After two decades, 10 albums, more than a dozen members and a much-needed hiatus, The Black Crowes are on the cusp of releasing their first new record in seven years. Warpaint is a rallying cry—the sound of a band that has rediscovered its musical vitality and continues to forge its own unapologetic path.
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I traveled each and every highway
and more, much more than this, I did it my way...
Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
but through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way
-"My Way" (As performed by Frank Sinatra)
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Chris Robinson cools out on his back deck in Topanga, Calif., sipping a Newcastle and watching a few hawks soar overhead.
“Check it out, that one has a little cut on its wing,” he says, pointing at a bird as it glides across the Southern California sky. “I call him ‘Percival.’ I love ’em, man. I used to always get made fun of as a kid for staring up at hawks. There’s a whole family of them that live around here. And it’s really nice at night—all the owls talk. I’m really into owls, too. All the birds are great, really.”
The Black Crowes frontman has himself a nice little spread up here on the ridge, just north of Los Angeles. The view is spectacular, and the lush green backyard is simply but gorgeously landscaped with clusters of bamboo and a pair of giant, rippling palm trees. It’s quiet, the lazy hush broken only by the occasional car whooshing tranquilly down the mountain road. Not bad for a guy whose band has always played by its own rules.
“Being teenagers in the ’80s and being totally immersed in the indie-rock world, that’s where our politics come from,” Chris explains. “When we were in a more commercial phase of our career—and those things come and go—I think it was funny because we were always so defiant with the business. It was, ‘Just because some other band does it that way doesn’t mean we’re gonna do it that way,’ and ‘Just because you think it’s a good idea doesn’t mean we think it’s a good idea. You’re Columbia Records, you have hundreds of acts, so guess what? Your opinion doesn’t mean as much as mine. Tough shit.’ That’s our perspective. At the end of the day it truly isn’t about being a pain in the ass, it’s just that we were always influenced by artists like Robert Altman and Jack Kerouac. We grew up believing, ‘Our band, our rules.’”
When The Black Crowes burst onto the scene 18 years ago with their multi-platinum debut Shake Your Moneymaker, hairbands dominated the charts. Of course, the Crowes had hair, too, but they weren’t exactly Warrant. Their interests lay in a far dirtier, more soulful brand of rock that was rooted in myriad American musical traditions and filtered through both the open-tuned strums of the early-’70s Stones and the Crowes’ own fierce independent streak. “Amidst Guns N’ Roses, Skid Row and Metallica, somehow we found a place for ourselves,” says Chris. “And then by the time [our third album] Amorica came out it was only Pearl Jam and Nirvana and all the bands that sounded and looked like them. And there we were again. We’ve kind of always been not what’s cool. But I think that’s part of our longevity.”
When their four-year hiatus ended in 2005, the Crowes returned to the road and discovered they still had a devoted fanbase. In fact, they’ve been doing so well for themselves since then—without any help from a record label—that a few majors came slithering around again, with great ideas of course: “We’d love to get you guys with some songwriters.” Can’t you see it? The Black Crowes: Featuring Songs by The Matrix.
“A lot of people have suggested we work with writers over the years,” says Chris’ brother, Crowes guitarist Rich Robinson. “And that’s because these assholes who are sitting on this sinking ship—and have caused the ship to sink—still don’t even understand why it’s sinking. Because bankers got involved in creative decisions. Because people who could’ve gone to work for IBM or whoever are now running record companies and telling artists how to write their music. And it’s for the sole purpose of making themselves money. And that’s what happened, and that’s why the industry is where it is, and that’s why people standing up and doing what they want to do, and owning their own masters, and writing their songs for the sake of
the song and the craft—instead of to make some asshole a bunch of money—is so important to us.”
So the Crowes decided to forego the whole major-label thing and get back to their DIY roots. (After all, they’d started in the mid ’80s as Atlanta indie rockers Mr. Crowes Garden.) Come March 4, they’ll be releasing their new album Warpaint on their own label, Silver Arrow Records. “We still have an incredible amount of energy for this thing we love to do,” says Chris, “but I don’t think any of us want to work for anybody but ourselves and our music and our little family.”
Of course, every family’s got its issues, and the Robinson brothers are no exception. Much has been made of their occasionally public feuds, but for Chris and Rich it’s not such a big deal—it’s just a part of life. “Chris and I don't get along that well,” Rich admits. “But if we’re in the middle of the worst fight in the world, or if we’re getting along great, it doesn’t matter—when we’re onstage, we do what we do, together, and in a sense we communicate through music unlike we do in a normal setting.”
“Shit happens, and shit happens in front of people,” expounds Chris. “But I think [the obsession with Rich and I fighting is] truly boring. We love each other dearly, and we’re happy to be working together, but—given our demise—we just don’t get along the way normal people do. But we've written hundreds of songs, we’ve played thousands of shows, and I don't think that it gets in the way.”
The true challenge for the Crowes over the years has been dealing with the drug addictions of several members. As a result, the band has steamrolled through a half-dozen guitarists, bassists and keyboard players in its two decades. “We wanted to have the same guys in the band forever,” Rich says, “But things happen—egos get involved, drugs get involved ... so you’re left to make decisions because you want to make the best music you can make. And you want everyone there with you, but sometimes it doesn’t pan out, and it sucks. It really sucks.”
Most recently, the Crowes reluctantly replaced longtime keyboardist Ed Harsch before their fall 2006 tour. “I’m Ed’s biggest fan,” says Rich, “I love Ed—as a person and a player. I think he’s probably one of the best if not the best modern keyboard player, but he’s also killing himself. And we can’t sit by and allow that to happen, or be a part of it happening.”
To complicate matters further, guitarist Marc Ford—who’d been fired in 1997 before returning to the lineup in 2005—quit the band on the eve of the same tour. Luckily for the rest of the Crowes, Producer/guitarist Paul Stacey, who’d worked with Chris on his New Earth Mud project during the hiatus, filled in on guitar for the tour. This planted the seeds for Warpaint, as Stacey would go on to produce the album in summer 2007.
“Besides the fact that we’re on the same page about the sonic places—and about a rough sketch of, conceptually, ‘How are we gonna do this?’ —Paul is one of the finest musicians I’ve ever met,” vouches Chris. “He’s an incredible engineer, and has an incredible knack for keeping the flow going. Especially when you haven’t made a record in a long time, you want to be in a place where you’re really feeling the way the energy is flowing.”
[The Black Crowes: A Guide to the Studio Recordings]
“Paul brought everyone’s strengths,” agrees drummer Steve Gorman. “As someone who’s seen us from a distance over the years, Paul had a simple view of the band. It was like, ‘This is what you guys are best at; this is where you’re happiest. You have a certain set of strengths, and maybe sometimes you haven’t played to those.’
“Our band has been very adventurous. In the past, we’ve explored different areas with mixed results, always learning along the way. I like all of our albums, but I wouldn’t say all of them are great examples of what we’re best at. But Paul was able to nudge everyone toward their natural wheelhouse—as players, as writers, as singers. A big part of that was the band was all in one room playing live without separation. We weren’t in a studio setup where everyone was in a different booth looking through glass at each other. We were set up like you would be in rehearsal where you’re in a semi-circle and everyone’s right in each other’s face. The feel of the album is very live. There are few overdubs. ... Paul was able to help us get that without any pressure, because he spent the better part of a year playing shows with us. There was such a comfort level with him, it was as if he were a member of the band.”
With Stacey at the helm, and the lineup rounded out by bassist Sven Pipien, plus new guitarist Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi All-Stars and keyboardist Adam MacDougal (both of whom are now official members of the Crowes), the band headed to Allaire studios near Woodstock, N.Y. “We wanted to be out of the city,” Rich explains, “to go somewhere we could just sort of be, and really focus on an album. After going up there, it was just beautiful. It had great equipment, a great setting, and when you’re there, you’re there.
“Luther brought such a refreshing energy, and Adam was cool, too. It was really spontaneous. Having everyone in that studio meshed so well together, musically. And being up on that mountain, you can’t really discount that. You wake up every day and you look out and there’s just so much beauty—there are bears running around. It was just a really cool thing.”
A secluded slice of studio utopia isn’t a strange place for this album to be born, even with a seemingly violent name like Warpaint. To lyricist Chris and the rest of the band, the title has more to do with the revolution that could take place in a person’s soul; an inner awakening as opposed to an outward political struggle. Like a lot of artists since 9/11 and Iraq, the Crowes see a problem with where America and our world are heading, but—as could be expected—their reaction is quite different than the hordes of modern protest-song writers. “If we all wanted to get together and hit the streets, could we stop an unjust corporate war?” ponders Chris a few days before his 41st birthday, his flowing hair and beard starting to sprout subtle hints of grey. “I don’t know. Does the trance run so deep that people have forgotten about humanity? I don’t know. But I tell you this—I can take responsibility for me and what I’m putting out there. And you can call it whatever you want. I don’t have to wear a button. And you know what else I don’t have to do? I don’t have to give soundbites on every fucking little thing, ’cause I think that’s debasing all of us and how we feel.”
“[The idea of Warpaint represents] a consciousness that I think is coming,” Rich says. “I think humanity really needs to change where it’s going. And I think that all the signs are there—getting back to what’s important. Getting back to the soul, in whatever it is. Taking craft seriously again. Everything has become so disposable; everything is about quantity instead of quality. And that goes for music, too. In the pursuit of perfection, the humanity falls by the wayside. Music has become so computerized. It’s like, ‘Let’s take this one note and have 10 guys tweak it.’ It’s just so laborious and it takes away all the humanity and the soul of everything. A lot of what was great about music back in the day was the imperfections, the unexpected. And you can apply that across the board, to anything—is there craft anymore? Is there pride in what you do? Is there care for other people? Is there less greed? All these things that really matter, people have lost focus on.”
But the album isn’t so much an angry statement, like some of the Crowes’ middle-period records. It has intense moments, to be sure, but its greatest assets are contemplative ballads like “O, Josephine,” “Locust Street” and “There’s Gold in Them Hills.” “There’s more clarity, in a sense, and less angst on this record,” Chris, who’s become a father since the last Crowes album, explains. “I think that has a lot to do with leaving your adolescence behind. I think—especially mid-’90s Black Crowes is very angry. Amorica was a really angry record—we were angry about a lot of cultural and political things, but we chose to speak about them in rock ’n’ roll terms.”
As “Whoa Mule”—a blend of downhome gospel and laidback raga—brings Warpaint home, Chris pleads hopefully, “We’re dirty but we’re dreaming / We’ll both get there someday.” “So what about the great unwashed, man?” Chris asks, speaking of the people left behind by politics. “Now, I’m never going to fucking pretend that I’m Merle Haggard, singing workingman songs. I can appreciate that and I love those songs. I love Woody Guthrie. I mean, we’re not that, but we sort of are in our own neo-baroque way, we’re representative of what it feels like to us [and our generation]. …
“And we’re super humble to work in this tradition. It’s amazing. I mean, opinionated about stuff? Yes. Humble to be here? Happy to be here? Totally. We’re sincerely moved that, after all this time, we still get to go out and play music and do what we wanna do.”
[The Black Crowes: A Guide to the Studio Recordings]
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