BOND OF BROTHERS
After being driven apart, the Black Crowes’ Robinsons are back together with new album of raw rock ’n’ roll
If there’s one thing the fractious Black Crowes co-founders agree on, it’s that they’ve never fit in. When the Atlanta-based band, led by brothers Chris and Rich Robinson, broke through with “Shake Your Money Maker,” the neo-classic-rock 1990 debut, “we weren’t cool,” Chris Robinson, 57, the band’s singer, lyricist and mouthpiece, said recently. “We weren’t indie, and we weren’t from Seattle.”
“Hair metal was big,” recalled Rich Robinson, 54, a decidedly stolid type who composes their music and plays guitar.
“Everyone looked like Guns N’ Roses,” Chris Robinson said. “To me, walking out in bell bottoms and
my Mick-Jagger-in-‘Performance’ vibe, that was punk. No one looked like us.”
“We’ve always been unto ourselves,” his brother said.
Thirty-plus years after their fivetimes platinum debut spawned the
soulful rock-radio stalwarts “She Talks to Angels,” “Jealous Again” and their boogie-rock cover of Otis Redding’s “Hard to Handle,” the Robinsons have defied expectations — their own as well as their fans’ — by coming together again. Their first album of new songs in 15 years, the back-to-basics “Happiness Bastards,” recently was released on the band’s own Silver Arrow label.
For brothers who fought like Battlebots when they were on top of the rock world, and who didn’t even speak to each other during a large swath of the 2010s, this reconciliation has helped heal many of the wounds, personal and professional, left by decades of personality crises, ego clashes, substance abuse, lineup changes, passive-aggressive solo projects and, above it all, Old Testamentlevel sibling rivalry.
“We’re complete opposites,” Chris Robinson said.
“But now we have an understanding,” his brother said, “whereas everything was previously built on misunderstanding.”
Chris Robinson’s wife, Camille, who designed the album artwork for “Happiness Bastards” with him, helped bring the brothers back together.
“One of the most inspiring things about our love was her being able to say, ‘Let’s talk about you and your brother,’ ” Chris Robinson said. “‘Let’s talk about what was and what could be.’ ”
With Chris Robinson as the strutting, motormouthed focal point, and Rich Robinson’s opentuned riffs providing the musical backbone, the Crowes quickly gained a reputation as a bracing live act and rock traditionalists who rejected the commercialism and corporate tie-ins that had become synonymous with A-list pop acts.
“We’re anti-authority,” Chris Robinson said. “That’s the whole point of being in a band. We’ve always felt a romantic connection to things that we felt were authentic.”
Unsurprisingly for a band that revered Jack Kerouac and the Rolling Stones in equal measure, the Crowes fell prey to most of the cliches that came with rock stardom. Following the critical and commercial success of its second album, “The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion,” the band split into two factions: the harddrug users, led by Chris Robinson, and the nonusers, led by Rich Robinson. The band’s debauchery, however, was limited to substances.
“I was far more interested in drugs than sex,” Chris Robinson said. “When I heard stories of metal bands having group sex on the road? Personally, I just found it unhygienic. Besides the drugs, we were pretty boring.”
For the band’s third album, “Amorica” from 1994, Chris Robinson insisted on using an old NSFW photograph from Hustler magazine for the cover, rendering it a nonstarter for big-box stores that dominated the retail landscape at the time.
The band’s revolvingdoor personnel changes eventually reached double digits (by some counts, it had 25 members all told), as painstakingly chronicled in a 2019 tell-all book written by the band’s former drummer, Steve Gorman, that blames its demise simultaneously on the brothers’ tortured relationship and their lack of regard for anyone but each other.
“Look,” Rich Robinson said matter-of-factly, “the core has always been me and Chris, regardless of what some people say. There’s a lot of things that happen. Substances happen. Attitudes happen. Life happens. Some people can handle it, some people can’t.”
While Chris Robinson was becoming a tabloid staple in the early 2000s via his marriage to actor and Hollywood royal Kate Hudson, the band was losing its footing. Following a handful of albums that left no discernible trace, the Black Crowes disbanded in 2015, after Chris Robinson demanded a larger share of the band’s income.
“I was like, ‘If you guys want me to keep doing this, I want to be paid more than everyone,’” he said. “I knew that would put the brakes on things. I wanted to blow it up.”
It wasn’t until 2019, and the pending 30th anniversary of “Shake Your Money Maker,” that the brothers reconnected, at first through intermediaries.
“I was writing songs and thought, ‘Man, I would love to hear Chris sing on this,’ ” Rich Robinson said. “And I mentioned it to a friend and he said, ‘Chris said something similar to me two days ago.’ It wasn’t a big deal. We were just on the same wavelength.”
A reunion tour planned for 2020 had to be pushed back a year because of COVID-19, but during the lockdown, Rich Robinson started sending his brother new songs, eventually leading to the band’s heading to Nashville, Tennessee, in summer 2023 and recording “Happiness Bastards” with country and rock producer Jay Joyce.
As one of six brothers, Joyce said he “was expecting drama and fights, but there was very little of it.” They recorded the 10-song album in a few weeks, with the band playing live. “It was old-school, everyone in the same room, no click tracks,” he said. “… It’s rare to do a record like that these days. They’re a dying breed.”
Chris Robinson likens the compact energy of the new album to “Shake Your Money Maker”: “It’s a rock ’n’ roll record. Focused. Riff-oriented. Before we get older and can’t do that anymore.”
The bedrock pleasures of their roadhouse Southern rock mask some surprisingly dark, venomous lyrics directed toward ex-lovers or bandmates: “Stab a knife in my back/ and then you want a please,” Chris Robinson sings accusingly on the opener, “Bedside Manner.” The album ends on a wistful note, though, with “Kindred Friend,” an olive branch from Chris Robinson to Rich Robinson (“Let’s stop pretending/ and write our own ending”).
“But in a weird way,” Chris Robinson said, “it’s also to our fans, about reconnecting with them.”
For much of 2024, the Black Crowes will be back on the road, performing at theaters and festivals across the United States and Europe. Chris Robinson can’t imagine ever doing anything else.
“I’m unemployable,” he said. “I’m nuts. But with the band, I get to do things in my own freakish way.”
“Look, the core has always been me and Chris, regardless of what some people say. There’s a lot of things that happen. Substances happen. Attitudes happen. Life happens. Some people can handle it, some people can’t.”
— Rich Robinson on the Black Crowes