Guitar One March 1999 Like a Rolling Stone Rich Robinson and the Black Crowes bounce back from personnel shifts and record label changes to deliver the ultimate rock n' roll remedy: a new album that KICKS ASS! In the world of music, 10 years can be a lifetime. When the Black Crowes hit the scene back in 1990, their brand of soulful blues-rock earned the critical raves and multiplatinum success: The bands debut, Shake Your Moneymaker, commanded the top 10 on the strength of its version of Otis Redding's "Hard To Handle" as well as the follow up acoustic ballad "She Talks To Angels." Since then, the Crowes (like any band) have had their ups and downs - including personnel shifts, record label changes, and sometimes uneven record sales. But after a decade of sticking to their ideals of tough, roots-based rock and roll, the Black Crowes are far from deceased: instead, they've taken their game to another level. The band's new album, By Your Side, is their best effort yet and stands comparison with nothing less the Rolling Stones' triumph of another era, Exile on Main Street. The hardest rocking songs, like "Go Faster" and "Kicking My Heart Around," explode out of the speakers with a guitar sound as big as the Grand Canyon, while the mid-tempo R&B of "Welcome to the Good Times" and "Diamond Ring" envelop the listener in deep soul grooves. With an attitude born e out of the defiance of the FM status quo, guitarist and songwriter Rich Robinson commands the center of the instrumental stage and proudly proclaims his allegiance to the guitar as the heart of rock and roll, his Open G and F tunings rumbling and roaring under his clanging slide work. With Rich and his brother Chris enjoying a tremendous burst of creative energy recently - the duo took some time to lay down track before their current tour - Rich graciously took time for an in-depth interview with GuitarOne. Intelligent, articulate, and unabashed in his love of music and the guitar, Rich Robinson is not shy about espousing his views on the art and the business of rock. GuitarOne: It sounds like the Black Crowes are living in the studio these days. Rich Robinson: We're just getting ideas and putting them down. We had 36 songs recorded for By Your Side and would really like to see something happen with them in the future. GO: You must be tired being compared to the Stones, but By Your Side has the energy, cohesiveness and exuberant songwriting of Exile on Main Street. RR: That is one of my alltime-favorite records, so it's flattering being compared to it. Thank you. GO: The guitar sound on your record is sensational. RR: I blame Kevin Shirley, the producer, for that [laughs]. Working with him was a completely different experience for us. Every previous producer had their own way of doing things - the mixes that came out on those records were great, but they were tedious because it took so long to get the sounds. This experience was our best by far. We went in the first day, and within 30 minutes we were tracking. On Amorica, it took us three days just to get a bass drum sound. Kevin was great at capturing what we do best, which is playing live and being a band. GO: Which equipment did you use? RR: It was basically two amps and five guitars. I used either a tweed 1955 Fender Twin or a tweed Fender Tremoloux through a Marshall 4X12 Silver Jubilee cabinet. For the guitars, there's the 1968 Telecaster that I used the most, an early '50 Gold Top Les Paul, the Zemaitis, a Gretsch White Falcon and an early '60s ES-335. I also just bought a 1963 Fender Esquire. GO: The natural distortion from such a low-tech setup is so real you can almost feel the heat form the tubes. RR: To me, when technology takes it to the next level and makes you sound better, then it is useful. But when it doesn't sound as good and is just more convenient, then the idea that it is somewhat better is totally a myth. The thing that I don't understand is when people spend 10 grand on some bullshit computer rack system because "this thing will make me sound like a '57 Fender and a '73 Marshall." I mean, why don't you just buy the Fender and the Marshall? That rack will never sound like the original, and you know why? Because there's no room for error, and error is the most human element to me that really brings life to albums - things that will never happen again, but a lot of times could turn out to be amazing, cool things. So when I listen to great tube amps..I mean, you plug into them and you're done. It takes two seconds. GO: You have all the dynamics and that you could want. RR: Oh, totally, it's all about playing. The shame is that it doesn't seem like people really play anymore, or understand what great is great about dynamics, feel, melody, and all those things. It's either this big wall of sound that is really loud and tuned down two steps, or it is just fluff, you know - the strumming of a chord. To me, playing is turning into a lost art. I am sure it's all cyclical, and it will come around again. GO: I think your new CD will have a positive effect and a very broad appeal. RR: Hopefully some kids out there who want to learn will say, "Hey, wow, I would like to play guitar and really learn how to play." That's what music is. It's not a jingle and something to turn your head to; it's too important for that. GO: People have made great rock n' roll, blues, and other forms of roots music often because that' all they had. RR: Yeah, exactly. People get caught up in the business; it's become so corporate. The industry dictates to everyone what they can hear, and they don't give people credit for being able to make up their minds. It gets disheartening. But then we play shows and our fans are just going nuts, and you can tell that they genuinely like it. There's no better feeling than that. GO: Your new label, Columbia, seems to have gone along when you wanted to delay release of By Your Side. RR: I think it was cool for them to do that, and hopefully they will feel the same about us and move forward. It's funny, but overseas we are considered rock n' roll rebel because we can play or own instruments [laughs]! GO: How did it feel to play all the guitar parts on the new recording? RR: I've played a lot of the parts on all our records in the past, but I've never played the solos. It was a different element because I like countermelodies and little licks that give layers and layers of sounds. But when a solo can add to a song, I think it's amazing. Sometimes they don't though; sometimes it's just a solo for the sake of playing a lot of notes, and I am not going to do that. Now we have a guy touring with us named Audley Freed who was in a band called Cry of Love, and he's an amazing guitar player. He makes me sound good onstage [laughs]! He listens, and his feel, rhythm and timing is just so good, he can play the shit out of anything. With the addition of bassist Sven Pipien, who replaced Johnny Colt, I am having the most fun I've had in five years. GO: Will you continue to play the solos? RR: I will play the solos on all the new songs. On some of the old songs, Audley and I will split. He and I play a lot more together than Marc and I did. GO: Are you still mainly playing in Open G tuning? RR: Yes, I don't think there are any songs in standard tuning on the record. GO: When you play in open tunings, especially with the slide, do you think in terms of boxes? For instance, do you think of the IV chord being at fret 5? RR: No, I approach it all by sound. I know where the chords are if I want to hit them, but it all depends on what it sounds like to me. GO: Do you have patterns that you have developed over the years that you go to when you want a certain sound? RR: Not really. I'm into creating weird chords in Open G because you can do almost anything - like these dissonant chords that incorporate so much and then just let it ring out. I do use some patterns that I have learned in the past, but then I will play something new just fooling around, and I find if I can use it. Then I will write four of five songs based on what I've just learned. GO: Who were your influences growing up? RR: Duane Allman, Lowell George, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck were some of the more obvious ones. Going back further into country blues, there was Mississippi Fred McDowell, Furry Lewis, Sleepy John Estes, Mississippi John Hurt, and Robert Johnson. GO: Did you actually try to learn their songs? RR: My favorite was Fred McDowell - I would sit down and learn his songs to where I could play most of them. But I just always enjoyed music, and I never really wanted to listen to get them down. When I first started playing, I wasn't good enough to play cover tunes, so I just enjoyed listening. I even do that now. If I hear something I love, I don't want to sit down and learn it immediately. I just want to appreciate it, almost from a distance. GO: Did the Black Crowes ever play many covers? RR: We never did when we started, but recently when we were going through our metamorphosis, or whatever you want to call it [laughs], we played a lot of covers. We still do now, stuff like "Shapes of Things", "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and "The Weight", a bunch of Gram Parsons' songs - whom I am a huge fan of - and blues standards like "Shake Your Moneymaker" and "Mellow Down Easy". GO: How do they go over? RR: Oh, great. It's our way of saying that this is the stuff we listen to, so check it out. And that's what it should be. It's sort of a mass turning on of friends to music. Instead of being like, "Hey, have you read this book?" it's "Have you heard this? This is where we got stuff from." GO: Do you still draw inspiration from your original sources? RR: Oh, totally, all the time. There are also some new bands that I like as well - like Radiohead, Beck and Prodigy. They're a lot different from us, but I like their melodies and songwriting. GO: Are there any contemporary guitar players that you like? RR: I don't think people really play guitar nowadays, [laughs] that I hear. GO: Are you talking only about rock guitarists? How about blues guitarists? RR: Well no, I don't think there are many of those, either. I don't really listen to any of them - like the new, young, sixteen-year-old, up-and-coming guitar players. As a guitar player, I do think Warren Haynes is amazing. Have you heard Bill Laswell's redoing of Bob Marley's songs in dub? It's pretty cool and worth checking out. GO: Do the Black Crowes have any plans to do an "Unplugged"? RR: I've wanted to do a traditional country and blues record, but Chris and I never seem to get it together. I don't think he wants to do it. GO: Is that the type of thing you could do on your own? RR: Well yeah, I could, but I don't think I could sing it [laughs]. GO: How about an acoustic "Unplugged" album of the band's songs? RR: No, I don't like that sort of thing, I never think about it. I would rather do a live album. GO: Do you still practice? RR: No. It's mainly songwriting and performing. I fool around and play at home, but I've never been the type to just play in a room by myself. I like the spontaneity factor of now knowing everything, and then when I do learn something new, it just gives me a lot more inspiration. GO: Was there ever a time that you sat down and practiced hard, or took lessons or studied books? RR: No, never. I never learned scales or any of that. Most of what I have learned came from touring. I have always been more interested in coming up with riffs and licks. GO: How would you like to see your playing develop from here? RR: I am always interested in writing good songs. I love it when I take strides in my playing and learn how to play different melodies and things in different ways, but I think I always will be the most concerned with songwriting. Crowe Tracks - Rich Robinson gives a behind-the-scenes tour through By Your Side "Go Faster" I used a Les Paul in Open G tuning for rhythm, and a Gretsch Roc-Jet in Open G for slide. The song started with a lick I'd been kicking around for a while. Originally, it was played at half the speed it ended up. I wanted to have to slide almost follow the vocal line and the solo to be chord-based. "Kicking My Heart Around" Here, I played a Zemaitis in Open G, tunes down « step to F#. This one developed I a similar approach to "Go Faster", with two countermelodies under the vocals to support it. The guitar sound is huge, thanks to the Zemaitis, and is mixed way out front, where the guitar should be [laughs]! By the way, I used the Tremolux for all the biggest guitar sounds. "By Your Side" By Your Side was a 1968 Telecaster in Open G for rhythm, and a Les Paul for slide and the solo. I originally wrote this one around eight years ago for Southern Harmony, but Chris didn't want to use it. I actually forgot about it for a long time and then brought it out again for the record, and everyone liked it. The rhythm track was built up by layering several parts on top of each other. The Les Paul is probably a 1953 that had a Bigsby and was routed out for a Humbucker in the bridge position. I took the Bigsby off and replaced the Humbucker with one made by Tom Holmes, and left the original cream-colored P-90 [soapbar] pickup in the neck position. I bought it for 400$ 12 years ago and used it on our first album, Shake Your Moneymaker, and always play on the Humbucker. "Horsehead" For this one, the main guitar is a Telecaster in Open G, tuned down one whole step to F. But for the solo, I used a Gretsch White Falcon. Like most of the tracks for this record, Kevin Shirley just put I mic in front of the Twin, and we got a great big, natural sound. The solo is one of the first or second ones that I did. I wrote this song on the acoustic guitar, and we have an acoustic version of the song that has a country blues feel. Most of my writing in the past has been done on the acoustic, but because I wanted a more rocking vibe on this album, I wrote most of the songs on the electric. "Only a Fool" "Only a Fool" uses a Telecaster guiat in Open G, and Gretsch Roc-Jet for the lead, through a Tremolux amp. I wrote this song in the summer of 1998 in five minutes [laughs]. It has a Stax-vibe with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band on it that Chris really liked. We actually recorded a couple of different versions, including more of a rock version. "Heavy" Again, it's the Telecaster in Open G, and the Les Paul for the solo. I wrote this the last day of pre-production [laughs], so we fooled around with it in the studio in a sort of a "cheeky" way. It seems to me like a cool Zeppelin riff, but more funky. For some reason, the solo was recorded "out of phase" due to the way Kevin positioned two microphones, and we kept it. "Welcome to the Goodtimes" For this one, it's the Telecaster, but in Open E. I also used the Gretsch Jet- Roc through a Leslie cabinet for the solo. "Welcome to the Goodtimes" went through a lot of changes to get to where it is. The thing that really made it come together was the horns in the bridge. We actually went to New Orleans to get the Dirty Dozen Brass Band for this track, and they were just amazing. They are New Orleans, and I don't think anyone else can get the feel that they have. Many people think New Orleans is where the blues was born, and I agree totally. "Go Tell the Congregation" I used the Telecaster in Open G for the rhythms, and a Fender Custom Shop B- Bender for lead. This song, along with "Diamond Ring", was one of the new songs that we delayed the release of the album for, and both are favorites of mine. The verse riff was one of the first rings that I wrote for this record, but then we just put it off because we already had so many songs. But it always bugged me, because I loved the riff and wanted to do something with it. When we got off on tour, I finally had time to finish it. To me it came off like War meets AC/DC [laughs]. "Diamond Ring" This time it's the Gretsch Roc-Jet in Open G for the rhythms, and the Telecaster for the lead. Like "Only a Fool", it only took five minutes to write. Sometimes the songs that take the least amount of time to write work the best. I used the neck pickup on the Tele, which is a Tom Holmes Humbucker, for the solo. "Then She Said My Name" Telecaster in Open G for the rhythms; Les Paul for the solo. This went through a lot of changes and actually came from a song called "Pastoral", which was supposed to be on Three Snakes and One Charm. The verse was originally the solo part for "Pastoral". I really enjoyed soloing over the bridge. "Virtue and Vice" "Virtue and Vice" was the Telecaster in Open G, and a Trussart Steel-Phonic resonator guitar for the solo. I wrote the chorus first, and throughout pre- production I tried like 15 different parts around it until I found one that we were totally thrilled with. This was one of those songs that Chris didn't like at first and I told him that he would, but when we finished it he loved it. Sometimes I'm the same way, where I'll write a song and think it sucks and Chris will think it's great. Occasionally, our difference of opinion prevents a song from reaching full fruition, but usually it works out.