.

“So we knew Jay had worked with her, he spoke really highly of her, and so we made it happen.”

The result sits like an oasis in the midst of Happiness Bastards’ otherwise ripping vibe, a well-placed piece of introspection on an album that fair throbs with energy, with passion, with rock ‘n’ roll and the love for same. It is, as Robinson sums up, a record which shows no fear, which given it’s been a decade and a half coming, is no mean feat. “We have had a tumultuous relationship throughout the years, but for whatever reason, when Chris and I would get into a room to write, we left all that bullshit behind,” he muses.

“And that’s why there was no fear involved; the one thing we both understood or knew or had so much respect for that we never fucked with it is, when we get into a room to write, we both have enough respect for each other and each other’s abilities, not to fuck around. “

“And so there were way more other things we would fight about and be stupid about,” he finishes with a laugh, “but writing songs we took very seriously. So there’s never been any fear in that sense. There’s something very free about it all. So I do think that added to the overall vibe of the record, you know what I mean?”

Happiness Bastards is available March 15 through Silver Arrow Records.

Laugh, cry, drink a beer – it doesn’t matter what the song makes you feel like doing, Lainey Wilson just wants it to make you feel, as she tells Samuel J. Fell

[First published on CountryTown (online), March 2024]

The past few months have been, for Louisiana-born Lainey Wilson, somewhat of a whirlwind. And not some run-of-the-mill whirlwind, but one of which country music dreams are made, reaping the type of recognition that, growing up in the tiny town of Baskin (population some 200 people) Wilson could only fantasise of. And, truth be told, she probably did.

Five CMA Awards (including Entertainer of the Year; Album of the Year; and Female Vocalist of the Year) last November, and just last month, a Grammy for Best Country Album for Bell Bottom Country, her fourth studio release and the one which has made such waves since it dropped in October 2022. “I feel like the last few years have just been a whirlwind,” she says with a smile, sitting backstage at last weekend’s CMC Rocks festival outside of Ipswich in south-east Queensland.

“[But] I’m trying to make sure I take a step back, try and zoom out and really pay attention to what’s happening and what’s going on, because you can get caught up and just go on from one thing to the next, from one win to the next, and before you know, that time has kinda passed you by. So I’m makin’ sure I’m present, as much as I possibly can.”

This is an attitude that has come to define Wilson, that of an artist who is intent upon remaining as grounded as possible, no matter the depths of success she and her music are able to plumb. Leaving home at a young age and relocating to Nashville, as so many young country singer-songwriting aspirants are want to do, Wilson came at it armed with little more than a guitar, a clutch of songs and a burning desire to succeed, building on the foundation she garnered growing up in Baskin as part of a tightknit family unit, which is something to this day she leans on, replies upon.

“Yeah, I am who I am because of the people and place that raised me,” he acknowledges. “Like, if I’m not Lainey the sister, Lainey the friend, Lainey the daughter, Lainey the dog momma, then I’m not Lainey the artist. 

“And thankfully, you know, even though I moved off and went to Nashville to go chase a dream, I did still stay close to my family because I take pride in where I come from and I’m proud of it and the work ethic they taught me – my daddy’s a farmer and my momma’s a teacher, they’ve busted their asses their entire life to have what they have, and they’re not just working for themselves, they’re working for me and my future family and they taught me that from the beginning.”

“And the truth is,” she says, leaning forward as if to truly drive home what she’s thinking, “these [awards] are all blessings and all gifts, and I accept them you know, because it’s nice to be recognised for your work, and also to be, like, voted on by your peers that you look up to. But at the end of the day, I’ve gotta make sure that I don’t let it define me as a person and as an artist. Because I think once you start doing it to win awards, you start doing it for the wrong reasons.”

The right reasons, for Wilson, are in the art of storytelling, of being able to “make people feel something, make ‘em wanna laugh, cry, drink a beer, you know?” she muses. “That’s the goal, just to make people feel something, and make them feel at home. The truth is, everybody wants to feel at home.”

“[So] I’m from a town of 200 people and we sit around and tell stories, the kind of stories that get better every time you hear ‘em,” she adds. “And that’s why I wanted to tell a story. So I’ve just gotta keep doing that, because it’s nice to have those awards on your shelf, but at the end of the day… I need to be proud of other things too.”

One reason for Wilson’s success of the past few years has been her ability to tell these stories through song, to tell stories that are, inherently, relatable. And this, in theory, is what is at the very heart of country music – a story through song that people, no matter their station in life, can feel and feel they themselves have lived, which is certainly no mean feat. “What I love about songwriting is just kinda puttin’ yourself in the shoes of whatever it is you’re writing about; it’s really therapeutic for me,” Wilson says on this, thinking carefully before answering.

“And I mean, it could be something I’m actually goin’ through, something my co-writer is experiencin’, or something I heard from a stranger, something at a meet and greet, or I was sittin’ at a bar and I heard somebody’s conversation, or it could fall out of the sky in the middle of the night. But yeah, when you can kinda put yourself into whatever it is, it takes you somewhere else.”

Bell Bottom Country is now almost a year and a half old (older for Wilson), and so I venture that she’d surely be working towards her next album, her next project, at the very least the next ‘batch of songs’ that could go anywhere, do anything, hopefully make people want to laugh, cry, drink a beer. “Always. Like, I feel like before Bell Bottom Country was even done, I was working on something else,” she laughs.

“But yes, I’m always working on stuff. I’m partial, because they’re my stories, they’re my babies, but I do feel like in the last few years, and even since Bell Bottom Country, I feel like I’m figuring out a little more about who I am, what I want to say, how I want to say it, and I feel more sure of myself, I feel like I’ve grown as a person, singer, songwriter, all of it, and I think you’ll be able to tell in this next batch of stuff.”

“And at the end of the day,” she says, smiling like she probably would have, years ago perhaps, while recording her first ‘batch of songs’ while the dream was still a dream, “I feel so strongly about the stuff that I’m currently working on… I told someone the other day, I said, if this never wins an award, I still feel like in my heart and soul that this is the best thing I’ve done. And that’s a good feelin’.”

One of the most influential metal bands in history, Pantera have risen from the ashes and are bringing their music back to life – as they play Australia for the first time in twenty-three years, bassist Rex Brown talks to Samuel J. Fell

[First published in Rolling Stone (online), March 2024]

It began in Arlington, Texas. Clad in spandex, teased hair, shrouded in the miasma that was the 1980s. It began as a channelling of youthful energy set to the music of the time, that over time, warped and buckled and was rebuilt into something so sonically brutal as to stand on its own as a bastion to heavy sound itself.

Pantera was its name, and as that decade wore on and morphed into the next, the four young men from the American south who comprised the band’s ranks, came to define a time and place and way of doing things that is still adhered to, and idolised, to this day. And this day is different, make no mistake. But it’s no less poignant, no less urgent, no less meaningful to the millions it’s bruised, the power of this music on display so vulgar.

But, of course, you know all this. You know of the band’s ingesting of more hard-biting musical influence, of the addition of a young vocalist from the steamy streets of New Orleans that began so gloriously to pervert their sound. You know of the warning shot, 1988’s Power Metal, and the ensuing full-on assault that began two years later via the now-seminal Cowboys From Hell. You know the band ran hard and fast through the ‘90s before imploding in the early 2000s, seemingly ending what was, for so many, the greatest period in heavy music since it began, likely never to be repeated.

You know that the heavy metal world was changed as a result.

Plenty has happened since the release of Pantera’s final record, 2001’s Reinventing The Steel, and not a lot of it good, but you know this too. Addiction and estrangement and death has permeated the ranks of one of the most influential heavy metal bands of our time, of all time, and yet, like the proverbial phoenix, the band has, almost inexplicably, risen once more. And it’s different, in human terms, but it’s the same, from a musical point of view, their signature groove-addled power thrash still very much alive. 

It’s been reported that, in the middle of 2022, long-time bassist Rex Brown and vocalist Philip Anselmo began talking about resurrecting the band in some form or another, but this isn’t true. According to Brown, the conversations began “way before that”, and when pressed on how they began, how they progressed, says, “I’m not gonna go there,” suggesting it wasn’t as easy as it perhaps sounds. “We’ll let you know in the book,” he adds, the hint of a smile playing on his lips.

Brown and Anselmo, in Australia for the first time since 2001, are the only remaining ‘original’ members of the band, touring today (and for the past year and a bit) with Zakk Wylde and Charlie Benante filling the immense shoes of founding brothers Vinnie and Darrell Abbott, both of whom have died since the band went on hiatus, in 2001, and then was scrapped two years later. It’s on the memory of the Abbott brothers that this reincarnation is founded, the band’s current tour leaning heavily on the ideas of legacy and brotherhood.

And so it is then that, finally, after twenty-three years, we see the band back on Australian shores – older? Yes. Wiser? Perhaps. But very much aware of the time that’s elapsed, the time spent away from their fans, and now, the opportunity to reconnect, to reintroduce themselves once more. “We were just young, spry bucks, you know, very thirsty, fuckin’ angry young men,” Brown smiles, thinking back. “And here we are, grateful and it’s just a privilege to be here. We’re different fellas to how we were back then.”

“I mean, it’s a dream,” he says, before adding with a laugh, “I told Philip yesterday, man, pinch me when this shit’s over.”

For Brown, being on stage under the Pantera banner once again isn’t anything to be taken lightly. It’s not a gimmick, a money-making exercise, something he’s involved with just for the hell of it. This is, for Brown, for Anselmo, no doubt for Wylde and Benante, and sure as hell for the band’s millions of fans, a very real thing – “Two of our beloved brothers that just aren’t here anymore man, that’s life, you know?” Browns says on the deaths of the Abbott brothers. “They’re just not with us man, that’s just fate, it’s the way the ball rolls, dude.”

“It’s just one of those things that is sacred to us, you know?” he goes on, insinuating that just because the original lineup isn’t present, it doesn’t mean the music stops; indeed, its somewhat of a homage. “This is not… this is no tribute band, you know, Philip and I get to play these songs of ours that we haven’t played in 23 years. And to be able to do that and connect with the enormity of what’s happened, is just extraordinarily fucking insane, you know?”

The pair who have been recruited to fill these hallowed spots long left vacant are, of course, not just anyone, session musicians plucked from obscurity; Wylde, as well as fronting the well-known Black Label Society, has played guitar with Ozzy Osbourne for decades, while Benante is the long-time drummer for thrash pioneers Anthrax – no one but the best to fuel the current incarnation of one of the more powerful bands in modern music. “These guys are kickin’ fuckin’ ass,” Brown asserts. “Hard shoes to fuckin’ fill, I’ll put it that way.”

“We knew, we knew who would fit and who wouldn’t,” he drawls. “We knew what the obstacles were in front of us, and we knew after… I’ll put it this way – Charlie and I came down in September before we played that [first] show in December (2022), and we have probably one hundred hours of tape of us playing every fucking Pantera song that I could remember.

“And so, you know, me and Charlie lockin’ in like that… the drummer and the bass player, that’s your foundation. So when Zakk came in, there were certain things we had to go over and over and over, to get tight. And today, this band is about as tight and about as badass as I fucking want. You know what I mean, and that’s all I’m gonna say on that.”

“Look, I’ll put it this way,” he adds a little later. “If it wasn’t tight, if it didn’t sound as close to, you know, I wouldn’t do it. That’s it. But man, this band is on fuckin’ fire, and I couldn’t be happier man, I just can’t explain that as much as I need to, I could not be happier.”

Another thing you know: unless you’re at a Pantera show, you’re not going to get that ‘feeling’. As Brown concurs, “You’re not gonna get that feeling off YouTube, you know, you have to experience it live.” And this is how it is now. The Abbott brothers are no longer here, this is a fact of life. But the music is. It’s still, in the hands of Pantera as it is today, as pure and jagged and real and raw as it ever was. “That’s the whole thing… there’ll be the chants before we go on for a big show and I’ll just go, ‘Hey boys, let’s just fuckin’ look at each other and fuckin’ jam’, that’s it. We all know these songs in and out, man. But you’ve gotta bring a rock ‘n’ roll element to it, you know what I’m saying? You can get it as tight as you want, but the thing that we were really good at back in the day, was impromptu kinda territory, and that’s where we’re kinda headed, you know?”

So it began in Arlington, Texas. It’s grown and prospered and withered but it’s never died. On the contrary. So where will it end? Will it end? Will the joy in playing this music that Brown and his brothers in sound are so easily finding, ever fade? Time, which has had its wicked way with us for so long, won’t stop, but then nothing is concrete, nothing is written in stone; indeed, this is something you don’t know. 

“You’ll see this band go and go and go and go,” Brown says. “There’ll be a bunch of new songs in the set in 2025, maybe even this year… I ain’t givin’ it away.” He won’t be drawn on specifics, and in truth, it doesn’t matter. Not right now.

“The set list we’re doing now, goddamn, it’s powerful, man,” he smiles. “And I hate tootin’ my own horn, dude, you know… we’re just happy to be here, man, it’s a privilege to be here, I’m honoured and I am grateful to be here, and that’s all I gotta say, man.”

(Feature image by Ashley Mar)