The Crowes
Apr 20, 2008 by Nick
A while back I stated that John Mellencamp was one of my earliest musical heroes. Well this time I want to write about a band that has been, without a doubt, the biggest musical influence of my entire life, and that is The Black Crowes. I hear people my parents age talk about how they remember where they were when they heard about JFK being shot, well I remember where I was the first time I heard The Black Crowes and that moment changed the way I looked at music. I was 18 years old and the minute I heard “Jeaolous Again” I rushed out and bought the “Shake Your Moneymaker” album and that album has been a regular fixture in my cd player ever since.
I firmly believe this band is one of the greatest bands of the last 20 years and one of the few bands from the early 90′s that are still making relevant music. If you read any review about The Black Crowes you will almost always see them being compared to The Rolling Stones or The Faces. They are called Southern Rock, I guess because they hail from Atlanta. If you listen to any of their music you will find then they are much more than the above labels. Their music is steeped in the blues, country, gospel, and americana. To see the Black Crowes live is a musical history lesson. They never play the same set twice and have a massive catalogue of original and cover songs. In any given night you can see them play songs by Little Feat, The Byrds, Stephen Stills, The Everly Brothers, Delaney and Bonnie, The Beatles, The Band, The Rolling Stones, and Neil Young just to name a few. They tour for years at at a time and live to be on the road. They truly are the definition of a rock and roll band.
After reading the two previous paragraphs you can imagine how excited I was to get my hands on the new album Warpaint. It had been 7 years since their last studio album and as far as I was concerned way too long. After listeneing to this album several times front to back it does not disappoint. The band has replaced Marc Ford with Luther Dickinson from The North Mississippi Allstars and his nasty slide guitar playing combined with Rich Robinson’s big riffs makes for the perfect combination on songs such as “Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution”, “Wee Who See The Deep”, and “Movin on Down The Line”. They then switch gears on the tracks “Locust Street”, “Oh Josephine”, and Whoa Mule. You really hear a Gram Parsons/Byrds influence on these songs as well as unbelivable harmonies by Chris and Rich Robinson. The kind of harmonies that can only be made by two people that are related to each other. This album really is an outstanding album and I think the spirit of this album is summed up by Chris in the song “Oh Josephine” when he says “It’s too late to play it safe, so let’s let it all ride”.
Of course with the release of a new album the Crowes immediately hit the road and when they hit the road so did I. I made a little road trip to beautiful Owensboro Kentucky on March 8th to see the this band do what they do best and that is play live. I have seen this band at least 10 times and they sounded as good as they ever have that night. Luther Dickinson did not disappoint, he spent 2 hours playing slide guitar reminiscent of Duane Allman while Rich spit out big nasty riffs like a Pez dispenser. The rhythm section of Steve Gorman on drums and Sven Pipien on base is one of the tightest and most underrated in rock music today and as always Chris displayed why he has one of the greatest voices in rock and roll. They played a perfect mix of old and new songs and played them to perfection. You combine that with a crowd of of Kentucky rednecks who acted like they had not seen a concert since Jackyl was popular and it made for an incredible evening of rock and roll. If you don’t believe me I have the pictures to prove it. You can also check out this video to see them do an unplugged cut from their new album.
http://www.vh1.com/video/play.jhtml?id=1583550&vid=216869
Nick
Posted in Nick's Rants