Black Crowes singer departs from flock
Chris Robinson has kissed corporate rock goodbye
I have to hand it to Chris Robinson.
Easygoing and friendly on the phone, the former lead singer of The Black Crowes turns into that most elusive of creatures — a Fight The Power rock star — when pressed about his musical past.
“The Black Crowes haven’t been a real band since 2010,” he confides when I ask if the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, his current project, will be performing Crowes songs at the Kitchener Blues Festival.
“There’s no more Black Crowes. If people think that then they’re stupid. It’s not my duty to walk them through this.
“When we started this band, if I showed up at a club on a Tuesday night and I saw ‘Black Crowes’ on the sign, I cancelled the show.”
He laughs. “Everyone can be pissed off that I shut down the soup kitchen, but it is what it is.”
It’s fair to say there’s no love lost between Robinson and his former bandmates, including his brother Rich, who fell out over ego and money issues after a hitmaking run in the ’90s that presented them as a cross between swaggering R&B revivalists and a harder rocking Allman Brothers.
“I was unbelievably unhappy with what that band had turned into,” he notes, outraged by its focus on materialistic concerns.
“I get it, but I’d rather start over. Eight years later, here we are.”
While Robinson did perform Crowes songs like “Remedy” and “She Talks To Angels” with his sideline band As The Crow Flies earlier this year, that project was a one-off.
“Our music now is more folky storytelling, not an appeal to heavy blues riff rock,” he confides between shouting matches with roadies.
“It’s based on a model of The Grateful Dead. We exist outside the regular music business, as part of the jam band scene. Our band was created to make hippies dance on a Saturday night at The Fillmore.”
When I question the word “hippie,” a term I associate with 1968, he corrects me bluntly.
“Hippie is a word, dude! It’s called The Counterculture.
There’s always been one.”
What he’s really saying is that — at least musically — he’s kissed corporate rock goodbye to embrace life as an Artist.
But truth be told, the Crowes were an anomaly even when they broke through in 1990.
In the era of hair metal and crotch rock, Robinson and company were an anachronistic throwback to a simpler time, drawing inspiration from blues rock bands like The Faces and Exile-era Stones, along with R&B greats like Otis Redding, whose “Hard To Handle” became one of their biggest hits.
When grunge hit a couple of years later, they were again out of step, too traditional in their influences to effect the genre’s “I’m a loser, baby” ennui.
“There was nothing else like us at the time,” insists Robinson, annoyed that other bands with retro associations get a free pass from critics.
“Anachronistic? That's from the same a—holes who didn’t say anything about Green Day!”
It’s been a long time since I gabbed with an actual rock star on the phone — Canadian musicians, with the exception of blabbermouth Hedley, tend to be more self-deprecating, less prone to making proclamations of “Down with The Man” independence.
For Robinson, 51, it comes naturally.
“I don’t care about the industry!” he notes provocatively.
“I didn’t listen to John Coltrane. I’m not a nostalgia person. Music is ALIVE, whether it’s Link Wray or Terry Riley or The Cars. If it’s your trip, it’s your trip.’”
What he’s really after, he confides, is a “soulful connection” with audiences, something he promises The Chris Robinson Brotherhood delivers in spades.
“You do what you want to do,” he points out matter-of-factly. “This isn’t a social etiquette situation. I’m not for sale.”
What is his brand of psychedelic-country-folk-funk doing at a blues festival?
“Blues is the origin of most popular music in the western hemisphere,” he says knowledgeably. “This is a musical trip. That’s what we are. We’re not pandering or begging.”