Workingman's Hallelujahs And Bohemian Hymns: A tale of The Black Crowes today

 

By Dennis Cook

 

Record company suits have been trying to tell The Black Crowes what to do since they emerged in 1990.  They tried to tell them to make more records exactly like their debut Shake Your Moneymaker.  They tried to tell them to bring in professional songwriters to help them craft radio hits.  They tried to tell them to conform, to play the game like the rest of the monkeys in the rock industry's decaying zoo.  18 years on, they keep on keepin' on in their own sweet & sour way, releasing Warpaint, their seventh studio album, on their own label and moving further & further away from the codified standards of their profession by the day.  At the bottom it all lays the music and an almost vulgar sense of independence and need to be truthful to larger muses than record executives and passing musical trends.

 

"I'd like to think there's s some level of self-indulgence.  If there's any power in success it should be that.  It shouldn't be all the cliché things.  It should be this," says lead singer-songwriter Chris Robinson.  "This has always been a group that's run on its visceral connection to wherever it's going.  The hiatus years were fruitful for me - creatively, philosophically and metaphysically.  Putting the band back together had a certain level of excitement, but even there it was also an exercise in patience.  Everyone's older, everyone's trying to find their place again and see what it feels like.  Some people couldn't find their place over the last three years because they never gave up on what happened before.  Most people have a hard time accepting responsibility for what they're doing, whether it's a band, a business, a family, a divorce or whatever.  People want to blame those around them.  You have to stop and remember that no matter what I'm half involved in any relationship, and I'm only responsible for my perception of said relationship.  One of the reasons this music sounds the way it does is the result of that patience paying off.  We did truly wait until there was something really to get into.  And then you have to allow things to show themselves, and I think we really did."

 

Recorded at Allaire Studios in upstate New York with producer Paul Stacey, Warpaint resonates with all these deep emotional chords Chris mentions, anchored to a renewed sense of their core attributes and the undeniable mojo of new members guitarist Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi Allstars) and keyboardist Adam MacDougall.  With all eyes on them and expectations high for the first new material to emerge in seven years, the Crowes did nothing less than look inside and find themselves.

 

"In The Black Crowes sense, that's what I saw happen on that mountain near Woodstock.  There was nothing and suddenly there was something.  It was a magical moment where we all were one enough to pluck something very solid and timeless out of the ether," says bassist Sven Pipien.  "Even the band itself was surprised at how well it came together.  Even with all the problems that might have clouded the situation, the essence of the band was intact.  Once we were at Allaire in the studio and we started messing around, all pre-production and whatever concepts we had going in went out the window.  This new band emerged on its own in that control room."

 

Read the advance press for Warpaint and more often than not you'll find a litany of clichés that have followed the Crowes around for decades: an overt focus on their personal foibles and line-up changes, the brotherly sparring of The Kinks or Oasis, a slavish devotion to the Stones, Faces, et al.  It's a gross disservice to a band that's put in close to two decades in an industry that generally produces acts that don't make it past their third album or have any idea what to do with themselves on a stage. In a culture obsessed with slapping neat labels on things The Black Crowes are delightfully messy.  That's not to say what they do is a muddle, far from it, but they revel in smoothing contradictions, streamlining the strange and the commonplace into something that resonates on myriad levels.  For the many critics that view them through the lens of their cocky, youthful debut, there are whole lifetimes that have been lived in their music since then, and these backwards looking commentators are really the ones caught in the past.

 

Listen closely to their seven studio releases, not to mention the millions of miles of live tape, and you'll hear a band actively engaged with sound, stirringly aware of both the past and the present.  The music of The Black Crowes echoes in much ballyhooed contemporaries like My Morning Jacket, The Flaming Lips, Kings of Leon and countless others.  For a group supposedly mired in Stones riffs and classic soul motifs there's an awful lot of genre defying nuances.  They grab hunks of bohemian gospel, dirt road blues, freshly harvested psychedelia, uncut funk and tear-in-your-beer country, yet rarely in a way that feels derivative.  This ain't no smartass, post-modern exercise.  Their influences, which they regularly and openly acknowledge and celebrate, have settled into their musculature.  The Crowes live and breath this music in a way that resurrects the spirit and integrity of Hank Williams, Sly Stone, Muddy Waters, Otis Redding and other inarguable greats.  And they keep an ear bent towards modern gems like Devendra Banhart, Vetiver, Gary Louris (whose new solo record was produced by Chris) and others who make music from a place of passion that bypasses the usual drives towards celebrity, wealth and other worthless status markers.  For whatever one thinks of a particular tune or album, there's never a moment's doubt that these boys mean it down to their bones.

 

"We're filters.  We take all this outside stimuli into our brains, process it and it comes out in multiple ways.  We're musicians so it happens that way for us," says guitarist-singer-songwriter Rich Robinson.  "I think [Warpaint] is the culmination of everything we've done, but I think all the records are.  To me, there are sins in every record but it was the path we took.  Speculation on what we could have done or should have done seems pretty useless.  Everyone was pretty happy with the records when we made them.  We gave 'em all a shot.  Some are more popular than others but so what?"

 

In ways it's comforting, both personally and artistically, to see the Crowes a bit more settled than in the crazy days behind them.  There's still plenty of sparks but they don't derail things the way they have in the past, where passion and strong headedness sometimes beat down their better angels.

 

"We believed and we weren't kidding around.  When I look back over the band, we made mistakes but we obviously weren't afraid to screw up.  As long as you're learning from the mistakes that's fine. That's life.  When you have a dream and it comes true, it's great but it's different than you imagined. I thought when we got a record deal our lives would be magic (laughs).  We were adamant about not looking green because we were so green!  We didn't know how rock radio worked.  Rock radio couldn't play us enough in the early '90s," says drummer Steve Gorman.  "It was years before I looked back on the first two records, especially the first one, and realized that it's not the norm for our career to have big singles.  You go out the first time and start hitting home runs you think, 'Hey, this is easy!'  But, you realize you weren't actually playing that game.  Rugby and football look alike but they're different."

 

As one of the new tunes emphatically announces, the Crowes are ready to move it on down the line.  While it would be easy to stay mired in the personnel shakeups and mad drama of days past – and Lord knows there's many who insist on making that the focus with this band – there's palpable joy and purpose to what they're doing right here, right now.  On "Movin' On Down The Line," Chris declares, "Starting to feel the shine/ Starting to let go/ Now that we know/ It's time to move it on down the line."  Just a few minutes with everyone in this band will tell you he's speaking for the lot of them.

 

"That's so true.  We arrived (at this session) to find that everyone had the exact same mindset of 'I'm here, I'm part of this band, and I'm gonna be the best part of this band I can be.'  We all felt like brothers making this album," says Pipien.  "Luther and Adam almost seamlessly fit into this mold, which is not an easy mold to fit into.  It all came crashing together on that mountain at Allaire and we've been on fire ever since."

 

"The first song we cut was 'Move It On Down The Line,' and it was like, 'Wow.'  We woke up the next morning and wondered, 'Was that as good as we thought?'  Two days into this record, and I didn't even want to say it aloud but I was thinking, 'This is great!'  We've come at records from all these different angles and you can do all the work you want ahead of time, be on the same page, and still not have it click.  Everything lined up for a few weeks in the mountains in New York.  Everything just flowed and made sense to us," Gorman says.  "My favorite Black Crowes stuff is when we go somewhere, plug in and let 'er rip.  A lot of people say that but it's harder to do than you think it is.  Magic doesn't happen when you're wondering if it's happening.  It's only when you look back and see it.  For a couple of weeks it just flowed, and in no small part due to Paul Stacey.  I could spend six hours talking about my admiration for that guy.  He's a fan of the band and he's an insider.  He has a very strong sense of when we're at our best, and he never lost sight of that, even in the middle of it.  He stayed focused on our strengths, what is our natural wheelhouse and how to just stay in there.  It's great to make a record where you say there are no parameters, but the real trick is defining your parameters and making something great within them.  The thing I love about this record is when the songs went from a skeletal state to being fully fleshed out there was a sense in the room, every time, of, 'That's all it needs. We're already there.  We don't need to add another part.'  The songs just seemed to be there."

 

As instantly appealing as songs like "Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution" or "Evergreen" are, Warpaint isn't a record that opens up immediately.  There's a subtle sway to the 11 tracks that demand listeners simmer in their pot for a spell before the true flavor of the thing is revealed.

 

"That's sort of what we've always done, layers you can keep listening & listening to and keep discovering new things.  All my favorite records are that way," Rich says.  "The thing that you love about Led Zeppelin's IV or Exile On Main Street or any number of Beatles albums is you can put your own context into it, and it breeds creative thinking on your part about how these people made this music.  That generates energy in your brain, and it generates creativity and a connection to this music that you individually have."

 

The Crowes have always made music for ramblers and silk tongued gamblers but they've rarely packed the bindle more fully than Warpaint, which points to a brighter future for the band than many might have predicted after their travails and rocky relationship with radio and the recording industry.  Put bluntly, this latest chapter suggests these boys have gotten their shit together in perhaps an unprecedented way.  Chris, often the summarizing voice for the sextet, sings on "Whoa Mule":

 

Sometimes a road
Is rocky and hard
Full of dangers unrelenting
Just take great care
To follow your star
Let the good times come a'plenty

 

"I'm never for lack of a line or a word or an idea.  I just like it that way.  But, I don't think I've had an easier – well, easy isn't the right word – but I've never been in a place where the music flowed so freely for me before.  And the more you see, the more feel.  And the more you live, the more you lose, and the more you love (pauses).  It's all part of the machinery," says Chris.

 

"Part of it is - and maybe one of the big themes of the record - is the line in 'Whoa Mule' that goes, 'We're dirty but we're dreaming.'  That line is making a statement about how clean cut everything is," continues Chris.  "In an age in America where we're in a recession - even if they don't want to call it that - violence is on the rise, crystal meth is an epidemic, and fear & ignorance are the trance tools that are keeping everyone from realizing what's around them.  So, where are we going to go?  Within that, what we're putting out culturally is very clean and designed for promotion.  All we're getting culturally is what people find safe and secure enough to fit into this sort of fear manifesto.  Hey man, there's a lot of lil' groovy, semi-good looking guys playing very mellow music, and they call that hippie music.  Well, to some of us - and Ethan Miller (Howlin Rain, Comets On Fire) will comment on this – hippies were fucking wackos.  They weren't the ones really dropping out of society to build their own utopian ideal.  They were the real revolutionaries.  They wanted to take it to streets.  Just buy Guitar Army and look at the picture of hippies with bass guitars and machine guns.  Now, they would probably just throw you in jail for that kind of imagery.  We live in a place where no one cares about rock 'n' roll, no one cares about revolution, no one cares about their personal freedoms.  Well, they do but I'm making a cultural generalization, in terms of what we're getting from the media, from radio stations."

 

The intentions behind music matter and if one hopes their song will extend into days ahead instead of evaporating almost instantly there has to be some foundational integrity, an inherent belief that what you're doing has some measure of import, which imparts density and life to the music.  The Crowes possess this depth and longevity in spades.

 

"The music itself will tell you the difference.  Music is just as much a part of life as bread & wine.  The one example I often think of is Bach," observes Pipien.  "He had pieces commissioned by the church or court, which are much different than the ones he did from pure inspiration.  Those are the great ones and the commissioned ones are often just crap.  Still perfection because he's such a master but there's a lack of spirit, something a little bloodless."

 

For a rock band to even mention Bach may seem heretical to some given the general sense that rock 'n' roll is an intrinsically lesser art form than classical music.  But, the ability for just six guys to put across something with even part of the same gravitas and pathos using electricity, amplification and forthright execution is a powerful thing and part of the reason rock like the Crowes endures.

 

"It's rhythm based, which is an older form of music than melodic based music, going back to the Neolithic times and beyond, whereas melody, harmony and polyphony came much later," says Pipien.  "So, rock 'n' roll has a much older origin, a more primitive base, but melody and harmony as rock developed encompasses all music, be it classical European music or Indian Sufi music.  Everything has been sort of incorporated as the world grows smaller.  That's why rock 'n' roll has grown to encompass all music.  It's not really a proper assessment to call rock 'n' roll base, though it has those aspects.  It tickles the hip as well as the brain."

 

"Music has been with us since the dawn of humanity.  It's the reason for our consciousness, as it exists," adds Rich.  "Music and language coincided and helped our brains evolve.  Proto-humans, Neanderthal and earlier used music.  Religions are based on music.  It moves people but it's intangible.  You can't touch it, you can't smell it, you can't see it but you hear it and it goes directly into your brain and effects your emotions, as much or more than anything can.  We've gone so far into this realm of commerce and distraction nowadays that a sincere moment is almost unrecognizable by many people."

 

Warpaint and recent live performances by the band are suffused with sincerity.  That's not to say they've lost their sass or black wit but it's their heart nowadays that beats most strongly below the rhythm and rhyme.

 

"This (new) record reeks of the authenticity of our kind of rock 'n' roll.  We didn't look around and try to incorporate anything.  We'll still be dubbed retro even 20 years later, as if music journalists weren't around in the '80s when bands were doing the same fucking shit they're doing now.  The funny part of that is, typically, it just has nothing to do with our aesthetics," Chris says.  "There's pain on one bank and pleasure on the other, and you're going to bump into both of them if you stay in the flow.  But, you're gonna be stuck if you get caught on one or the other.  There's an arc of maturity, in terms of personal growth, with this band.  No matter how paranoid or dark I can get, I've always had to have a light at the end of the tunnel.  I've always loved the juxtaposition of light and dark.  Things like that have always interested me, and I guess are part of our style."

 

In the live experience, if everyone is pitching in – the band is doing what they're supposed to do and the audience is engaged and enthusiastic – there's something that happens that's akin to what many folks find in churches or temples.  This vibe is part & parcel of what makes The Black Crowes tick, and is a massive part of why their hardcore fans love them as they do.

 

"You find a purity of spirit there that hasn't been as discredited as some other avenues.  I remember being a kid in several cathedrals in Europe and just the magnificence and seeing the harmony that happens, without all the religious crap that happens later on [laughs].  I do think there's something like this in rock 'n' roll.  It's almost the definition of church with people getting together in communion," says Pipien.  "Obviously some days are better than others but when we do get it together it is church.  This is as much about spirit or God or whatever you want to call that higher sense of our existence as anything.  Names and titles don't matter.  That all just gets away from the point, which is the essence of union beyond our normal three-dimensional space."

 

"Chris would probably be more likely to think of it as conducting the experience but for me it's always been channeling," continues Pipien.  "There's this spirit world we channel.  I've always thought of music in this timeless sense and we tap into that.  I can't say that with the best stuff I've ever done that I can't truly say that I did it, I wrote it or I created it.  I just channeled it.  In some ways it already exists and it's for us to pluck it out of those spheres."

 

While a little highfalutin for some, this level of purpose and belief is precisely what differentiates the Crowes from the rest of the flock.  While not alone in rock's general wasteland, they shine as a beacon within a genre often dark as a blackbird at midnight.

 

"The whole move for me (joining the Crowes) I felt was potentially an important thing for rock 'n' roll, not just for me or my band or their band.  It feels like we have the potential to do something that rock 'n' roll needs," says Dickinson.  "It does feel like I've joined a gang.  It's part of that thing where you're trying to get the cut in the studio and everybody's working together.  It all comes back to the Allman Brothers thing of 'hittin' the note.'  You just gotta put your heads together and keep at it until you get it."

 

"I'm excited to see how it all builds.  We did the record so quickly, and I love it.  I love all the other records but this one really sounds like a band that's comfortable with what they do.  There were no click tracks, no tricks.  It was live and everything moves around and breathes like songs from a band like this are supposed to," comments MacDougall.

 

"Obviously in this day and age, things don't happen like they used to, where you first encountered a record through headphones or between two speakers, looking at the vinyl sleeve.  Those days are gone.  I was talking to Luther when we were up on the mountain, and we both wanted to just put down one great rock record for posterity's sake and see what happens," says Pipien.  "It's been the most fulfilling thing to be in this situation and have things develop even further than I could have imagined.  The way (Warpaint) came together made everyone feel like they're exactly where they're supposed to be."

 

"I know that Shake Your Moneymaker was a record that when it ended people said, 'What the hell was that?  I don't know.  Start it again!'  That's what you want.  When you sit down with Warpaint there's nothing to skip over.  If something feels like it's going out, it comes right back to where you want it.  I don't think you'll know where you're going but it always feels natural," says Gorman, who's proud of the band's ability to set its own course these days.  "That's the ultimate lesson of this album for The Black Crowes, if I can make such a ludicrous statement.  Great artists are above the normal pressures of this industry.  They figure out what the best vehicle for getting the music and keep on it.  If a guy from a label or radio people love it, that's a bonus, the icing.  It's not the goal.  The cake is what we're doing together when there's no one else around."

 

Without putting too fine a point on it, Warpaint is a defining moment for The Black Crowes.  It's a statement of purpose with a rollicking soundtrack, a philosophy built from the music up.  Take it or leave it, this is who they are and this road they're moving forward on.

 

"I think any creative endeavor should challenge the listener or the viewer or the reader to look at things from a different standpoint.  But, the creative culture in this country – like we've been saying for years – is a service industry that we've allowed because everyone wants to succeed," says Rich.  "The mold for success has been laid in every artistic field, and because people see gold before they see their work it's really weird.  They're like politicians.  They don't want to say anything or offend anyone.  This is a creative endeavor and audiences should either love it or hate it but they should have some reaction to it."

 

"I wanted to make sure it was organic, and that we'd be going with more takes with everyone playing (at once).  What you're hearing are actual performances from everybody on the day we recorded," offers Paul Stacey.  "When I listen to records today I don't really believe them.  It's like magazines that tell you about celebrities where everything's airbrushed and made up.  For this kind of rock 'n' roll, especially with The Black Crowes, what you hear should be what they are. Forget label worries and making singles for radio, I just wanted them to sound like The Black Crowes breathing and having fun and enjoying the way they play."

 

"At the end of the first year of us getting back together, when we first came to L.A. to play those five nights at the Henry Fonda, we'd been doing great business and everyone was happy.  So, the record companies started sniffing around like fuckin' swine on truffles," recalls Chris.  "It's hilarious because the stuff that starts coming back is like, 'The band is great.  Chris' voice is so powerful. It'd be great to get them in the room with some writers (laughs).'  Seriously.  How about this, 'We don’t want ya.  We don't need ya.  We appreciate the opportunity but we're not gonna take it.  Goodnight.'  That's being humble and sincere, too."

 

"We've only ever been interested in making a sound, in making our statement.  That's just the truth of the matter," concludes Chris.  "A lot of '80s bands were amazing, R.E.M. and U2, at finding a great place between art and commerce.  One of these days, I hope our albums are somehow inspirational to young bands.  Not just because they sound cool or they're fun to get high to but because they hear the cultural politics, too.  This is OUR band.  And the point of it, especially with record companies, is they're over there. It's us versus them.  That's the business part of it.  It seems like the more purity you try to keep in your art, the more they want to destroy you (laughs).  And I'm not even paranoid!  I don't think what we're doing is that important, in the least, but I do think we're the Cool Hand Luke of rock 'n' roll (laughs)."

BC Chris Q and A

 

As it's getting closer to Warpaint being out in the world are you getting excited about people hearing it?

 

Chris Robinson: Totally.  This was the first Black Crowes record in a long time I was super excited to play for my friends.  So, if that's the litmus test, then, of course.

 

There's a sense of excitement about this record, and the band in general, coming from you guys right now.  You can hear it the minute you put this record on.

 

Chris Robinson:  I think this is one record where everyone unanimously feels the power of the music, and it's different because the songs haven't been around for a couple years.  This is the first record kind of like Southern Harmony, in the sense that all the music was created and recorded in a short period of time, and it retains that kind of energy.

 

The longer I listen to Warpaint, the happier I am that you didn't include "Cold Boy Smile," "Magic Rooster Blues" or any of the other stuff that'd surfaced on the Brothers of a Feather tour and recent Crowes runs.  There's something really cool about encountering a record where you know absolutely nothing going in.

 

To me, that's always been where I'm most excited and enthusiastic.  So, I think that's part of what the energy is in there.

 

Every time I listen to it a different tune stands out as my favorite.  This morning it was "We Who See The Deep."

 

As a kid, that's how my favorite records felt.  I was talking the other day about how bands these days make records that are too long.  It's hard enough to get ten good songs, so why are we listening to 15?  It's because someone at a record company says you need more stuff. Maybe you should put out 10 good songs and if you come up with more later put out an EP.

 

Do you think some of the other stuff you recorded for the new album will surface eventually?

 

There's only three other songs. We only recorded 14 songs.  We definitely like those tunes.  One of them is a cover of a Joe South tune, "Hole In Your Soul" from the album Games People Play, which is a really good record.

 

His albums are pop but there's so much going on, so many layers.  When you say pop it's sometimes feels like a dirty word to some folks.

 

It is now.  It's become something so contrived and manipulated and weird.  There's some people, I guess, that are making interesting pop music, but no one's played them for me (laughs).  These days, pop is anything. It's Justin Timberlake or these chicks or whatever, but it used to be that Colin Blunstone (The Zombies) was a great pop artist.

 

The sense that I get listening to Warpaint, and talking to Rich, too, is this is definitely a new chapter in the Crowes story, that some sort of quantum shift has happened.  I may be wrong but…

 

…no, no, I agree.  My point about it would be is this has always been a group that's run on its visceral connection to wherever it's going.  The hiatus years were fruitful for me - creatively, philosophically and metaphysically.  So, I could come back with that kind of stuff.  And putting the band back together had a certain level of excitement, but even there it was also an exercise in patience.  Everyone's older, everyone's trying to find their place again and see what it feels like.  Some people couldn't find their place over the last three years because they never gave up on what happened before.  Most people have a hard time accepting responsibility for what they're doing, whether it's a band, a business, a family, a divorce or whatever.  People want to blame those around them.  You have to stop and remember that no matter what I'm half involved in any relationship, and I'm only responsible for my perception of said relationship.  One of the reasons this music sounds the way it does is the result of that patience paying off.  We did truly wait until there was something really to get into.  And then you have to allow things to show themselves, and I think we really did.

 

Patience is a great word for it.  People forget the craftsmanship of writing songs.  These new cuts feel like you got the tools out and made sure they were well built before putting them out there.

 

That's still my process.  Whenever we're not in the same place, Rich sends me pieces of music and I listen to them.  I work in the morning now.  I could make reference tapes on my little digital recorder but I don't do that.  I just sit and let the songs come.  I'm never for lack of a line or a word or an idea.  I just like it that way.  But, I don't think I've had an easier – well, easy isn't the right word – but I've never been in a place where the music flowed so freely for me before.

 

That's being engaged with the world.  You're going to be playing with language, playing with ways to describe the world if you're actively engaged with it.

 

And the more you see, the more feel.  And the more you live, the more you lose, and the more you love (pauses).  It's all part of the machinery.

 

There's so much life in these songs. I've even got choked up over a few of them.  "Locust Street" rarely fails to give me a little lump in the throat.

 

That's a little bit of our interest in country music and folk-rock.  There's a lot of Gram (Parsons) in that song.  The best thing about doing what I get to do is I can write about a street I remember when I was 20 years old and living in Atlanta or I can write about something I saw on the outskirts of Cologne.  There's nothing that says I have to keep all my imagery in a particular timeline or reference it.

 

You're not writing autobiography.

 

No, no, but it feels like my story, even when it's abstract.  But, it could be anybody's story.

 

You're trying to create a space that's both personal and universal and able to touch people.

 

Part of it is - and maybe one of the big themes of the record - is the line in "Whoa Mule" that goes, "We're dirty but we're dreaming."  That line is making a statement about how clean cut everything is.  In an age in America where we're in a recession - even if they don't want to call it that - violence is on the rise, crystal meth is an epidemic, and fear & ignorance are the trance tools that are keeping everyone from realizing what's around them.  So, where are we going to go?  Within that, what we're putting out culturally is very clean and designed for promotion.  All we're getting culturally is what people find safe and secure enough to fit into this sort of fear manifesto.  Hey man, there's a lot of lil' groovy, semi-good looking guys playing very mellow music, and they call that hippie music.  Well, to some of us - and Ethan Miller (Howlin Rain, Comets On Fire) will comment on this – hippies were fucking wackos.  They weren't ones really dropping out of society to build their own utopian ideal.  They were the real revolutionaries.  They wanted to take it to streets.

 

You couldn't find more hippie ideals than the MC5, and that's not a calm group of individuals.

 

Just buy Guitar Army and look at the picture of hippies with bass guitars and machine guns.  Now, they would probably just throw you in jail for that kind of imagery.  We live in a place where no one cares about rock 'n' roll, no one cares about revolution, no one cares about their personal freedoms.  Well, they do but I'm making a cultural generalization, in terms of what we're getting from the media, from radio stations.

 

I don't think you're completely off base because people have bought into the idea of giving up freedoms for the sake of safety.

 

How dangerous can our enemy be when everybody has access to the Olive Garden every night?  Go ahead, eat some shitty corporate poison food!

 

Have you worked up how your going to play the new songs live?

 

Rich and I played a couple of them for a little thing we did now that we have our own record company.  It's the best. I think that's the best idea ever.  We've been through a bunch of phases in the music industry, and now that it's an abandoned amusement park, a weird sci-fi movie, we decided to just do it ourselves.  I feel that's the ultimate squatter's rights take on the music business.

 

It's the perfect end of the road for a band like the Black Crowes.

 

And it's kinda fun.  The worst part of being in the music business is dealing with people that don't care or don't have any inclination to get know you or care about you and the trip you're on, except for how popular it is.  They could care less what a band sounds like.  They could care less what stuff you're going through that makes your sound.  We live in an age of music where people rarely talk about how a band sounds.  Even in our most commercial period, no one heard the Black Crowes' records and said, "Oh yeah, we'll do that."

 

I do think you have your acolytes but I don't think their primary aim is getting on radio.

 

Yeah, but for a time (we were on radio), and still you turn on football and hear "Hard To Handle."

 

Is that kind of haunting sometimes to encounter something you did almost 20 years ago?

 

To me, it's funny, and at the end of the day I'm always happy that somebody somewhere, somehow is going to get into Otis (Redding) through that.  Even if they think, "I hate that band but that song is cool," they may find out the Big O did it.  Otis Redding will make your time in this dimensional reality easier.

 

Amen.  That's always seemed one of the points of cover tunes in the Crowes, to point an arrow at the artists you're covering.

 

And to have everyone know where are heads are at when we're not in front of you making music.  I've always been obsessed with that.  Even the music we play before our concerts is always chosen for a reason.

 

It sets a mood.  There's continuity between the things you cover or lift up and the things you do in the Crowes.  Creating that space where things are overlapping has a weird, cool synergy.

 

Oh yeah, and it all fits into a weird tapestry somehow.

 

That sense of interwoven ideas plays into Warpaint on subliminal levels.

 

I was totally into it the second we got up there (Allaire Studios near Woodstock, New York).

 

We've talked about Allaire before but there's a strong focusing factor to the place because it's very isolated and you can't do anything but make music.

 

To me, it's everything, like that big arched room, like "We're in the temple, man. This is a holy place for us, so we should make some holy music."

 

You guys have that sort of respect for the process.  You're laying something in concrete.  It's a kind of heavy responsibility to make rock 'n' roll for people if you take it seriously.

 

How horrible would it be for the real hardcore people who've been on this trip with us if you didn't hear anything from us for a while and the new Black Crowes record came out and we all had short haircuts like Bon Jovi?  Or we'd hired Pharrell to do a fucking track?  It'd be so sad, wouldn't it?

 

It'd rip our hearts out.

 

It'd rip mine out!  What's really funny is at the end of the first year of us getting back together, when we first came to L.A. to play those five nights at the Henry Fonda, we'd been doing great business and everyone was happy.  So, the record companies started sniffing around like fuckin' swine on truffles," recalls Chris.  "It's hilarious because the stuff that starts coming back is like, 'The band is great.  Chris' voice is so powerful. It'd be great to get them in the room with some writers (laughs).'  Seriously.  How about this, 'We don’t want ya.  We don't need ya.  We appreciate the opportunity but we're not gonna take it.  Goodnight.'  That's being humble and sincere, too."

 

Talk about people missing the boat on what the Crowes are all about.

 

Yeah, but that's been the main theme of where we've been for many years with people.  It's not easy for them.  We never made it super super easy in that way.

 

I don't think this band has ever been interested in making product.

 

We've only ever been interested in making a sound, in making our statement.  That's just the truth of the matter.  A lot of '80s bands were amazing, R.E.M. and U2, at finding a great place between art and commerce.  One of these days, I hope our albums are somehow inspirational to young bands.  Not just because they sound cool or they're fun to get high to, but because they hear the cultural politics, too.  This is OUR band.  You hear all these kids say, "This is our band."  You know what?  If this is your band then even your manager has to be part of it.  And no one could be tighter than Pete Angelus and the Black Crowes.  It's been 19 years this year.  And the point of it, especially with record companies, is they're over there. It's us versus them.  That's the business part of it.  It seems like the more purity you try to keep in your art, the more they want to destroy you (laughs).  And I'm not even paranoid!  I don't think what we're doing is that important, in the least, but I do think we're the Cool Hand Luke of rock 'n' roll (laughs).

 

I think integrity is unnerving to the industry, as it exists now.

 

You know why?  People, in any corporate setting, are used to the game and the dance and the hierarchy.  My small forays into Taoist philosophy tell me that hierarchies don't mean anything to the natural order of things.  I'm gonna judge you on what you're putting out and who you are.  People look up to people with money, but acquiring money is hardly that interesting.

 

It's nice to have it but it matters even more how you got it.

 

In the true realms of bohemia, I like having champagne at The Ritz in Paris but I also like having a keg party in my friend's front yard in Topanga.  You know what I mean?  There's pain on one bank and pleasure on the other, and you're going to bump into both of them if you stay in the flow.  But, you're gonna be stuck if you get caught on one or the other.

 

We get taught very young that it's wonderful to be complacent, to get comfortable and stay in that one rut.

 

There's a certain sense of entitlement that's funny.  As a typically middle-class kid born in the mid-sixties, I don't understand that sense of entitlement.  We work.  In a Wal-Mart world, I like having our little mom-and-pop hardware store.

 

There's something to be said for handcrafting things.

 

This (new) record reeks of the authenticity of our kind of rock 'n' roll.  We didn't look around and try to incorporate anything.  We'll still be dubbed retro even 20 years later, as if music journalists weren't around in the '80s when bands were doing the same fucking shit they're doing now.  The funny part of that is, typically, it just has nothing to do with our aesthetics.

 

Rock builds on itself.  Sounding a bit like what's come before is natural.

 

Every other art form has, even when it deconstructs itself.  All major movements in painting reference something that came before.  Poetry is the same thing.  It's always building on top of each other, using that core of other stuff.

 

The retro tag has never fit the Black Crowes. Anyone who writes that can't have really listened to Amorica.

 

Especially that record, out of all of them.  At the time it came out it was height of the grunge trip but because we had long hair and bellbottoms and we didn't kiss anyone's ass, they wouldn't play us.

 

It's still such a strange, dark, very modern sounding record.

 

Even "Downtown Money Waster" isn't as rootsy sounding as "God's Got It" or "Walk Believer Walk," which is just a ferocious blues.  In the 19 years since Shake Your Moneymaker we've never played a blues like that on a record.  But, it's also not the real blues because we're a rock band.  And that's why it rocks (laughs).

 

For me, rock 'n' roll is the most encompassing way to say this music draws from anything – folk, jazz, blues, whatever.

 

That's the point of it.  It's even got one-up on jazz in that way.  If you're playing jazz you gotta play jazz…

 

…if you're playing country you play country.  Certain standards have to be adhered to, but with rock the lines are happily blurred.

 

Interview conducted by Dennis Cook on December 18, 2007.