Rich Robinson

The Black Crowes have a new album, "A Pound of Feathers," and have been nominated once again for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is Rich Robin Show of the Black Crows,
who have a new album, A Pound of Feathers.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Rich, why that title the Black Crows?

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Ha ha, No pound of feathers.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Oh, pound of feathers? Oh well, it was a you know,
it was a lyric of Chris Is in one of
the songs. At the end he sings a pound of
feathers and a pound of or a pound of lad
and you know, it just kind of one of those
things that's stuck. You know. We always try to sneak
a bird, you know, a bird reference in there every
once in a while.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
So who decided that was the title? You or your brother?

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Chris brought it up, and it was me. Chris and
our manager talked about it, and we my manager and
I liked pound of feathers, and Chris had another one
that I can't remember what it was, and so we
kind of chose pund of feathers.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
So, you know, we live in a totally different world today.
There are a lot of acts of your avingteage. You
don't even make new records. How do you decide that
it's time to make a new album.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
You know, Chris and I have always written. I write
all the time. Chris writes lyrics all the time. He's
got notebooks and notebooks of lyrics. And so basically the
way it works with him and I is that I'll
I'll send him musical pieces. Some of them are full songs,
some of them are you know, a verse and a
chorus or whatever it may be. And then whatever he

(01:39):
whatever pulls something out of him, whatever inspires him, is
what we tend to make a song, you know, And
so we just I believe in making records. I still
believe in making out full albums. I don't I don't
adhere to the new record label kind of philosophy of

(01:59):
let's make an EP or let's do a single. It's
just like make a fucking record. I mean, it's you know,
it's a piece, it's a whole thing. There's a journey
on a record. The sequences art is an art form.
The way the songs work together is an art form.
The way the the recording and all of these different
elements are creative elements of what I do and what

(02:21):
we do as a band, and what Chris and I
do as writers and it's still valid to me, you
know what I mean. And so we make a record
when we're ready to, when we have songs, we're ready
to go in and you know, bust one out.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
So you say you're constantly coming up with a musical
idea in the plural. So do you play the guitar
every day?

Speaker 2 (02:45):
I don't necessarily play the guitar every day, but when
i'm it kind of depends on where I am. If
I'm on tour, I have a guitar in my room.
If I'm at home, I have a studio at my
place in Tapanga, and I mean I'm in upstate New York,
I have, you know, three guitars up here if I
want to mess around. But I don't make it a

(03:07):
mission to play guitar. But I always pick one up,
and I'm always I'm always inspired to pick it up.
Like I've always believed that if you pick up an
instrument when you want to, you're always going to be
happy about it instead of like, oh it's you know,
it's two o'clock, I have to sit down and do
my scales or whatever it may be. I'm more interested

(03:29):
in in that inspiration, you know, So I play you know,
I have drums at my house. I play bass and
drums and guitar, and you know, have some keyboards, and
I love to be in the studio and make stuff
and so a lot of times I'll just put together
whole songs for Chris and send them to them. And
but this record was a little bit different. You know.

(03:50):
We decided to use the studio as a tool to write.
So I had about twenty five or thirty things I
sent to him, and he chose, you know, twelve or
fifteen that he liked, and then we went in and
kind of saved the arrangement for the studio. And a
lot of times certain things will spark other things, which

(04:12):
then lead to other things. And that's what's really cool
about it.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Let's go back a step. What do you do in
upstate New York?

Speaker 2 (04:21):
I have five kids, and there's a school up here.
They're a school burned down last year in the Palisades
and they go to a specific school. It's called the
Waldorf School. And the two big Waldorf schools in Los
Angeles burned down. There was one in the Palisades and
there was one in Altadena. And we had been up

(04:43):
here before because we love the area. It's gorgeous. But
we you know, my wife's from LA, so we moved
out to La. Kind of lived between Nashville and LA.
But we just bought about eighty acres up here, and
we're going to build a house and maybe live on
both sides of the of the continent or of the country.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
I mean relative to California. New York is a small state,
but by the East Coast standards, New York is a
large state. How do you decide where you want to
buy land. I'm not looking for your address, but generally speaking.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
Well, I mean, I like trees, and I like I mean,
I grew up in Atlanta, so we had, you know,
we had a lot of being on the East Coast.
There's seasons, there's you know, I lived in outside of
New York for like fourteen years. I lived in the
city for a couple of years, and so and I

(05:38):
used to go up to Woodstock all the time, make
to make records and to you know, just to be
there because I love it. It's you know, the Catskills and
the Berkshire. So I'm kind of the property I bought
is right in between the Catskills and the Berkshires. We
have views of boat which is just beautiful. It's peaceful,
you know, it's just it's amazing. And about three or

(05:59):
four families from La moved here too to send their
kids to the school, and so we have friends here
as well.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
Okay, so how many kids are living with you? Now?

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Five?

Speaker 1 (06:13):
So you all five kids? What's the oldest.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Fifteen? And the youngest is five? And then have I
actually have seven kids, but two of them are older.
One's twenty nine and one's twenty five. So my younger bunch,
they all live here at home.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
So the older ones, what are they up to?

Speaker 2 (06:35):
My oldest one, his name's Taylor. He went to Occidental
and studied. He studied a form of AI consciousness that
I think it was kind of a curriculum that he
wrote himself, and he majored in that. And then he
minored in acting and minored in speaking Russian. So he

(06:58):
learned the Russian language, and he was really interested in teaching.
So he moved to Russia for two years. He lived
in Saint Petersburg teaching English, and I kept sending I
kept sending him things like, hey, you know, maybe you
should think about getting out of there. Things are getting weird,
you know, as the build up was going, and he

(07:19):
was like, no, that's just Western propaganda. They're not doing anything.
And literally randomly, it was just random. He flew home
and the day he flew home, Putin invaded Ukraine while
he was on the plane flying home to see his mom,
and he got he landed. He's like, I can't believe
that happened. I'm like, yeah, I've been telling you. There's

(07:41):
you know, one hundred thousand troops on the Ukrainian border.
So he moved to Georgia, the country. So he moved
to Tubilisi for like six months to a year, and
then he moved to Turkey because he has a Russian
girlfriend and she couldn't get a visa to a lot
of these places. And then they wound up in Argentina

(08:02):
for a couple of years. And now he's back in
Chicago and he goes to Northwestern School of Journalism.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Okay, did you ever go visit him in these places?

Speaker 2 (08:16):
I never visited him in He came to visit, like
when he was in Russia, he and and his significant
other came to visit us in Amsterdam. But I've I mean,
I've been to Russia but not while he was there.
It was a lot more of a hasshole to get
over there because we were that's when we were starting
our touring, and then literally COVID hit, so he moved there.

(08:39):
I saw him in February January, February of twenty twenty
and that and then he went home, and then I
came home, and then the world shut down, and so
he was literally stuck in Saint Petersburg for two years.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
Okay, what's the twenty five five year old up to.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
He's in a band called the Sunday Mourners and he
lives in LA He's I think he's either just he
just graduated or finished his term in December. He was
going to Chapman but he's His band's great and they
just opened for the OCS. They did some shows with

(09:23):
X they did they're doing. They did a full tour
of the Midwest, and I think in the maybe the
summer of the fall. I can't remember what they're planning,
because they want to go to Europe. They have a
single out and record out and they have a lot
of interest from labels and booking agents, so I think
they're going to go over to the UK and do

(09:44):
a full tour over there, and they're going to do
East coast down into the South again in the States.
So their band's great. He's the singer.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
What is your philosophy young kids who've graduated from college
and being on the payroll, not being on the payroll.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
I want them to be happy and fulfilled and if
and if that makes him happy and he can do it,
and he can you know, he can provide for himself,
then I think it's an amazing thing, you know what
I mean. I always show my support, but I never

(10:27):
get involved. You know, Chris and I and you know
we're not involved. You know, Chris doesn't get involved with
his kids, and like in the sense of like pushing
for things. I think he's very similar in that way.
I will always be there to help if they need it,
but I don't want to like insert myself and what

(10:47):
their trajectory may be or what they have plans for.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
Well, your older son is going to journalism school at Northwestern.
That's a big chunk of change. Is he paying for that?
Are you paying for that?

Speaker 2 (11:00):
We pay for that, the parents. But he's it's a
year it's a year program. So he's you know, he's doing.
I'm really proud of him. It's one of the best
journalism schools in the world.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
Okay, does the one who's in the band, does he
ever call up and say, I'm sure, can you send me,
you know, one thousand or three thousand dollars?

Speaker 2 (11:23):
He does other jobs, like he he models, and like
he does other things outside of the band to kind
of help him. He works at a record store. Like
he's got his whole thing down. He lives within his means,
so he's cool to exist. You know.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
So their mother, when did you get involved with their mother?

Speaker 2 (11:50):
In nineteen ninety two? Okay, she was twenty and I
was twenty three or twenty four. I was twenty four.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
Is this somebody, because you know, Black Crows basically started
to blow up in nineteen nineties. Is someone you knew
before that or you met subsequent to No.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
I met her at a show. Actually a friend, a
kind of acquaintance, brought her to the show and we
saw each other and we were together for twelve years
and had two kids. So that ended because just I
think we were too young and I was gone a
lot and she it's just you know, it's that age

(12:30):
old story. We grew apart, you know what I mean.
I think that's really all it was.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
So if your kid said I want to get married
at twenty three, you would say.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
What I would say, Luckily they're both past twenty three.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
Well they're coming up. We got five coming up.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yeah exactly, I would say. I mean, look, I could
you know, I can always give my like this is
what happened to me, but this age twenty three, this
is your life too, So you're going to have to
make this decision. But I would, as someone who went
through this, I would have to tell you that this
is something that can happen and you have to you

(13:12):
have to really look at it for yourself. But I'm
not the type of person to like force an agenda
or force them into something that they may not. I mean,
you know, look, life is life. Kids don't listen to
their parents. I never listened to my parents, and it's
just the way it is, you know. And so I would,

(13:32):
like I said, I'm always there to be like, hey,
this didn't really pan out for me. So if you
want to take that chance, go ahead, you know, okay?

Speaker 1 (13:41):
And when did you meet your prison significant other?

Speaker 2 (13:45):
I met her in two thousand and she and we
were together in five or six, I think it was six,
but we were together. Yeah, we've been together ever since.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
Okay, did you just end up with five more kids
or did you want a big family?

Speaker 2 (14:09):
I you know, it's tough when you go through a
divorce and you don't you know, you instantly get moved
to almost like a visiting uncle status. At least back then,
that's how it was, where it's like you get to
see your kids every other weekend and on Wednesdays or whatever.
And that that was just like the the way that

(14:30):
the divorce industrial complex tended to work, you know what
I mean. It was like, this is what it is.
I had to travel because I was working, and I
still had to pay for everything, and that's what it was.
And so obviously I missed so much, you know, but
I also love kids and I love having kids, and

(14:51):
so you know, I just I just kind of go
with it. You know. I don't have a ton of
you know, we never really had a ton of planning
going on, you know what I mean. It wasn't like,
let's sit down and have five kids and this is
what we're going to do. We would you know, have
kids and we would be thrilled about it, you know
what I mean, that's how.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
It was, okay, So you know, it's funny. I was
talking to Stuart Copeland and he has seven kids, and
he says, you never really know what you're going to get.
They all have their own personality.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
What's your experience one hundred percent? And they come out, man,
I mean, there's so many things that when they come out,
there's certain there's already bits of their personality that are
already there one hundred percent. It's amazing, you know, it's like,
really it's so far out to see and then to

(15:45):
watch them grow and then watch those things that are
these you know, I don't know, these strong sort of
urges in their personality, and then they integrate into a
larger personality as they get older and older and older.
It's really amazing. I mean, my teenager, my fifteen year old,

(16:08):
he was he has a lot of the qualities that
he had when he was a kid, but now he's
getting into the grumpy teenage sort of face. So it's
I don't know how much of that is kind of
clouding the positivity of his youth, but I think it's
still in there because it comes out everyone in all.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
So what intrigues you to invest and have them go
to Waldort schools? What's that about.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
It's a specific way of looking at the world. It's
more of an analog way of looking at the world.
Like I still, although there's technology all around, I still
believe in the analog way of looking at life and
looking at the world and making music and you know,
everything I do, I would prefer to do it that way. Then,

(16:52):
I think if you have that base of being able
to exist, I mean I tell them all the time,
like you need you need to learn how to be bored,
because being bored can be an incredibly rewarding thing. I mean,
that's where a lot of I mean, that's where creativity
comes from. That's where the creativity is but was born from,
you know, a lot of times instead of having something

(17:13):
constantly in your face entertaining you twenty four to seven,
to just sit back and do some reflection and look
at the world in a different way. And so they
do these things. The way they teach is more of
a holistic way of teaching. They teach about, you know,
like thetle in their younger grades. They you know, they

(17:36):
bake bread and they cook things and they make things,
and they want it to be like the normal sort
of rhythm of life, to just be present in the classroom,
just to be able to smell bread being cooked or
go out here. They're encouraged to use their imaginations and

(17:56):
they're really they try to be strict. It's hard in
today's world, but there's a no media sort of thing
where you're not really supposed to watch movies or TV
or devices, and we thought it would be a great
thing for our kids, you know.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Okay, so now we live in this technological world. To
what degree do you restrict their device use, screen use?

Speaker 2 (18:22):
Well, when we're at home, we only allow them to,
like they're going to watch some stuff, but we have
a TV and we make them watch movies. You know,
we really try no YouTube. None of them have you know,
social media, and you know, my older son kind of

(18:43):
sneaks into it sometimes, but the younger kids, they don't
have social media and they can't, you know, other than
when we travel they have iPads to just because traveling
is can with five is pretty chaotic. But you know,
when we land, that's it. Those things go up and
they have to either watch a movie or play outside

(19:06):
or do whatever.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
So what point do they get a phone.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
I don't know, that's it. I mean my fifteen year
old got one a couple of years ago, so he
was like thirteen, I think when he got a phone.
So we try to push it to that, you know.
I mean, I would say even later, but you know,
sometimes the fighting to get one. I mean, you know,
when he was in la they were going to a

(19:30):
different school. He was going to a different school in Malibu,
and all the kids had phones, and it was just
kind of like everyone's got a phone but me. You
know that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
Okay, you know, you have five kids, and you have
two older kids who were out of school, but you
know there were some expenses here. You feel the financial
pressure to work and make the money.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
I mean yeah, I mean we go out and to
our and I'm really fortunate to be able to do
that and take care of everyone. But my older kids
they're pretty I mean they're pretty self sufficient, you know.
Like I said, my twenty five year old, he's you know,
he does has he works at a record shop, He'll

(20:18):
do this stuff. He does a little modeling. He makes
a little bit of money. My older son has like
five jobs when he's not in school. He's really he's
got a strong work ethic and so he doesn't want
to rely on us.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
You know, So how many boys and how many girls
of the younger five and do they get along?

Speaker 2 (20:38):
Four boys and one girl?

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Where's the girl in the hierarchy?

Speaker 2 (20:43):
She's the second youngest. Okay, so she's seven, but she
kind of rules the roost, you know. She she screams
like nobody's business. She's she can control, she can control
what's happened, like she's so smart. She gets in on
it quickly and understands what's happening and can can traverse.

(21:07):
You know. She's the most like my dad, which is amazing,
you know, which is funny because my dad and my
grandmother in particular, were really charismatic people like my dad
and Chris were a lot of like my grandmother was
just like them. You know. She was a really far
out lady, you know, just ahead of her time. And

(21:30):
so my daughters like that, and she just kind of
rules everyone in the house, puts them in their place,
and she's amazing.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
Okay. I mean there have been legendary battles between you
and your brother. That's your first hand, you know, growing
up experience. Now that you have kids, do you think
that's just a nature of siblings or was there something
special about the to you that caused friction.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
I mean, I think in a sense it's the nature
of siblings. Although my older two GID kids always got
along a lot better than Chris and I and my
younger kids. You know, my fifteen year old's a little
annoyed by everyone. He can't stand being around the little kids.
He's just like those kids annoying me. I can't be

(22:28):
around them. But there's also a cushion there because they
have other siblings to go to. With Chris and me,
it was just the two of us, and it was
also a different time. There was a lot of like
just deal with it, like you just have to deal
with what's in front of you. And I think today

(22:49):
there's a lot more negotiating room for people to deal
with one another, you know, And so back then, I
think that's really what it was. Chris, you know, it
was always the you know, kind of ringleader. He always
drew like kind of dictated what we would all do.

(23:09):
We had cousins and we had people that were around,
but you know, I once we started writing music, writing
songs together. It always worked, but there was always a
push and pull because I have I have very strong
ideas about music and where I need where I think
it needs to go, and he has strong ideas about

(23:31):
what he wants, and so I think that's where a
lot of the stuff would come from. You know a
lot of those you know, battles that we would get into.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Let's go back to your father. Tell me about him
being so charismatic? What was up with him?

Speaker 2 (23:48):
He was just I mean to this day there's people
in Atlanta. You know, he passed away in twenty thirteen,
so to this day in Atlanta, like, we'll go the
other I was there a couple of years ago and
I had to go do laundry somewhere and we were
on tour and I was like, oh, well this place
will do I remember my you know, like this is
where dad used to go at whatever. And I went
in there and the woman was like, oh, your Stan Son.

(24:12):
You know his name was Stan Robinson. And I was
like yeah, and then like two other people in the
laundry at I was like, I remember Stan. I love
that guy. You know, that's just how he was. Like
everyone remembered him. Everyone loved him. He was funny, you know,
he was. He was just gregarious. He'd walk into a room,
he knew everyone's name. He knew, you know, every matre

(24:34):
d at every restaurant. He would go to every waiter
he knew. He just knew everyone. He was. He put
himself out and that's how he was. He was always
that way.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
And how do you earn his living?

Speaker 2 (24:47):
He was He was a musician in the late fifties,
when he was about eighteen, he had a hit called
Booma Dip Dip and it was on it was top
forty or whatever. He was on the Alan Fried Show
and Dick Clark Show. We found footage of him on
the Dick Clark Show actually, And then he got into

(25:07):
acting off Broadway or like, he tried out for the
Traveling Troop of for West Side Story, and then he
did some things here and there. He did some commercials
and then he wound up coming back to Atlanta and
he started a fote group called the Appellachians and they

(25:27):
they were on like I think they were on ABC,
Paramount Records, and they toured around the South there. You know,
he actually played at the Rhyman and when Chris and
I play there there's a plaque downstairs of him or
a mention of him. And so, but later he kind
of went down the road of my dad, of his
dad and his mom, and they were in the you know,

(25:50):
the clothing business took yeah, exactly, and his so his dad,
I was, he was a traveling salesman. And my grandmother
started a children's clothing company in Atlanta, this place called

(26:12):
the Merchandise Mart. And so she was one of the
first women to start her own business. And she had
her own showroom and down there, and she grew it
into a sizable thing, and then Dad took it over.
You know. Dad went into that after the after we
were born and the music kind of just you know,
it wasn't working out the way he wanted. He went

(26:34):
into started working for clothing companies and then he found
finally started working with my grandmother and then took that
business over. So he sold children's clothing for years.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
So at what point did his family come from the
old country.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
They came after World War One from Poland, which is
what we were told, and they were Rabinowitz and they
were naturalized Robinson and they came through Ellis Island.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
And your grandparents were born overseas.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
No, my granddad was, my grandmother was so ike was Jewish,
came from a Jewish family, but my grandmother was Baptist,
so her dad and her dad and first husband were
both Baptist ministers. And so how those two met up,
I have no I have no idea, but you know,
she was our bubby. We called her Bubbs. You know,

(27:31):
she was like Bubby we called her. But you know,
we grew up. Dad had two older half siblings from
her name was Tatsi from I mean that was her nickname.
Her real name was Thetis, but they called her Tatsi uh,
And then we called her Bubby. But you know, she
had you know, she had two kids from an older

(27:54):
from her first marriage, and then they were my dad's
half siblings. And I think there was like a fourteen
year difference.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
So how did your father meet your mother?

Speaker 2 (28:04):
They met at a party and Buckhead in Atlanta, and
I remember them driving us by the house and they're like,
that's where your dad and I met. You know, my
mom would say she was a stewardess for Eastern Airlines.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
And she moved down to Atlanta from Nashville, her and
her two sisters and they all I think they all
flew for Eastern you know, and so that's how they
got to Atlanta. Then her and dad met and then
we started, you know that they started the family.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
Okay, was it an instant romance between them?

Speaker 2 (28:38):
I guess, I mean, you know they do that generation
doesn't talk too much about that kind of stuff typically,
you know what I mean. So I mean Mom said
it was you know, Mom said that there was instant
they were kind of together, but then she was like
when they first had Chris, it was a little harder

(29:00):
for them, and then they everything smoothed out and then
they kind of went. But they got divorced in ninety three,
so you know, they were together for twenty eight years
or something like that.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Okay, they got divorced. Did either of them or both
of them get remarried.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
No, Well, my dad, my dad got married, but I
think it was for like a couple of months and
then it just didn't pan out and then he split up.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
I went to college with somebody whose parents divorced when
he was in his late twenties, and it fucked them up.
So what was your experience?

Speaker 2 (29:41):
You know, it didn't mess me up too.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
Bad.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
I mean, you know, they were unhappy. I think you know, again,
I always take a you know, I always take more
of a like it's their life, I and that's you know,
they're still here. It changes the dye dam slightly, but
it is what it is kind of thing. So to me,

(30:05):
it was just like part of life, you know what
I mean, this thing happened, it changed a little bit,
but they were both cool and then later they became
more like friends and they would talk to each other
and kind of could lean on each other a little bit.
So it wasn't you know, it sucks to watch your
parents go through that. It sucks to watch, especially our

(30:26):
mom go through that because it was dad who kind
of initiated the whole thing. But you know, but again,
like you can't help how you feel. You can't help
who you love. And if you if if it's hard
to be around each other, then you know, then it shouldn't.
You shouldn't be around each other, you know what I mean,
That's how I saw it.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
So how much of a Jewish influence was there in
the family growing up.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
We had? I mean there was a good amount, because
I mean, you know, culturally, there was a lot we
had cousins in Atlanta. Our uncle Saul owned a bike
shop in Atlanta. It was Cohen's Bike Shop, and he
was my granddad's either his cousin or his I can't

(31:13):
I don't know there was a relation there. And I
can't remember if it was his cousin or his brother,
because I know I sister or no, maybe it was
his brother in law because my sister married him. So
and they and so we would go to their house,
and you know, we kind of grew up going and

(31:33):
I mean it was an interesting life Chris and I
had because we did have No one ever pushed religion
on us, but there was there was a religion around us,
you know what I mean, or like like culture or religion,
and so you know, we were around it. You know,
we went to the family functions, we interacted with everyone,

(31:55):
and so it was it was kind of there through osmosis,
you know, in that sense. I mean Dad was going
to convert, but then he had a fight with his rabbi.
Then he bailed out. He said so, and he always
said because his dad was Jewish and his mom was Baptist,
he became a druid.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
So, but your mother is not Jewish.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
Nope, she she I mean for a minute, like for
a couple of years, she kind of went she was
a Lutheran because her sister was a Lutheran. But then
I don't know, I guess it wore off, you know
what I mean. She may she took made Chris and
I go to church a couple of times, but it

(32:36):
was like, I don't know, a handful of times. Dad
wasn't into it at all, and so Dad was like,
you know, don't make him go to church, and we
kind of I don't know what the impetus for everything was,
but we went in and got out pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
Okay, we're exactly do you grow up in Italanta? How
far from the city center was your neighborhood like subur
what was the story?

Speaker 2 (33:02):
We were in the suburbs. So when we were born,
Chris and I were born in Buckhead, which is part
of the Atlanta downtown like the city Atlanta city proper.
But then Dad got a job we moved to Charlotte,
North Carolina for two years, and then we moved back
out into the suburbs. And it was a suburb called

(33:22):
eas East Cobb County, and it was about thirty five
minutes from the city, you know, thirty five to forty
minutes tops. And that's you know, I mean I was
fourth or fifth grade when we moved there. I think
it was fourth grade, so it was fourth through twelfth
grade we lived there, you know, and that's kind of

(33:47):
where everything musically got started. That's where we would go
in the basement and play music and you know, started
cultivating our own musical tastes. Okay, you know.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
I don't have an older brother. I have an older sister.
But I know a lot of people have older brothers
and the younger brothers entrall to the older brother, you know,
and before you hit you know, maturity, et cetera. What
was your relationship with your brother?

Speaker 2 (34:16):
You know, we would get along. We got along, you
know a lot. We got along really well. But obviously
there were sometimes where we would fight and you know,
get upset. I mean I was always kind of bigger
than him, so I could, you know, we would we
would get in arguments and I could, you know, I

(34:37):
could hold my own let's just say it that way.
But he was also he would he would forge himself
into the world more than me. I mean a because
I was younger, but b just because of my personality.
So you know, he would go out and look for
records and he would go do these things and he
would bring them back and then I would go in

(34:58):
and take the ones I like and listen to him
in my room. And you know, I would always obsess
over the types of like all the instrumentation, and he
would obsess over the stats, like who played what, who
did this, who played that? But I could I could

(35:19):
sing every note of every instrument that was going on
at the time.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
Okay, were you good in school? Were you popular? Did
you play sports? What kind of kid were you?

Speaker 2 (35:31):
I played football for like six years or you know,
something to that effect, but Chris played. Yeah, I played
football in soccer when we were kids. I remember playing
soccer and football. I played from fifth grade to ninth grade,
and then I stopped and was more interested in other things.

(35:53):
You know. I had two really good friends and some
other friends, but like, the three of us were really
close and we would do everything together, you know, that
kind of thing, always staying at each other's houses and
doing stuff. And then we had a broader group of
friends outside of that. And one of my friends lived
right up the street from me. So it was, you know,

(36:16):
it was easy just to walk over every day. Chris
had a ton of friends, and you know, he was
more out there, but I was more you know, I
was a little shyer, you know what I mean. I'm
a lot more shy than Chris was. And I had
my own issues to deal with because I was OCD
and no one really knew what that was and that time.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
So were you a good student, mediocre student? You're a
good student.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
If I wanted to be. I mean, you know, growing
up in the South and doing like going to public school.
I mean I went to thirteen schools and so like
in my whole you know, kindergarten to twelfth grade. So
it was you know, I would have falling out with

(37:05):
teachers or you know, it was a lot of times
it was boring and I would just be like Jesus,
this is so boring to me. And but if I
had to, like I you know, I remember like these
teachers would get mad at me and they're like, if
you if you don't get a hundred, you're we're going
to fail you and you're gonna have to repeat. And
I would get one hundred if I wanted, you know,

(37:27):
And because I'm like, the last thing I want to
do is go to this fucking school again and deal
with this. And so I could get good grades and
I could pass if I wanted, but most of the
time I was so bored I didn't. I didn't really,
I was so uninterested in what they in the way
that they were presenting these things to me.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Just if you move to the suburbs, Like when you're
in fourth or fifth grade, how do you go to
thirteen schools?

Speaker 2 (37:52):
Well, it was starting from kindergarten, it was one school,
then another, then you know, like first grade was when
we moved to Charlotte. So I went to first grade,
and then the second grade was a private school. Then
we moved back to Atlanta in the third grade, and
then moved out to East Cobb in the fourth grade.
And so then it was like I was in one

(38:14):
school for fourth and fifth grade. Then I went to
middle school, which was sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. Then
I went to high school. And when I went to
high school, I went to one school and then they
pulled me out and put me in private school, and
then I went to a boarding school, and then I
came back to another school, and so It's just it

(38:36):
was just kind of moving around within, you know. It
was just, you know, it was just sort of how
it happened, you know what I mean, which also created
a lot of like social issues because I was always
a new kid coming into school, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
Usually the new kids figure out how to fit in
and git along.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Though I can get along and fit in, but it
wasn't like having a group of friends that you grew
up with that you could deal with.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
So why did you go to boarding school?

Speaker 2 (39:12):
My dad? I went to my dad's boarding school. It
was just, you know, I got you know, my parents
wanted me to go there. So I went up there
to Darlington. It was in Rome, Georgia, and it was
where my dad and my godfather went and so it
was a great school and it was kind of cool.
But you know, I went there for a year and

(39:33):
then came back.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
And what about your brother do he go there too?

Speaker 2 (39:36):
He didn't go there. He went to a school because
Chris was dyslexic, so he had some learning issues, and
he went to the school called Brandon Hall, which was
more of like a tutorial school. There was one on
one teacher on one student or one teacher on two
students and they were designed to be able to deal

(39:56):
with those issues at that time, and I wound up
going to Brandon Hall two for a year as well.

Speaker 1 (40:12):
So tell me about the ocd.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
Uh. It's just something that I've always had and it
was pretty you know, pretty It's just extreme anxiety of
the world, you know. I you know, I feel energy
from people and from places, and I can and I've
always been able to feel it. And when I walk
into a room, the energy can be like crushing, where

(40:37):
it can be pleasant, you know, just kind of depends
on which room and where you're being in. The same
thing goes for people. There's certain people that when they
come around, their energy doesn't work with mine, and then
other times the energy works and it's great. And so
it's just it's just something I've had to deal with.
I mean, as I got older, I was able to

(40:58):
control it, and then now it's just kind of it's
very little. But as when I was a kid and
I didn't know what was going on, and my mom
tried to understand, and she tried to look into it
and and was helpful, you know, but ultimately, you know,
no one talked about it and no one knew much
about it, so it was kind of it was just

(41:21):
something I had to deal with.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
Well, do you have rituals, repetitions, you know, focus on things?

Speaker 2 (41:27):
Yeah, I used to weigh more and now it's now
there's certain things that I'll but not I don't have
any of those anymore. I don't have to like do
you know, repeated things and you know, touch surfaces or
do this or do that, you know. I kind of
I was able to get past.

Speaker 1 (41:45):
That and with help or you just outgrew it.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
I I I went to actually went with my first wife.
We went to a marriage counselor, and she and the
marriage counselor and this came up, and the marriage counselor
told me she just said, well, you know, follow it through,
like what's going to happen if this happens. And then

(42:13):
it just clicked with me, just just that simple thing
was like, Wow, you're right, She's like, you know, how
is this going to continue down the road? There is
an end? You know. I mean, because when I was
a kid, there was so much there was a lot
of pressure because you know, I was writing these songs.
I was the youngest in the band, and I remember writing,

(42:33):
you know, having to write a whole record, and you know,
because I was young, and because as the band got bigger,
Chris and I became more volatile towards each other because
everyone was buying for you know, you know, who's say
is going to be what or whatever, And there was
a lot of resentment growing and I would get panic attacks,
you know when I when I was like twenty two

(42:55):
or twenty three. You know, you come off a record
like Shake Your money Maker. I was nineteen when I
made it, sold seven million albums, and then all of
a sudden, you're supposed to make another record, and so
we just go in and do it without thinking about it.
But by the time we got to America, it was
like a thing. And I was and I was getting
married and making this record and all these things were

(43:19):
kind of hitting me at the same time. And that
was one hundred percent, I think, circling the center issue,
which was this OCD shit that I had to deal with.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
So when was the last time you had a panic attack?

Speaker 2 (43:34):
Well, my mom gave me some amazing advice one time
because she used to have them, and she just said,
there's a time limit, like the physical effects of a
panic attack last ninety seconds. And when I knew that
there was a time limit, then I was like, oh shit.
Logically I could look at that and say, this isn't forever.

(43:58):
And knowing that there was a time limit to it,
then I was able to kind of see when it
was coming or when they were coming, and then work
through it in a logical way. And then I haven't
had one since.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
You know, Okay, so you talk about your brother coming
home with these records. He's reading the credits, you're analyzing,
learning how to play all the parts. You remember what
some of those records were.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
I mean early on it was like you know, rim records,
the replacements, you know. I remember he had a David
Bowie record. I think it was like the greatest hits.
I think it was Change is One or something, and
there was a lot of and I love David Bowie
and I love those songs. And when I first heard Murmur,

(44:49):
just this sound of that record was so profound to me,
you know, it just kind of I remember hearing it
on this station in Atlanta. It was called ninety six Rock,
which played like and you know, like like you know,
skinnerd or whatever, but they're playing this and I heard
Radio for Europe and it was one of the coolest
sounding things I'd ever heard, and it just hit me.

(45:12):
And so I would listen to that record, you know,
a thousand times. You know, a lot of stuff like that,
Chronic Town. Then there were bands that came from California,
like the Rain Parade, which were part of this Paisley
underground movement that was out there. The Long Riders, the

(45:36):
Rain Parade, the Three o'clock, the Dream Syndicate. We were
way into you know, X. I loved X. I loved
the I mean, Billy Zoom is an amazing guitar player,
and the songs were deeper and cooler than some of
the punk rock that we first got into, like the
Dead Kennedy's or The Black Flag or that, and so

(45:58):
it was like the Clash and it became more like
rock and roll thing because the Clash and X and
these bands and the Ramones and you know, they were
more they were more rock and roll and they had
some swing, they had some difference and it wasn't just
hardcore punk. Yeah, So you know, that's kind of where
it started. My dad had the first thing I taught

(46:19):
myself how to play on guitar was a Dylan song.
It was Oxford Town and Dad had he had that
record at home, and I was and I just remember
picking it out and then I picked out a couple
of rim songs, and I picked out a couple of things,
and that's just that's just how it got started.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
Okay. Was the guitar the first instrument you played?

Speaker 2 (46:41):
Yeah? Yeah, And I started banging around on my dad's guitar.
He had this, He had this guitar that was a
it was an old it was nineteen fifty three Martin
d twenty eight wow or fifty four, and so I
just remember picking it up and listening and like picking
stuff out on the guitar, just picking it out. And

(47:03):
then Dad would be like, you know, he didn't want
us messing around with that guitar. So she was like,
all right, here's four chords or four or five chords.
He's showed me like ed AC and g and then
he showed me how to do harmonics, like this is
what you do to make a harmonic, and that was
about it. He was gregarious. He was great. I loved him,

(47:24):
but he did not have the patience to like sit
down and teach me more than that, so I had
to grow what you know. I never started playing guitar
really till I was fifteen, fourteen or fifteen, and so
I was late, you know, doing that, but I just
kept at it and I was and so, you know,
I took those five chords and the first thing I
started doing was writing songs. And so Chris got a

(47:50):
bass for Christmas, and I got a guitar for Christmas,
and then we got an amp to share and it
was a bass amp and that was kind of it.
And Chris, you know, he kind of played bass for
a little bit, but he went he decided to be
a singer, you know. So that's how that that's how
that worked.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
So what was the guitar you got?

Speaker 2 (48:12):
I got a Lotus. It was a I guess it
was a Japanese company. It was called Lotus, and it
was a strat copy and so it looked like a
stratocaster and we were into U two at the time,
and it was like the edge is black and white
strat that he had. I remember that. I was like,
oh wow, that's cool. It's like the Edges guitar. But
it was the name of the brand was Lotus, and

(48:32):
uh and there was a bit there was a punk
rock band in Atlanta called Neon Christ, and I slapped
a big Neon Christ sticker on it.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
So, okay, it came late fourteen or fifteen. Your dad
showed you a few chords. Did you ever take any lessons?

Speaker 2 (48:49):
No, I always most of the things I've done, I
kind of taught myself, you know, taught myself how to
ride a bike. I taught myself really how to swim.
I had a little bit of help, but it was
just like, you know, they would throw you in the
pool and like you got to deal with it. I
remember them pushing us off the diving board in Atlanta
at the YMCA, and Chris and I just having to

(49:11):
you know, make it, and so you just kind of
have to do what you have to do. So a
lot of those things I just taught myself and I
so I started writing songs pretty quickly, and you know,
we weren't much of a cover band. We were always
right off the bat, just writing our own stuff. And
one guy, you know, Chris, moved out when he was eighteen,

(49:35):
so he's two and a half years older than me.
I was still I was sixteen at the time. Maybe
I was fifteen, and there was a he lived with
Steve Gorman, our old drummer, and Steve and Spinn and
these other guys moved in with Chris into a house.
And one of the guys in Steve's band was called Mary.

(49:58):
My hope that one of the guys, his name is
James Hall. He was the singer. And James showed me
what open e with tuning was because I heard a
song and I was like, what is that? That's amazing,
you know, and he was like, oh, that's open tuning,
this open e and you showed it to me, and
it just sounded different to me. It just sounded so
different than even just someone strumming an e and what

(50:19):
you could do with it. And so I kind of
started with that and just ran with it.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
Okay, you started late and you come out full flowered
five years later. Were you just practicing all the time?
How'd you get so good? No?

Speaker 2 (50:36):
I'm you know, Chris and I hate we are the
worst at rehearsing where and where even now we're like, oh,
we got to rehearse for five days and but no,
I just I mean, I stuck with it. But I
loved building. It's just it's like building. It was building

(50:57):
a song. I love taking new approaches and kind of learning.
You know. Every time I would learn a new court
or a new approach, that would just be another piece.
There would be another word or another paragraph that I
could add to my language of what I was writing
or doing. We were playing shows.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
A little bit. You went to varying schools, but I'm
older than you. The Beatle era, we all saw the Beatles.
We all formed the band. Some people had downs, some
people didn't. But there were bands who played at the
school dances, the bar Mitzvas, whatever. What was your experience?
Were a lot of people in bands? Was it something like?

Speaker 2 (51:38):
So? Where we were and I think the only time
we ever really played out where we were was we
played a graduate, Chris's graduation party, and it didn't end well.
But we played Chris's graduation party, and that was really
the only time. Maybe another time at like a house
party out there that we played, but yeah, that was it.
Every other time. We kind of went straight to downtown

(52:01):
Atlanta and we started playing in the Atlanta music scene,
which was more of an alternative scene. There was a
lot of punk rock bands there, but there was a
lot of you know, RIM kicked the door open for
tons of bands in Atlanta that were part of that.
I mean Rim and the B fifty two's. I mean,
there was a ton of stuff in the South between

(52:21):
Nashville between Chapel Hill, where you had bands like Let's
Active and you know the DB's, and then you had
you know, Birmingham and Tuscaloosa and Columbia, South Carolina. So
there was a ton of bands in that area. And
Atlanta was the biggest city in the whole Southeast, so
a lot of those bands would come through and we

(52:42):
would play. But that's where we were, you know what
I mean. We started with bands like Driving and Crying
they were going at the same time, and a lot
of local bands, and so that's I would get in, like,
you know, I would finish with school when I by
the time I was sixteen, I had my own car,
so finished school in our drive sound check. So we

(53:02):
would be playing shows. We played shows and Athens. We
played shows, you know, all over even on weeknights, and
I would finish school, come home, get my guitar, drive
down to you know, to cab County or Atlanta or
wherever we were playing a show, and then I would
play the show, then come home by one in the morning,
and the wake up and go to school the next day.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
Okay, your brother moves out, he's living with other players.
At what point does it become a band or was
it already a band before that?

Speaker 2 (53:34):
You know, it was a band before that, because you know,
we started a band. It was like our cousin was
on drums and because he got a drum kit for Christmas,
and we got guitars and a bass and so we
just kind of started bashing around right off the bat.
But my cousin was playing soccer and his dad wanted

(53:56):
him to didn't want him to be in a rock band,
I guess. So we you know, we took it seriously
and he wasn't prepared to take it the way we
took it, I guess, And so we you know, started
just bringing in new people. We brought in a new
bass player, we brought in a drummer. So we started

(54:17):
moving forward like that, like we didn't there there was
never a time where Chris and I were like, let's
be in a band, let's do this. We just kind
of did it, you know what I mean. It was like,
all right, well he left, so let's get another guy
in here. And while we're at it, let's get this
bass player, this guy Keith Joyner who played bass with us.
He was a really good musician. And Jeff Sullivan from

(54:39):
Actually who went on to play with Driving Crying. He
was our drummer. And so we just started doing you know,
more and more shows, you know, talent shows or shows
at clubs. The first club show I ever played was
I was fifteen, and we played the day of Live
Aid and it was in Chattanoogam. We drove up there

(55:02):
and opened for this band from California called Yoh, And
you know, we just we packed up to station wagons
full of shit. We drove up there and brought some
friends and the only people that were in that building
were our friends. And so, you know, we kind of
started pretty quickly. You know.

Speaker 1 (55:22):
So you're saying you never played covers, It was always originals.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
We did play a couple of covers, so we did
play you know, we played a couple of covers, but
it wasn't like our mainstay, you know, like I'm trying, like,
we played a couple of velvet underground songs and what
else do we play? By the time Towards the end,

(55:51):
we were doing like Down in the Streets by the Stooges,
and then we would do we'd throw in like an
Aerosmith song. We did No No More.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
Actually, it's a fucking stellar No one.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
Ever talked about it.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
It's one of my favorite Aerosmith songs. But that was
a night George Jacolia saw us because we actually booked
some Uh. Chris was friends with this girl in Athens
named Velina and she was dating Jefferson Holt who was
managing RAM at the time, and Jefferson was starting a
record label. And also we had been dealing with A

(56:30):
and M Records at this all that this was all
going on at the same time. A friend of ours
who now owns this this I don't even know how
what you would describe it, but you know, have you
heard of thirty Tigers? Of course, yes. So our good
friend is David Massias, right, So Dave was our first manager.
He worked at the record bar in Atlanta and Chris

(56:55):
and it was at Lenox Mall, and so Chris and
I would go in there and Dave was like, I'm
a drummer. So we're like, well, we live in the
you know, we live out in the suburbs. You want
to come try out. He came out and he was horrible.
He was like, they actually had songs that I couldn't
even He's like, I couldn't even hold a beat. He's like,
all right, I'm not good, but I'll be your manager.

(57:15):
We're like all right, man, you know, like whatever, we
liked Dave. He was a great guy, and so Dave
was like he was really supportive and cool. So he's like,
here's what I want you to do. I want you
to go make a demo. You have these songs. I
really like them. Let's see what we can do. So
he kind of he booked us. He started booking us
shows in Atlanta, and he booked us a studio session

(57:36):
at this guy's house somewhere in like I don't even.
It was like Decater, Georgia or something, and this guy
in the basement had his own studio, and so we
went in there. We recorded maybe four or five songs,
and Dave was like, you know, I'm just going to
send him out and see what happened. So he sent
him to A and M Records, and he sent and
one of them made its way to this guy named

(57:58):
Aaron Jacovis. I don't know if you remember that. Aaron was.
So Aaron was an A and R guy at A
and M, and he was like you know, he called
Dave back. He's like, yeah, I like what I hear.
Let's try to get him to do some demos or whatever.
So he paid for us to do demos, Like was
I guess it was like a technically a developmental deal

(58:20):
with A and M. So we had two sessions of
demos for A and M. And we did them in Boone,
North Carolina, at this guy's house. His name was Steve
Grombach and he was the producer of the third Rain
Parade record, Crashing Dream, and so we were excited because

(58:42):
we loved Drain Parade. We're like, I can't believe we're
working with this guy. So we drove up there and
did some stuff and we made Yeah, we did two
demos with A and M. And they were cool and
Aaron was kind of cool. And then he lost interest
and we don't know why. He just kind of stopped
calling and it just didn't happen. So that's when Jefferson

(59:03):
got involved. And Jefferson was like, well, I have a show.
He was booking a show for something up north. He's like,
you guys want to do the show? And I think
it was a band called Will and the Bushman and
it was a It was at a club called Drums
in New York, and so we were like, all right,
you know, we'll go check it out. Of course, you know,

(59:25):
we were kids. We were excited to go. So we
drove up to New York and the show was in.
There was a show in d C. There was a
show in I think it was d C, New York
and Boston. If I could be convoluting two timelines, but
I think that was it. And so we went up there.

(59:46):
We played our set, and that set in particular we
played I think it was down in the Street or
it was nineteen sixty nine, but we played that. We
played no More and More, and we played our songs
and we finished, and I remember I was sitting out
in the audience and there wasn't much of an audience,
and George was sitting right next to me, and he

(01:00:08):
seemed so much older than me, you know, he was,
he was only like maybe five years older than me.
But I was like, man, who's this old guy staring
at me? You know, and he was like, hey, man,
that was pretty good. I'm like thanks, and he's like,
I'm George. And we met him and started hanging out.
And he was an A and R for A and
M Records on the East Coast, so he was in

(01:00:28):
the New York office and he had heard of us.
He said he was in Atlanta and asked some people
around if there was some good, you know bands, and
someone had said us, and so he wanted to come
see us in New York. So he came down and
he really liked our covers. He's like, that's really cool
that you did No More, No More in that iggy song,
But I like your other stuff and so it was

(01:00:50):
just it kind of kicked everything off, you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Know, before you get there. Once Chris is out of
the house and you talk about this era of going
to school and then playing at night. How much did

(01:01:12):
you gig? And since you're playing all originals, where are
you playing? Are you making any money? What's happening in
that period?

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
So there's no money, I mean maybe fifty bucks, one
hundred bucks tops, you know, and but we're playing, you know,
like we would drive up there. There was a club
in Atlanta called the Cotton Club, which we remember we
opened for Alex children there one time, which was pretty amazing.
But that was a local club that we played a lot.
There was a club called the White Dot. There was

(01:01:45):
a club called The Point. There was a club on
Ponce de Leon that we one of the first shows
we ever played, like you know, second or third like
professional shows opening for like Larry T and The Now
Explosion and that was on Punts and I can't remember
what this celebrity club, that's what it was. So there

(01:02:06):
was a ton of clubs in Atlanta that bands would
go play and they would play original music. But we
I mean as far as money goes, we would make
fifty bucks or one hundred bucks tops the Dugout, which
was near Emory. But you know, because of the South
and the way it was, we could drive up to Athens.
We played the forty Wok Club, and we would play

(01:02:26):
the Uptown Lounge and there was another club there called
the Rockfish that we played. We would drive up to Charlotte.
We would drive to Columbia. There was a place called
Rockefellers in Columbia. There was another place. There was a
place in Jacksonville. Man, what the fuck was the name
of that place. Einstein at Gogo play in Tuscaloosa a

(01:02:47):
lot playing Birmingham, and Birmingham was a couple of hours away,
so we could go play there. So we built a
network of shows. We could go play and do you know,
either our own shows on a Tuesday night for the door,
you know, or we could go you know, open for
someone and get a hundred bucks here or there.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
It's hard to win over an audience without a record
playing original material live. I mean, did you have any fans?
What was going on?

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
I mean in Atlanta people would show up, you know,
there was a there was you know, it was harder
to get people. Maybe Athens we had some friends, you know,
but for the most part it was hard for people.
It was hard to get people to show up. But
we kept at it. You know, we all loved doing

(01:03:38):
what we were doing and none of that really mattered
to us, you know, we were just having fun.

Speaker 1 (01:03:44):
And how often would you play?

Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
We would probably I mean we got to a point
where we'd probably do about four to five shows a month,
you know, we try to do one every week or
every at least every two weeks.

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
Okay, from the time that you reference your first professional
gig till you're sitting next to George Draculius. How long
a period of time is that?

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
It wasn't that long because I don't think I was
old enough to drive. Maybe I just turned sixteen when
we went to New York, because I remember driving the
van and I took a right the wrong turn, and

(01:04:32):
I wound up on the access road on the fifty
ninth Street bridge and there's no rail right there, and
they're they're like, oh my god, and like we're stuck,
and you know, I'm just like trying to stay away
from the fucking falling into the river. So I remember
driving up there, So I was probably sixteen, So maybe

(01:04:54):
it was a year.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
Okay, when was the dream to me? Was it from
day one? Or was this a lark and all of
a sudden you got a reaction? What was going through
your head?

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
It was more of a lark and we got a
reaction for me, I mean. But also, like unlike most
of the things in my life, I enjoyed the process.
I was more interesting, I mean, And that's what happens
when you're young. You know, the process is more fun
than the end. You know, you're not looking to an

(01:05:30):
end to a means to an end. You're loving the process.
And like every time we would go out into the
world and every time we would play one of these shows,
it was always different. It was always cool, it always
you know, and it shifted like that. And so the ride,
the journey was what was amazing. And so we never

(01:05:52):
never really I mean, I think everyone was like, oh man,
it would be great to be in a huge band,
but I don't think any one thought about it like that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
You know. So you're sitting next to George. What happens next?

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
So George, you know, introduced himself and George is. We
love George. I mean, he's such a charming, hilarious person.
He kind of became our I mean, he really did
become our mentor you know, he took us in. He
was like, I like your band, I like what you're doing.
You know, you have ways to go, but I'm I'd
like to help you get there, you know, and he would.

(01:06:31):
And so we started. That's just basically when we started,
and you know, he was like this kind of came
up with a plan to sign us to A and M.
We needed some more songs, and so he's like, I
want you and Chris to go home and write, this
is what I want, you know. And so Chris and
I really took that. And the good thing about George

(01:06:51):
is that, you know, he let us figure it out ourselves.
He wasn't saying it wasn't the type of producer or
an R guy that would be like, you got to
write this kind of song and this is what you
need to do. But we would send him a song,
he'd be like, ah, that sounds good, keep at it,
you know, And that's good and bad and it's not

(01:07:15):
really bad. But for us at the time, it was
frustrating because we're like, well, what are we doing wrong.
It's like nothing, you just have to come to this
on your own. And so in that sense, it did
give us a work ethic to where we would just
constantly write and constantly write until we reached a level
where we where we you know, I mean, I kind

(01:07:36):
of remember the first song I wrote for Shake Your
Money Maker. That was on where she Talks to Angels,
and I was like seventeen and it was an open
E tuning and I wrote it and I knew something
different was there. And then one of the next songs
was Jealous again and I remember we were opening for

(01:07:58):
Driving and Crying in now Spille at the exit in
and they heard that song at sound checking there and
and their guitar player was like, holy shit, what is
that song? We're like, Oh, it was just one we
just wrote, you know what I mean, And you know,
Chris and I had just finished it, and so you
could kind of tell when the new stuff was coming
in and it was much better, you know. And that

(01:08:21):
was one hundred percent because of George telling us like,
that's really good. Keep trying, buddy, you know what I mean, Like,
that's that's cool, but you got to keep trying to
keep trying. And so we really, I think it helped
us hone our uh our writing skills. It helped us,
you know, learn a little bit of patients, although we're

(01:08:41):
not the most patient people. And it really it really
brought us to this place, you know, where we were
where we put in the hard work to make these
songs the best they could be.

Speaker 1 (01:08:50):
So from the time you meet George to the time
you sign a deal when you go in the studio,
how long a time is that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
So I met George when I was sixteen, I think
it was sixteen. By eighteen so in two years we
were making Shake Your Money Maker, we did a demo
session at the place we were going to record, where
we just went in and recorded all the framework of
all the songs, and then we were going to start

(01:09:20):
again in like March. I think it was March or
April when we started making the record, And so so
it was a couple of years, and we had a
couple of times where George would come down, you know,
because it wasn't like once we met him, we all
went home. We would talk to him every once in

(01:09:41):
a while, we'd write a song, we'd send it to him.
There wasn't a plan, and so it didn't really start
moving quickly until we got to let's say, eight songs
that he thought were worthy of putting our record. You know,
it's like, all right, these eight are cool. We need
a ballot, or we need this, or we need that,
or we would kind of you know, George. It was

(01:10:02):
George had this idea of doing hard to handle and
you know, and yeah, and and so those were the
kind of suggestions that he brought, you know. And I
think it was Chris that said, well, I don't want
to do an Otis redding. I'm not. You know, I'm
like twenty years old. I don't want to bust out
an otis writing song. But he said, what if you

(01:10:23):
do it like walk this way, you know what I mean,
like a more rock and roll version. So that's what
was cool with it. And as time went on and
as more songs went and that he liked and we
were moving towards something, that's when it started speeding up.
And so by the time I had like she Talks
to Angels, which was set, I was seventeen. So within
those two years is really you know, when we started

(01:10:45):
making the record.

Speaker 1 (01:10:47):
Well what point do you make a deal with Rick
Rubin and Death American.

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
We didn't sign a deal until after we made the record,
and you know, we never really saw any money until
after the record was done. Like Rick just kind of
paid for stuff, and but you know it was it
was real loose and not you know, but we trusted George,
you know what I mean, Like we just he was like,

(01:11:13):
let's go make a record. We're like, all right, great,
so we go in. We made this record. Took us
a month. It costs like seventy thousand dollars to make.
I remember because I was a kid and I was like, wow, you.

Speaker 1 (01:11:24):
Know, well, who was it George's seventy k who was paying?

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
No, it was Rick. But like George wouldn't buy you know,
there was no food, there was no strings, there was
no like the one thing they paid for. It was
like I had this telecaster and it needed it was
totally needed to be refretted, and George paid for that.
And that was about it, you know what I mean.

(01:11:48):
It was like nothing else. And so we would go
to you know, we would go there and we'd be like, man,
we're hungry, and George'd be like, here when everyone share
my big goal or whatever it was, or you know,
he would buy some fries and be like, everyone share
my frid like it wasn't you know which at the time,
we didn't care because it was funny, you know, like
we were just like whatever, we're making a record. But

(01:12:08):
the studio and all that was paid for by Rick.
I'm assuming, you know, we never really know what happened
with that. But and then you know, the record was finished.
We didn't have a manager yet, so then we had
started looking for management, you know what I mean, And
that's when we decided to you know, that's when the

(01:12:31):
late the contract came in and there was this attorney
in Atlanta who it wasn't great and he basically it
was a really shit deal and it was like Rick
owned a lot of stuff that he shouldn't have owned,
and we were getting paid nothing. And the guy was like, look,
this is the best you're going to get. You might
as well sign it, and you know, being teenagers, were like,

(01:12:54):
all right, you know, I guess we should sign it.
And you know, but we got out of that quickly.
We hired a manager that was that was able to
see and we found a way to renegotiate and get
all of it back.

Speaker 1 (01:13:10):
Was that before or after the record came out.

Speaker 2 (01:13:13):
It was after the record came out we had to
deal with the deal that we had. But then a
year into the tour, we discovered that, you know, as
the record was kind of taking off, Rick didn't pick
up the option for the second record and he just
forgot and so we were five million records sold by then,

(01:13:36):
and we were lying. And so our manager was like
because he went to him and good our manager went
to him in good faith and just said like, come on, man,
this is a shit deal. You know, this is a
shit deal. Let's make it right, you know what I mean, like,
let's let's let's make this right. And Rick was like, nope,
I'm not doing it. That's it. I'm not touching it.

(01:13:56):
And so a year in or maybe it was a
year or two, I can't remember the exact time. Whenever,
the time was that he was supposed to pick up
the option. Our manager was like, he didn't pick up
the option, so we're going to go and you know,
I'm going to give him one more chance. Maybe he
doesn't do it, then we're going to play hardball. And
that's what happened, and so we got everything back retroactively

(01:14:18):
signed a huge you know, it was it was like
along the lines of like a Celine Dion deal, which
is one of the biggest deals signed in the industry
at that time. And so it was a great deal
for us and it worked, and you know, so we
were able to reclaim a lot of this.

Speaker 1 (01:14:36):
Who was the manager and who was the lawyer at
that point.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
Our manager was a guy named Pete Angelus and our
lawyer was John Branca.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
Okay brinca obviously experienced Pete Angelus has all this history.
He's a wild character with David Lee Roth, how was
your experience with Pete?

Speaker 2 (01:14:56):
He you know Pete when we first started, like after
the record was done, we changed our name because we
made the record under mister Crow's Garden and that was
our more like jangly rimy kind of name that we liked.
And everyone agreed at the label, like you got to
change your name. Your your sound has changed, this is

(01:15:18):
a new thing. Let's do this, and you know, so
we kind of kicked things back and forth, and once
the record was done, the name was the Black Crows.
This is what it was going to be. We you know,
we were looking for managers and there were a couple
of guys out there that were interested, and one of
them was Rob Stewart's manager, and one of them was
Pete Angelis and we were talking to for a minute,

(01:15:44):
but I think he obviously he had his hands full
Peter Minch and Bernstein and then some smaller managers. There
was a guy in Atlanta that was interested, but we
just like Pete, you know, like he flew down to Atlanta,
he came to see us. We did a show. He

(01:16:04):
set up a show for us, and like we gave
away free alcohol and like twelve people showed. It was
like and we were you know, Chris and I were like, man,
only you know, can't even give away tickets or whatever,
and so but it was cool. He was there, he
got to see it, and we just really liked him
as a person personally. But I remember us always saying like, man,

(01:16:27):
we're not David ly Roth and that whole thing is
not us and that's not anything that we want. He goes, no,
that's Dave. I understand that this is you. I totally
get it. And so, you know, but yeah, he was
He was smart, and he had a vision and we,
you know, we appreciated his vision. And that's who he chose.

Speaker 1 (01:16:46):
And how long did he last?

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):
He was our manager for like twenty four years?

Speaker 1 (01:16:53):
Okay, how long after the album is finished is it released?

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):
So we finished in the summer of eighty nine and
it came out in March of ninety.

Speaker 1 (01:17:07):
What transpires in those six months and what happens in
terms of the band working Once the record comes out.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
We start doing more shows. We now were signed to
a label, we have a record, and so we can
start doing more and more. You know, we have the
opportunity to do more stuff. And we started opening for
bigger bands. I remember we played with the Red Hot
Chili Peppers in Atlanta at the Fox. When they were
playing there, we played with this band that was they

(01:17:41):
were like an indie band at the time, like a
college band called the Rave Ups. No, it wasn't the
Rave Ups. I can't remember the name of the band,
but we opened for them as Charlotte. So we started
getting more and more shows like that. There was a
band in Atlanta called the swimming Pool Cues and so
I remember playing with them one New Year, so we
would We started like adding and ramping up the amount

(01:18:03):
of shows we were playing, and we found a manager.
That's when we hired Pete. We hooked up with this
guy who worked for the Georgia Satellites. His name was Kevin,
and he let us rehearse in his basement because that's
where the satellites rehearsed. So I remember rehearsing down in

(01:18:24):
the basement and he was on tour and we became
and we were we paid the first month or so.
When he came home from tour, he was like, man,
I really like your band. I want to let you
rehearse for free. I love what you're doing. Or whatever,
and he became a friend of ours and he was
kind of cool, put us on some he helped book

(01:18:44):
us some shows too. Before this was all before we
hired Pete, because Pete probably wasn't hired until January, so
it was between the end of the record in January.
It was about five or six months that we did
for us. At the time, it felt like an eternity,
you know. But you know, you look back now, you're like, man,
that was nothing. And so, but you know, we kind

(01:19:09):
of used his house as a headquarters to talk to
these people, to talk to managers and to and we
asked his advice because he had been in the industry
and we thought he knew something and so, but it
turned out to bite us in the ass. The night
before we left, or the week before we left to
go on tour, his wife was pregnant. He didn't know

(01:19:29):
she was pregnant. He was going to be our tour manager,
and she gave birth unexpectedly all of a sudden. He's
a father, it's all. It's a whole story. She was
a larger woman, and I guess she didn't tell him
that she was pregnant. And then there was some drugs
involved and so whatever. But so she, you know, all

(01:19:54):
of a sudden he found himself as I'm a father,
and so he was going to be our tour manager,
but he's like, I can't. I have to stick with
the satellites because they're more solid for me. So he
let us go and that was cool, and then a
year later, when we hit a million records, he came
down to see us and started asking us for money
and then started writing threatening factxes, saying he's gonna you know,

(01:20:18):
we promised him something and we owe him this and
wants fifty thousand dollars and if we don't pay him,
it's going to get ugly, and just more and more.
It kind of ramped up, and then he wound up
suing us at the end of shaking money Maker for
like two point two million dollars or something. That's what
he was trying to sue us for.

Speaker 1 (01:20:36):
Gow did that end up?

Speaker 2 (01:20:38):
Well, he sued us and he lost, and we or No.
It was a it was kind of a hung jury,
and it was a weird scene because after the trial
you can interview the jury and see what the thinking was.
And apparently there was one guy that had convinced half
of the jury that he was going to sell a

(01:21:00):
book of the trial, and so he got half the
jury to sign on to his book by using, you know,
like a like some sort of napkin, which is what
the guy like, we wrote, we wrote about this guy,
you know, Kevin. We're like, you're one of us, Kevin,
you know all these things, and then he said that

(01:21:23):
and it was on literally on a napkin, and he
said that was a contract that promised him, you know,
seventeen percent of all proceeds from the record, Like we
were just saying, we're going to miss you, you know
what I mean, It was like that. And so but
this guy who was some finance guy on the jury
convinced he's like a school teacher, and a person that

(01:21:45):
worked for you know, Bell South at the time, which
was like a phone company, and someone that was like
a truck driver. He convinced them they were going to
make a lot of money. So they voted against us.
The other people are like, this guy's fucking crazy. He's
trying to take advantage of you. We see all this
that's going on. So it was a hung jury, and
instead of us going back to trial and giving the

(01:22:06):
attorneys another couple hundred thousand dollars. We just decided to settle,
and our manager Pete flew down and negotiated with them
and wound and finished it in a day, and it
was done and we never had to deal with it again.

Speaker 1 (01:22:26):
Okay, from the outside, it looks like an instant's success.
What was it like from the inside.

Speaker 2 (01:22:34):
From the inside, Yes, you're correct, it does look like
that from the outside. From the inside, I mean, just
by nature of being teen, I mean, you know, I
was still a teenager. It seemed to take forever. I mean,
not only was I a teenager, but most of it
I was still in high school.

Speaker 1 (01:22:50):
So you know, I was like, I'm actually referring to
when the record is finally released. Oh, it seemed like
it was successful instantly.

Speaker 2 (01:23:00):
Yeah, I mean, you know, we did two tours opening
for these club bands. One was called a junk one
was called Junkyard, and one was called MSG, which is
McAuley Shanker Group. And so McCauley Shanker Group was Michael
Shanker and another guy McCauley, who was a singer, and

(01:23:20):
you know, they would do clubs and Junkyard did clubs,
and so it was like two four. I think it
was like four or six week lags around the States,
just right back to back, and then we got Aerosmith
and Aerosmith was kind of the first arena shows, big
shows we were playing. And so right before Aerosmith, we
flew to Europe to do a quick stint our, first

(01:23:41):
time in Europe, came back to do Aerosmith, and it
was just kind of growing, but it was it was
growing steady, but it wasn't like it didn't feel like
an you know, it's basically a March to December where
we in December we hit a million records, the first million,
and so that's you know, nine months and so for

(01:24:02):
us and being on tour and how time moved back
then and how we were as kids because I was
I didn't turn twenty, so you know, you're dealing with
you know, you're dealing with this. It seems like a
long time, but it wasn't like painstaking because we're always
doing something. You know, it's Junkyard and then it's this

(01:24:23):
other band, and then it's Robert Plan you know, Aerosmith,
Robert plant Heart. Then we played we did a headline
club show, and then we played with Eazy Top, and
then we finally got to the point where we could
headline our own theaters because we got kicked off as
Easy Top and so, you know, and then once we
joined Easy Top in January, we were selling like two

(01:24:44):
hundred thousand albums a week and so it quickly went
from a million to three million albums like like that.
And then that's when it like that January is when
it just seemed to just launch, you know what I mean.
And that's when it kicked in and we're like, holy shit,
like this is a big deal.

Speaker 1 (01:25:00):
So how'd you cope with the success?

Speaker 2 (01:25:03):
Uh? You know, everyone, you know, when you're when you're
on tour, you're in a bubble. You know. Some people
call your bus a submarine, you know what I mean.
And so we're and and it's very insular. So the
world was changing around us, but we were still on

(01:25:23):
this one path. It didn't, you know. So when we
first did our first bunch of theater shows in America,
that felt like a big deal. We were on the
cover Rolling Stone. We got kicked off as Easy Top
because Chris was you know, ZZ was at the time
was sponsored by bud Light. No, it wasn't bud Light.

(01:25:45):
It was Miller Lte, and so, you know, Chris was
becoming slightly disillusioned with some of the older bands because
they were, you know, using backing tape or taking money
from corporations and and he's he's a romantic, so he
was like at the time, he was like, that's kind
of bullshit, you know, like, and so he would say

(01:26:08):
some things like we're brought to you by no one
or whatever it may be. And then ZZ, I mean
Miller Lte started getting up tight about what we were saying,
and so they started complaining to Bill Hamm, who was
Zz's manager. And Bill Hamm would come to us, started
coming to us and our manager and saying like, hey,

(01:26:28):
you need to tell your singer to watch his mouth
or whatever. And that was all Chris needed to make
sure he didn't watch his mouth. It would just he
would just go out and double down and randomly, We're
playing in Atlanta at the at the Omni. There's three
nights at the Omni, and we were doing it. It

(01:26:49):
was scheduled to be a like a big interview with
Rolling Stone, but it wasn't a cover. So they sent
David Frick down. So David was down there to do
this and we got That was the night we got
kicked off, and they came in and they're like, all right,
you know, you're off the you're off this tour. And

(01:27:10):
so we were like, all right, man, you know, and
it and then it was just big news. The next day,
was on the cover of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The
next day, you know, all of these things happened and
then and it was for you know, the reason, like
you know, Chris said, it's bullshit and I'm not gonna
I'm I don't work for Miller Light and fuck those

(01:27:31):
guys and blah blah blah blah blah, and it turned
into this thing. And so that then pushed us to
be on the cover Rolling Stone, and it pushed us
into this next level. And so you could kind of
tell at that moment that things were getting big, you know,
because it was constant, certain things were consequential. And then

(01:27:54):
the next and so we got kicked off as Easy Top,
and that's when we booked our whole summer headline theater
to Or with this band called Jellyfish opening for us,
which was an amazing band and we loved touring with them,
but we were playing you know, four or five thousand
seat places. We played the Santa Barbara County Bowl. You know,

(01:28:17):
we were playing these places and we're headlining, all of them
are selling out, and it was like shit, you know,
this is amazing. And then after that ended, we went
to Europe and we did Monsters of Rock and Stadiums
with ac DC and Metallica, which was phenomenal too, because

(01:28:37):
we're playing in front of one hundred thousand people a night.
We're going up there. I mean, although we were the
opening band or one of the opening bands, I can't
remember if we were first or second sometimes, but it
was like, you know, ACDC came over and they were like,
we love your band. It's proper rock and roll band.
And you know, we had played some shows with Aerosmith

(01:28:59):
and Metallica the summer, so we knew those guys and
and it was just this thing and it was like
fuck man. We played Amsterdam and Malcolm and Angus came
to see us at the Paradiso on a night off,
which we thought was really cool. And then we played
that show in Moscow. So there was that big show
in Moscow that where there was you know, a million

(01:29:19):
people that showed up to it. Was US a CDC Metallica,
I think Pantera was there, and it was right after
the fall of you know, communists basically, and so we
were flown over and that was kind of the pinnacle
of everything, you know, where it was just like things
were really amazing. And you know, it's always to me,

(01:29:42):
I always like and it to like climbing Mount Everest.
You know, we as a group of people over it.
Because that tour lasted eighteen months or twenty months and
three hundred and fifty shows and we just we just
climbed this mountain, you know what I mean, and together
and that was a really cool thing to be able
to do, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:30:03):
Okay, when did you see your first check?

Speaker 2 (01:30:09):
The first big check we got We signed a publishing
deal and that was a big check and that really
that really put a lot in perspective. So that was
about a year, maybe fourteen months into the tour.

Speaker 1 (01:30:27):
So when you got money first on the contract? Was
it just you and your brother forget the song, right,
I'm talking about the record deal? Was it just you
and your brother? Are all members of the band.

Speaker 2 (01:30:38):
It was all of us, Okay, I remember correctly.

Speaker 1 (01:30:43):
So when you get the first money, what do you
do with it?

Speaker 2 (01:30:51):
Well, we never got any money from Rick, and it
wasn't and we didn't and we were still we were
so unrecoup because we were taking so much, you know,
it was like tour support, all these different things, and
Rick had some interesting ways of accounting, so there was
a lot of stuff that was in there. It wasn't

(01:31:11):
until that publishing check that Chris and I got, we
each got one, that I really had a lot of
money in our pockets for the first time. And I
bought a house and a car, and he bought a house,
and that was kind of the first, you know, but
it was while I was on tour, you know what

(01:31:33):
I mean, because still at that time, I was flying
home and staying with my parents because I never really
moved out because I made the records when I was
so young and then been left, you know what I mean.
So getting my own house was a big deal. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:31:47):
Well, you make four records with Rick P. D Angelis,
we negotiated the contract with Brinka. Do you ever get
paid record royalties from Rick?

Speaker 2 (01:31:56):
Yeah, we did after that, especially retroactively, because once we
renegotiated and everything kind of came back, money started coming
in that was O.

Speaker 1 (01:32:06):
Okay. In terms of the royalties, In terms of the publishing,
do you still own that?

Speaker 2 (01:32:16):
Well, we get yeah, we get royalties from everything.

Speaker 1 (01:32:20):
Well, I guess that you were in an era the
last five seven years where people are selling their catalogs,
they're selling their publishing, they're selling their royalties. Is that
something you've ever done?

Speaker 2 (01:32:33):
No, I mean, I mean no one's talked to I mean,
we haven't really talked about it right now about that
because a lot of people are selling their stuff, but
you have not. No, we haven't sold it. Now.

Speaker 1 (01:32:46):
Okay, if you never worked again, do you get enough
money coming in from all this that you don't have
to work?

Speaker 2 (01:32:53):
I mean, yeah, we would have to make adjustments, but yeah,
we do. Well.

Speaker 1 (01:32:58):
Okay, So now let's go back. When do you start
thinking about and writing and recording the second album?

Speaker 2 (01:33:08):
Chris and I were writing songs. I mean, we wrote
maybe two or three albums worth the material during the
Shaker Moneymaker tour, and so you know, we're constantly writing,

(01:33:28):
and so there were two or three songs that we
had that wound up being on Southern Harmony. One was
my Morning Song. I remember writing that in Houston while
we were on tour with Jellyfish, and then I wrote
Thrown to My Pride. I remember playing Thorn in My
Pride in.

Speaker 1 (01:33:50):
Which is my favorite Black Rose song. I'll just leave
it at that.

Speaker 2 (01:33:53):
Oh well, thank you. I remember playing that in Dublin
one of the last shows. And then I wrote black
Moon Creeping at the sound check in at the County
Bowl in San Barbara. So we had those three songs,

(01:34:15):
and then but when we got to when it was
time to make that record, because we got home like
right around Halloween, like it was fat, I mean, you know,
like we finished. I think it was like a week
before Halloween, and George came out because we were going
to start writing the next record. We wanted to go
right in. We felt like we had all this newfound

(01:34:35):
power as a band, you know what I mean, like
playing three hundred and fifty shows straight, We're like firing
on all cylinders. We want to use that. So Chris
had bought his house. I had my house, so we
you know, Chris had a setup in his base in
his garage and it was just me and him and
I went over there. We wrote the rest of the

(01:34:57):
record in about three in about two to three days,
it was over the weekend. You know, George was there
and he was on the phone a lot, and so
I remember he was upstairs and Chris and I would
just be writing, like George's on the phone, you know,
so let's just write. And then at the end of
the weekend, George like, all right, let's get started, and
Chris and I were like, we're done. Like, you know,

(01:35:18):
we weren't going to let We weren't going to let pressure.
We weren't going to allow pressure to have any effect
on how we wrote that record. We were excited to
write it, we wanted and the songs were rocking and
it was we were really happy with what was coming out.

(01:35:39):
But we weren't going to be too precious about it.
We weren't going to like sit and try to, oh, well,
you know, we sold all these records, we need to
try to do that again. And where's this where's the
hard to handle, And where's this she talks to angels
or whatever. We were just like, man, fuck it, this
is a record we're going in. We're gonna make it,
and we made it in eight days. It took us
eight days to make that record, and most of the

(01:36:01):
takes were single takes. The first time we played it
to tape is when is the one that was in
and then the rest of them were second tape. There
were no you know, songs that took ten takes or
you know, we had to keep coming back to. It
was just we were in. We were firing on all cylinders.
It was it was done, and we were thrilled with

(01:36:21):
what it was.

Speaker 1 (01:36:21):
You know, Okay, that album goes double platinum, then the
sales start to decrease. To what degree does that bother
you it?

Speaker 2 (01:36:34):
You know, it debuted at one and it was poised
to but you know it was poised to go, you know,
but also at the time, at the end of Shaking
money Makers, when grunge came out, right, like Nirvana's first

(01:36:55):
record came out at the end of that record, So
there was hair metal, then there was and then for
a short year and then it was like Nirvana and
grunge came and so you know, we had about an
eighteen month period where you know, we kind of pushed
hair metal out of the way for something different, and

(01:37:16):
then this other thing came and so we were you know,
we were playing roots rock music, roots rock and roll music,
and also we chose our own path. Like again, we've
always been on our own path. When Some Harmony was
finished before it came out, Lars called me from Metallica

(01:37:39):
and was like they were getting you know, They're like,
we're doing the Stadium tour with Guns and Roses and
we want you to be on the tour with us,
and you know, and I was like, oh, wow, you
know that would be cool. But I said, I think
we're going to do our own thing, you know, we
want to do our own tour. And Lars was like, man,
you're making a mistake. You know. He was really cool,

(01:38:00):
he was always great, but he was like, I think
it would be really good for your career, you know,
to play in front of all these people. And but
you know, we were really dead set on doing our
own thing. And what we chose to do was three
or five nights at theaters. You know, we wanted to
go in. We opened three nights at this theater and
you know, in Minneapolis, and then played you know, five

(01:38:24):
nights at the Fox and five nights at the Beacon
in New York. And we we kind of took a
different approach and a different route, you know, And so
I don't know, chicken or egg what came before then.
But as we're going off on our own and doing
our thing, and as the music industry is changing, we

(01:38:47):
make a Moorica, which is not a commercial record by
any means, you know, like and we weren't really trying
to make a commercial record again, like we were just
you know, we're always trying to push ourselves to write
better songs, Chris and I are always trying to push
ourselves to write better songs. And you know, another fifteen

(01:39:08):
or eighteen month tour for Southern Harmony and I pick
up a lot more tools than my tool belt, er
language that I can use in my writing. Chris is
you know, we're all pulling more life experience for us
to add to what we're writing about. But we wanted
to make like a we wanted to make a very

(01:39:29):
specific record, and we weren't. You know, it was a
much more like our songwriting became more sophisticated, came more emotional,
like deeper emotionally a heavier record, and Amorica is a
heavy record, and there's not a lot of room for

(01:39:50):
you know, there wasn't there wasn't much thought given to
the choruses or these types of things. We were just
making our record. We put our head down, just went
through and made this album.

Speaker 1 (01:40:02):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:40:03):
Oddly enough, Rick on that record took an interest, which
was really the first time he took an interest, and
was like, he came to us and said, Chris and Rich,
I think Descending is could be the best song you
guys have ever written. He said, the verse is absolutely gorgeous.
The musical piece is gorgeous. It just it needs a chorus.

(01:40:27):
And you know, he was like, I want to bring
someone in. I want someone to you know, what tools
can we give you to help you rewrite the chorus?
And we were punk rock back then. We were like,
you know, you know, this doesn't need a new chorus.
This is how we wrote it. This is what it is.
And he felt the same way about gone to the
first song on the record and he was like, that

(01:40:50):
just needs a chorus. It doesn't have one, you know,
And in that sense he was correct, you know, I mean,
from a commercial standpoint, he was correct. Those two songs
could have benefited from big choruses. And in my opinion,
Chris's verse, what he sings on the verse and Descending
is one of the lyrically and melodically is one of

(01:41:12):
the most beautiful things he's ever sung.

Speaker 1 (01:41:15):
How do you end up working with Wig and what's
the difference between working with him and George?

Speaker 2 (01:41:22):
Well, Jack, you know. So we made one record one
America and it was called Tall. And that's when this
is when Chris and I were really at odds and
there was a lot of you know, substances going around
with Chris and not with me, but with Chris, and
so there was then there was more ego, and there

(01:41:44):
was more weird stuff happening, and so he decided he
wanted to produce the record. I'm like, you're not producing me, Like,
I know what the fuck I'm doing. I don't need
you to produce me. And so we wound up making
the first record. Chris met this guy who was an engineer,

(01:42:07):
but I didn't, you know, And Chris conveyed everything he
wanted from a record to this guy without asking what
I wanted from the record, and I'm like, well, that's
not what I want, you know what I mean? And
so it was just a dirge. It was like a
fucking six or sex. It took seven months maybe in
the studio, and it was and so we made this record,

(01:42:30):
and at the end of it, we were just like,
it's not very good. It's just not good. We don't
I don't like it, you know. Even the other guys
in the band were like, yeah, you know, I think
it could have been better. Our manager was, you know,
like yeah, I don't think this is it. And after that,
Chris and I took some time. We got back together

(01:42:51):
and we were like, well, let's make a studio album.
I want something that sounds amazing in this in the sense,
you know, something that is like that audio files would
put on and listen and be like, man, this sounds
fucking you know. The sounds can be their own sort
of tapestry. And we felt really strongly about those two

(01:43:14):
Jellyfish records, especially Spilt Milk the second one, because we
love those guys they were our friends. But also those
records sounded unbelievable. And it was Jack Quig who did
that record, and so we reached out to him and
he came in and we made we kind of went
back in half or maybe seven out of however many

(01:43:36):
songs is on America and I wrote some more songs
and and then yeah, we went in and made a
Moorica and it did. It was one of those things
that sounds fucking stellar. It's an amazing sounding record. But again,
you know, Descending Gone could have been something else if

(01:43:57):
we had written, if we had focused on that, but
we weren't the right place to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:44:02):
How do you end up working with Jimmy Page.

Speaker 2 (01:44:07):
So America comes out, We do that, then we make
Three Snakes, and Three Snakes is kind of more of
a of a pathway into We wanted to make like
led Zeppelin three. The juxtaposition between like big drums and
acoustic guitars, like the sound and the presentation of led
Zeppelin three we loved. We're like, man, this is fucking great.

(01:44:29):
What if we do this?

Speaker 1 (01:44:30):
Do this?

Speaker 2 (01:44:31):
We made this record, but again, tickets, I mean, the
album sales continued to kind of plateau, and you know,
people at the label were getting up tight. Our manager
was kind of getting up tight. So we're like, we
need to make a rock and roll record and kind
of get back to our roots and see how this works.

(01:44:54):
So we hired Kevin Shirley, who had been working with Aerosmith.
We sign our manager was able to pull us away
from Rick and get us directly onto Columbia, and so
Rick wouldn't really we wouldn't. We didn't like Rick, and
we didn't We couldn't, you know, we wouldn't have to
deal with Rick anymore. So we signed with Columbia, do

(01:45:16):
this big thing, have a comeback and made this rock
and roll record, which is a great It is a
really good rock and roll record. There's choruses, it's exciting,
sounds good. We do a bunch of shows, do a
bunch of headline shows, and then we got a bunch
of Aerosmith stadium shows in Europe because they would do
stadiums in Europe. And in nineteen ninety we toured with

(01:45:41):
Robert Plant. He was one of one of the bands
we toured with in arenas and we loved Robert. Robert
was always so cool to us. Couldn't have been cooler person.
The next year on Southern Harmony, Robert was doing. We
were doing festivals and Robert was opening for us, which
was a little weird for us. I was like, wow,
this is and I remember we were playing three nights

(01:46:05):
at the Royal Albert Hall in London and Robert was like,
can I bring Jimmy down? We're like, fuck yeah. Of course,
you know, they were putting together Page Plant, and Robert
wanted Jimmy to come, and we were excited to have
him come. And it was Robert and Jimmy, Jimmy and
Ron Wood was there too, and we met Jimmy and
he couldn't have been cooler, and he loved the band

(01:46:26):
like that. I think that was the first time he'd
seen us, so he really loved the band. It was like, man,
you guys are great. We hung out with him and
he liked it so much and he was good. And
Jimmy was close with our friend Ross Halfin, who's a photographer,
and so we're like, well, Jimmy, were playing in Paris
in two days, if you want to come, And so
Jimmy came and him and Ross flew to Paris and

(01:46:48):
we were up there and you know, Chris had a
bunch of vinyl on the floor because we traveled with
this massive stereo in our in our dressing room, and
Chris went and bought a bunch of vinyl and they
would fly home with the stereo. And so Jimmy was
there looking through the virus like oh yeah, I love
this and this, and we really hit it off, and

(01:47:11):
so you know, we always kept in touch. And then
the next year the next record we played, you know,
the Albert Hall, and Jimmy came down again and we
just really hit it off in that way, and we
had done some shows with Page Plant, so we did
so the Amorica tour in the summer, we toured with
the Stones and Page Plant at the same time. So

(01:47:33):
in between playing with the Stones at we did three
nights at Wembley Stadium. We broke off and would go
do shows with the Page Plant in the UK and
then come back the next night play with with the Stones.
And it was like a magical, unbelievable summer of that.
And so we just really headed off and it was

(01:47:54):
always cool cut to by your side, by your side
comes out we're doing these shows with Aerosmith. Jimmy was
part of a he was part of a charity event
that he I guess set up with his wife at
the time, Hermione, who she was from Brazil and I
think it was called the Brazilian Children's Fund and he

(01:48:17):
did this thing every year at the Cafe de Perry
in London, and so he wanted us to be his band.
He's like, I want you guys, he goes, I've already
done it with Robert and I've done it with these people,
but I really want you to be my band. And
so we were so flattered and like, man, we would
love to first song we learned was like in My
Time of Dying, which was amazing, and you know, Jimmy

(01:48:39):
was like, what would you guys like to do? And
we chose to do like ten Years Gone and you know, yeah,
cool stuff, and so we were so excited and then
we got we learned our parts in New York and
got everything together and then we got together with him
before the event at this place called No Me's and
it was just something that was so it just felt right.

(01:49:00):
You know. It's like when you play with someone that
sound that is like, oh shit, you know, that just
sounds like they've been in your band forever or you've
been in their band forever, whatever it is. And it
was so natural and so cool. And while we were
doing it, our manager, actually Pete at the time, said

(01:49:21):
we should do this, like let's you know, this would
be cool to do. Let's do a couple of shows,
and he approached Jimmy and Jimmy was like, man, I
would love to do that, that's great, So he put
you know, I think it was like three shows in
New York, one show in Boston, wanted Detroit, and in
to in La at the Greek, and so we just

(01:49:41):
kind of booked these shows and said, let's see how
it goes. And it was the most fun some of
the coolest shit we've ever done, you know what I mean,
Like all these people showed up in New York. The
excitement was so palpable, like you could feel it in
the dressing room. You know. We played the Roseland Ballroom

(01:50:02):
three nights and it was like a small place. It's
like four thousand seats and you think about those people
getting in to see that thing, and what's it going
to be like you just felt it. And Amed Urnaguet
was there and all these people came out of the
out of the you know, the woodwork to see it.
It was something that was amazing. Joe Perry jam with

(01:50:23):
us in Boston, you know, just such a fucking cool
thing to do.

Speaker 1 (01:50:29):
Okay, in two thousand and one, you do the Brotherly
Love Tour with Oasis and Black Crows. I saw it
at the Greek. I think you guys closed I had
seen Oasis at the Whiskey. Oasis were long in the
tooth at that point in time. What did you think

(01:50:51):
when Oasis came back last year and sold stadiums in
America forgetting?

Speaker 2 (01:50:57):
I was shocked, Like, are you fucking kidding me? I mean,
I was happy for them. I love those guys, you know,
but I was like, I mean, because the last time
I saw them in America before they split up, they
were doing theaters, you know, they never got to that
level in the States, and then all of a sudden,
they're doing fucking stadiums in LA, Chicago and New York.

(01:51:21):
I was I was like, oh my god, this is crazy.
Chris saw a couple of the shows. I think I
think he saw New York and maybe La or London.
I can't remember.

Speaker 1 (01:51:39):
Okay, you and your brother get back together before COVID.
There's a lot of excitement. There's a little bit of backlash.
I'm gonna ask you for it. Some people say, hey,
you did it for the money. What would you say
to them?

Speaker 2 (01:51:55):
You know, I mean, everyone's gonna have their take, you
know the fact that we didn't. You know, there's two
a band. Being in a band is like being in
a marriage or being in a family. There's a family
dynamic that surrounds every band, and our family band dynamic

(01:52:16):
was fucking toxic, and it was toxic from the moment
we started seeing success is when infighting started happening and
all this shit. You know, our old drummer had said
a couple of times, like the scariest thing to all
of us in the band is when you and Chris
get along, because we can't, you know, because there's no
stopping and a lot of and there was a lot

(01:52:37):
of that attitude there, and so there was a lot
of there's a lot of push to keep Chris and
I separate, to divide and conquer, to to push what
I call little pettige power agendas that people wanted to
push instead of looking at Chris and I getting along
as something that's a positive for everyone. And so when

(01:53:00):
we got back together, we talked about it. I mean,
what most people don't understand is we got offered tours
every year that we were broken up, you know what
I mean, like there we could have toured anytime, but
at this time and moment, we you know, Chris and
I had been out on our own. We think it
was eight or nine years apart, and we you know,

(01:53:23):
decided that it was something that was important to us
and the way the way we did it was going
to have to be a different way. And I'm like,
I don't want to do this. If we're going to
just start the same bullshit, if we're going to fight
and it's going to be this and there's going to
be you know, pettiness and people trying to divide us.

(01:53:45):
I said, I'm not going to fucking do it. I
don't want to do it. And he said the same thing,
and I and we both agreed that like the only
way to keep it positive is to bring in new people,
is to bring in new band members and bring in
new management and kindind of start over where it's established
that we that this is where everything comes from, and

(01:54:05):
we need to just get and for Christ andize relationship
and for the relationship of the band and for the
and for moving forward. This is how we need to
do it. And so that's what we did.

Speaker 1 (01:54:16):
Before we get back to the Black Crows, I saw
you as one of the guitarist with Howard Lease in
what was called Bad Company Phenomenal Show, and you were great,
But how do you end up playing in that situation.

Speaker 2 (01:54:35):
There was a couple of years ago there was a
tribute to Jimmy Page from the Experience Hendricks Project and
I had done. After the Crows split up, I was
doing my solo stuff and I got asked to do

(01:54:56):
this Jimmy Hendricks tour and it was it was something
I'd never done. I'm like, oh, I've never done anything
like that. I've always been in my own band. I've
always been kind of safe and protected in my own band.
So I was like, oh wow, trying to challenge myself.
And so I went out and did that and everyone
was so cool. Jamie, you couldn't have been cooler. And

(01:55:17):
this guy, John McDermott, who runs or manages the Hendricks catalog,
was out on that tour and he was one of
the people that wanted me to be involved, and so
he wound up helping me out, you know, because I
had a manager and it wasn't panning out, and so
I asked for his help and he was like, oh, yeah,

(01:55:37):
I can help you out. So he helped put together
a couple of things, and one of the things he
put together was this tribute to Jimmy. I mean, that
guy knows everyone, but Bad Company's manager asked him if
I would play on a couple of things with Bad Company,
and so I'm like four, because they were doing at

(01:55:59):
this experience Hendrick's thing. They were doing what was the
name of that band that he was in with Jimmy
Radioactive and uh get Satisfaction Guaranteed the Firm.

Speaker 1 (01:56:16):
Those were the two best songs.

Speaker 2 (01:56:18):
Yeah, So I was like, yeah, sure, you know, I'll play.
I don't care. That'd be cool, you know. And so
I kind of flew there and played with them and
it was cool, you know, and that was it. And
then about maybe a couple of months later, they called
me and said, Mick Rauss can't do the American leg

(01:56:40):
and we were just they were just wondering if you'd
be up for filling in for six weeks, and I said, yeah,
of course, that would be amazing. I mean I love Free,
I mean Free is an amazing band, and I love
Simon and Andy Frasier, you know, and Paul's amazing, and
so I was like fuck yeah, and I just I
did it because I thought we'd play Free songs at soundcheck,

(01:57:04):
you know. But but it was cool and I went
and did it, and you know, Paul sounded amazing. Simon
sounded great. It was a cool thing to do, and
it was just six weeks and so I filled in
for Mick and then he came back, and then I
think is when he started having his you know, more
medical issues.

Speaker 1 (01:57:23):
Did you play any free songs in soundcheck?

Speaker 2 (01:57:26):
Yeah, we did a little bit. You know, I think
like Simon, because Howard was into it too. Howard love
free and he you know, I think he played mister
Big and you know Simon, but Paul wasn't having it.
He's like that man never told over here. And I
was like, all right, but I you know, I would
have done like I'll be creeping or you know, ride

(01:57:48):
on a pony or something. Would have been cool.

Speaker 1 (01:57:50):
Okay, So Black Groves gets back together, he amps up,
COVID happens. Okay, the novelty of Black Crows being back
together is over. It's been you know, seven years at
this point in time. Okay, So how do you see

(01:58:13):
Black Crows going forward in terms of, you know, what
you want on of it? It's completely you talk about
grunge coming in the early nineties, we're in an era
where no one has dominance. The Rolling Stones put on
a new album, it gets pressed very few people who
actually listen to it. What's your vision going forward?

Speaker 2 (01:58:36):
I mean, you know, we love playing, we love being
in the studio. We're going to do what we do,
and you know, that's it's kind of what we've always done.
We've always been We've always been outside what everyone else
does in the industry. We've never been part of any
any kind of movement. Like we were kind of our

(01:58:58):
own movement for two years from ninety to ninety two,
and then something else came, but we still existed consistently
throughout the world unto ourselves. And so I think we're
you know, just keep going as long as it's fun
and as long as we feel happy about what we're doing.
And you know, that's pretty much it.

Speaker 1 (01:59:18):
Do you care about the size of the audience, size
of the buildings you play in?

Speaker 2 (01:59:25):
You know, we're selling more tickets still to this day
than we ever did, you know, I mean consistently, we're
still selling a lot of tickets. We're still selling big
So I mean, it's it's cool. I mean, it's nice
to have people come see you. I mean, it feels
great when people come see you and they like what
you're doing.

Speaker 1 (01:59:47):
Okay, the album comes out, it's a completely different era
from nineteen ninety. Hey, do you care about reviews? Do
you care about the number of streams? And how much
what of this will people see in the new sets?

Speaker 2 (02:00:06):
Again, it's one of those things you make music because
you want people to like it and you want people
to stream it. But if they don't, then that's cool too,
you know what I mean. Like it is what it is.
At the end of the day, They're going to like
what they like or not like what they like. As
far as as like how many songs, we'll probably play

(02:00:29):
two or three songs a night, new songs from this record,
maybe a song from the last from Happiness Bastards, and
then a bunch of stuff from our old records, stuff
that from unreleased albums and covers and you know, so
we still change it up a bit, and we still
you know, change the set list every night. We still
add new songs in and make it dynamic, and that

(02:00:52):
makes it more interesting for us.

Speaker 1 (02:00:55):
Okay, there were some other things you've done that have
not been common. You've done it. You did a tour
that was another under play. You've also played nights where
you've played for a long time. You know, mixing it
up is one thing, but left to your own devices,
how do you like to do it?

Speaker 2 (02:01:19):
You know, left to our own device. I don't know.
We're always kind of on our own devices. But I think,
you know, I like changing songs every night. I like
playing where we play. I like I still like getting
on stage and having that band move like an engine,

(02:01:42):
Like everyone is moving and everyone is It's you know,
some people have likened it to like esp but we
all know where we're going. We're all writing. It's like
riding away. It's like everyone's writing this way. And that's
the magic when it hits and everyone's doing this thing,
and it's kind of and it can fall off the
rails at any time, and that's what makes it exciting
to me. You know, that's you know, I think being

(02:02:06):
older it made us realize that, you know, there are
people that want to hear she talks to Angels are
hard to handle our remedy every night, you know, so
we try to do that. You know, we try to
play those recognizable songs every night, but then we also
will add some cool, rare stuff, and we'll add some covers,
and we'll add these other things. So I kind of

(02:02:26):
feel like we have more of a balance now than
we used to.

Speaker 1 (02:02:30):
Now. When you broke it was the tail end of
the MTV rock era, but MTV was still extremely powerful
hip hop for his grunge. Then hip hop starts to
take over. Then it was like a floating party, a club.
I mean, you could even be simple about it, say
it's Sunset Strip, it's the Rainbow, etc. We live in

(02:02:53):
an era where everybody can connect via the Internet, but
you could live anywhere this point in time, is your
life primarily your family in the Black Rows? Or to
what degree are you hearing from other people? I'm more looking,
you know, what are you hearing? And how is it

(02:03:13):
different today as opposed to yesterday? And what do you
think caused that? Just the Internet or age?

Speaker 2 (02:03:22):
Yeah? For me, I mean, you know, my family is
where I spend most of my time when I'm away
from the Crows, because this is because I'm gone a lot,
and so this is where I want to be. And
but I do you know, we do experience things. We
go out and see bands and you know, see it

(02:03:45):
and do other things as well as far as what
the world is now versus what it used to be.
It's it's I I mean, it's kind of bizarre now.
I mean, there's a you know, back then, there was
a two formats that you could get your music out,

(02:04:08):
you know, radio and MTV, and it was pretty focused
and you knew that if you went out and toured
and you worked hard, you could pretty much get somewhere
if you worked at it for a while. You know, Now, man,
there's streaming, there's social media. You know, my son tells

(02:04:29):
me that everyone expects them to bring fans in and
that everyone expects that. So like that, you know, you
have to have x amount of social media people in
order to get booked or this or that or streamed
all this bullshit, and it just seems it seems bizarre
to me. As far as being in a band, it's
got to be really difficult because we grew up in

(02:04:52):
a totally different time. And then you have a bunch
of people now, the youth, they don't drink, they don't
want to go out, they want to sit at home
and watch Netflix or you know, do whatever they do
on their phones or computers or whatever. And so you're
competing with reality and with a virtual world, which is

(02:05:13):
really intense and kind of anti humans. It just seems
it seems the opposite of having human relations. And I
think maybe that's why the youth is having such a
hard time. Maybe that's why they have such anxiety. Maybe
because they weren't kind of forced to go out and
forge their way into the world and deal with failure

(02:05:36):
and deal with rejection and be okay with it and
try it again and try it again. You know, it's
a different way of looking at it. And I think that,
you know, I think that that's I mean, that's a shame.
I think there's a lot of there's a lot of
missing out on humanity right now, and what it means

(02:05:59):
to be human, or what it means to relate to humans,
and what it means to hear things that aren't perfection
or what is seems to be a perceived perfection. You know, music,
when you play it, when you write it, you know,
you get excited when a chorus is coming, you speed

(02:06:20):
up a little bit, then you kind of slow down.
When the verse comes, you reset. You know, there's a bridge,
you lean into it, you kind of reset after this,
depending on how it is. There's humans tend to you know,
the key is relative, a key of a song is relative.
Some people sing slightly flat, but it's part of the

(02:06:41):
charm of their voice. Some people sing a little sharp,
but it's part could be the part of a charm
of their voice. But what we've done with these tools
is we've eradicated the human element of making music. So
John Paul, you know John Bonham's you know, squeaky kick
drum sound and you know, since I've been loving you

(02:07:02):
would be extracted by AI because it's not part of
the song. The bleed of a horn part into a
drums would be extracted because it's not part of the song.
Or you know, everyone puts this music in a grid
and it has to be perfectly in time, and the
AI fixes it and all this shit, and at the

(02:07:22):
end of the day, it's like, man, that's that's what
music is. That's the magic. The human element of it
is the magic. That's the uniqueness of it. You know,
there's this song on Southern Harmony and Musical Companion one
of our records called sometimes Salvation and at the end

(02:07:44):
there's a circular chorus that keeps going around. And one time,
because Steve and I recorded it in the room and
I'm looking at him and we add a beat to it,
and then just by accident, but we were both together,
so we both do this thing, and you would look
at it and it's different. It's never been played that

(02:08:04):
way ever. Again, that's the one time it's been played
that way. But it sounds fucking great. We didn't try
to recreate it because we thought it would be a
little hokey to recreate it. But that's a piece of
magic that was caught in that moment, and that's what
makes that magical. And when you suck all of that
out and you take all the humanity out, and you
take the breath of humanity out of music, the music

(02:08:27):
that speeds up or slows down or does this or
does that, that's when it gets really kind of weird
and you start to look at this thing and you're like,
what are we doing? You know, what the human ears
meant to hear is the ear and the heart, Like
the music needs to hit you in the heart and
you need to be able to feel something from it.
And so you know, that's where a lot of this.

(02:08:51):
I do think technology in particular kind of took over
and has deadened the senses of what music as it can.

Speaker 1 (02:09:00):
Be finally you grew up there. You haven't spent all
your life there since. But what is different about Atlanta
as opposed to New York in LA What is different
about the South?

Speaker 2 (02:09:15):
The South, you know, we grew up and by osmosis
we were I mean, you know, the South is a
fascinating place, and it's a sensual place. The food is sensual,
the sounds are sensual. The weather, I mean, shit, you know,
in the summer it's fucking hot. It's this, it's that

(02:09:36):
you have seasons. But there's a culture in the South
that doesn't exist anywhere else in America. There's I don't
think there's really anywhere in America that has a specific
culture that that's like that the South does. And the
South culture is an amalgamation of all these different sort
of cultures that came together and created this whole thing

(02:09:57):
from New Orleans to Atlanta to the Appalachian Mountains and
everything kind of came And if you think about Southern
writers and Southern musicians and Southern painters and Southern filmmakers
and Southern and all of these things, there's a very
specific thread that kind of goes through it that makes
you feel a part of something something different, And there's

(02:10:19):
also a lot of shame down there, I mean from
the past. I mean, it's there's a there's a whole
paradoxical existence in the South. That's but it's amazing, you know,
you have all these elements and so you know, I mean,
if you think about it coming from it, even from Georgia,
you have Grand Parsons, you have ram, you have Little Richard,

(02:10:41):
you have Hotus Reading, you have you know, you have
the Almond Brothers. You know, you have the B fifty two's,
you know, you have bands like us, you have you know,
all of this music that comes from this one place,
you know, and then you expand that out into Alabama
and Mississippi and Louisiana and all the different types of

(02:11:03):
music and the type and just the rich tapestry of
all of this. Uh, you know, creativity that comes from
that place, and it's in the soil and it's in
the energy of the place. Uh. And it's just you know,
there's there's some but it's getting lost too, you know,
like it's it's it's kind of leveling out and changing

(02:11:26):
as well. But when we grew up there, at the
time we grew up that was palpable. You know, Rim
was just as much of a Southern band to me
as Skinnrid was, or you know, the Almond brothers or
whoever it may be that, but their vision of the
South was different. It was there was something really beautiful
about it, there was something tender about it, and there

(02:11:47):
was something incredibly artistic about it, but it was no
less southern. You know.

Speaker 1 (02:11:53):
Well, it's been amazing talking to you, Rich, because this
is gonna come out in a way that's going to
sound I'm like judgment, but I'm bringing up. Your brother
tends to eat up all the year, and therefore you
don't get to talk that much, which gives one the
impression that you're shy and you don't talk that much.

(02:12:14):
But you can talk and you're you're a very sharp guy.
I mean, listen some of the records you know, no More,
No More, ten years gone, and all these others. I
can talk to you for days. There's so much other stuff,
but we're gonna stop it here for now. Rich. I
want to thank you so much for taking this time
with my audience.

Speaker 2 (02:12:34):
Of course, thank you so much for having me on.
It was great talking to him.

Speaker 1 (02:12:37):
You bet till next time. This is Bob left six