Good Ol' Southern Arrogance
By Chris Morris
RIP Magazine
September, 1992
 

" To all you people over there playin' pool- fuck you!"

The site is Dupree's, an Atlanta pool room/bar, and the voice
is that of Mistuh Chris Robinson, lead lip of the Black Crowes,
chastising the eight-balls who are continuing to shoot as the band
plays at their album-release party.

The few chumps persisting in their games are missing the main
deal: an opportunity to watch the Crowes revel in the coming-out
for their new record, the archaically titled The Southern Harmony
and Musical Companion. Viewed from a vantage point ten feet from
the makeshift stage, the boys are smokin', whipping through such
new toons as "Sting Me," "Remedy" and the gospel-ized, insistently
dynamic "My Morning Song" with roadhouse energy.

Besides the new firepower supplied by guitarist Marc Ford and keyboard
maestro Eddie Hawrysch, a listener can't help being struck by the
ambition of the band's new songs and the anted-up soulfulness that's
found its way into the playing of rythym guitarist Rich Robinson,
bassist Johnny Colt and drummer Steve Gorman. And, as Mistuh Chris'
address to his distracted listeners makes plain, the Crowes' formidable,
capital-T 'Tude is still in full effect.

Flash back a couple of months to a wet, late-winter night. As a
deluge washes the streets outside Def American's Burbank offices,
Chris Robinson debuts Companion for me, handing me the song lyrics
page by page as the album blows up in my ears.

Clearly, I think to myself as the cassette unspools, my boys the
Crowes felt they had something to prove after a two-year run that
saw their debut, Shake Your Money Maker, climb into the Top Ten,
yield up hits like "Twice As Hard" and "Hard To Handle" and sell
three million copies. The new songs are sprawling, filled with
gospel-style vocalizing, by turns fierce and darkly reflective,
and often resolutely "uncommercial."

As Chris, sporting a wispy goatee and clad for the occasion in
a flowing silk shirt and patched bell-bottom jeans, quickly makes
clear to me, the Crowes were determined to make their second record
their own goddamn way.

We wanted to get in and show everyone, you know, fuck it, man," he
says in his customarily emphatic manner. "In an age where everyone
is so worried about demographics and marketing consultants- who the
flying fuck gives a shit about consultants? I don't give a fuck if
you play my record on Top 40 radio. I won't edit these songs for
Top 40 radio. Top 40 radio plays Marky Mark! You think this record
and my thoughts and feelings have anything to do with that?

"This record also, in a way, is saying, 'Hey, man, we really went
out of our way to the best of our abilities on this lost weekend to
pull it together and give you these songs that tell you what's going
on with us.'"

Before the Crowes could embark on their "lost weekend" in the studio
late last year, some changes were in order. The first involved the
replacement of the group's original lead guitarist, Jeff Cease. As
Chris explains it, his departure was precipitated by the band and its
axeman occupying virtually different planets, musically speaking.

"He just couldn't play- flat out," Chris says. "He just couldn't
play the way Johnny and Steve and Rich and I were. When you got on
the road, and when it started turning into that chugging down the
tracks, I think he maybe wanted to be sitting on couches and living
off people and having a good time playing in the clubs. It's really
cold of us, I guess, but it sort of turned into, there were the Black
Crowes, and there was this guy who traveled around with us and fiddled
around onstage. We really wanted someone who was going to add to the
vibe, 'cause we were creating a vibe, even with this fiddling."

Ultimately, the prime candidate to replace Cease was Marc Ford, who
developed his own incendiary style as the frontman for Burning Tree,
an L.A.-based group that opened several East Coast club shows for the
Crowes in late 1990.

Chris says, "I'd heard their albume and met Marc, actually, before
any of it. We'd met and hung. He basically kept the same hours,
whereas most of the musicians I'd met out here [in L.A.] didn't.
So I dug those guys. I was out here, and he had a gig with Burning
Tree. They rocked the house big. I was way into the record by then.
We were just friends for about a year and a half. then Jeff was-
whatever, no one really cared anymore- and we knew we had to find
someone.

"I loved Marc's playing. I happen to think he's a really gifted
guy, and he's the best. Who it came down to, though, is Rich, 'cause
the band does nothing without Rich. It comes to a grinding halt if
Rich doesn't say, 'Let's do this.' He said, 'Marc Ford is great. I
think he would sound great with what we're doing.' It's nice. Rich
doesn't have to cover that solo. He can be more expressive in what
he does, and that's write songs. That's why these songs sound much
more open to me and have more dimension. Rich really stepped out on
his own as a songwriter."

The arrival of keyboard man Eddie Hawrysch, a veteran of James Cotton's
and Albert Collins' blues bands, predated Marc's. He played with the
Crowes on their '91 cross-country trek.

Chris recalls, "I met him when we did those gigs at the Center Stage
[an Atlanta club] that Chuck [Leavell, of Rolling Stones and Allman
Brothers Band fame] played. I'd talked to Chuck and my friend Reeves
Babrels, from Tim Machine, and said we wanted to find someone. They
both recommended Eddie. He flew back down before the tour started,
did one rehearsal, and said, 'Let's go.' He's been on the road with
us ever since."

(Over lunch some time later, Eddie would tell me that the Crowes were
impressed by his performance during a brawl involving a certain bandmember
at an Atlanta strip joint, and Chris reputedly said, "If he can play as
good as he can fight, let's hire him.")

With the band lineup secure, the Crowes turned their attention to
planning the next record, which didn't turn out to be what they
originally intended.

"We had written an album on the road, basically; an album called
Souled-Out," Chris explains. "We were ready to go do it. We got off
the road [in late '91], and Rich and I got together and started songs,
and this record came out. We said, 'Fuck that other record; this is
the one we want to do.'"

The songs were written over the course of a couple of weekends and
recorded in a week of sessions, with the Crowes laying down much of it
dead live. but, I ask Chris, doesn't that method fly in the face of the
highly manicured productions of today?

"Highly manicured to us is the most choking, vile, depressing sort
thing there is," he responds, with no little heat. "In an industry
that's supposed to be based on emotion and creativity and spontaneity,
you can't really say that that's an overabundant thing. So many people
are so calculated and cautious that I really think greed is the
motivation, maybe. People play it so safe. You try lighting up a joint
in the record company. They'd toss you out on your ass and call the
cops on you. You pay the bills, yet the'll toss you out. It's fucked
up."

With more than a hint of his trademark cockiness, Chris adds that they
weren't really worried if this loosely recorded set put the noses of
their business associates, or anybody else for that matter, out of joint.

"With success, we understand one thing- that whether people respect
what we do or not, it doesn't matter, because we made people a lot of
money. They have to do what we say. That's how it's done in the
industry today. It's not done because everybody thinks you're good at
what you do. Now people are so jaded, and apathy runs so deep, no
one really wants to believe that here I am, 25, and Rich will be 23
soon, and we call the shots and do what we wanna do. Here's the record,
plays this, edit this- that's the attitude.

"But," I say with a very loud laugh, "you guys were that way two
years ago!"

"It seems more relevant now," Chris replies. "At that time it was
easy for us to be that way, because we were nothing; we hadn't sold
record one."

I note that the record features gospel-like harmonies by two female
vocalists, identified on the album as Barbara and Joy. This seems
like an unusual stylistic tack. Had Chris been listening to a lot
of gospel material at the time?

"I always listened to it," Chris says. "Like anything else, it's
gonna come out in what you do. Not this record, and maybe not the
next one, but maybe sometime we'll be able to do a bluegrass tune,
or we'll do a Woody Guthrie song. It's pat of something right now
that we want to touch on. I don't know if it's going to be part of
it forever."

Touching on the dark mood of many of the songs, Chris says, "I think
it's very realistic. One of my favorite records of all time, that
really affected me in a big way, is the first Little Feat record.
Every one of those songs is so sad."

It strikes me, I tell Chris, that some observers might think that
the Black Crowes, with their arrogance and their determination to
pursue their own creative vision, are a bunch of punk ingrate shitheads.

"Well, the people who say that are the people who are in it for
the wrong reasons," Chris says. "The people who say that are the
jaded masses. The people who say that are the people who have let
apathy cloud their judgement. I'm fully aware of that, and I'll take
it on in any manner. And if that's the case on a global scale, we
won't sell record one, and I'll still be happy, because I know that
what we did was really therapeutic for us and very good. If anything,
it's very logical. We knew we were going to get off the road and
make this record. We're not going to let fears and other people's
fucking baggage, for lack of a better word, stand in the way of me
getting to make some of the music I want to make. That' when I really
feel good- when we're playing, and the band is turning people on.
That's when I really feel good, and I want to do that more. It's
the difference between frat-boy, college-guy weed and really good,
high-grade, on-the-cover-of-High Times kind of weed."

He guffaws loudly as another puff of smoke fills the air. "We
knew we were going to take our music to a more diverse level. We
knew that. Why play music? Also, we went out and did some outlandish
fucking things. We better back it up, or we're gonna get our asses
kicked, you know? I wrote this song called 'Wiser for the Time,'
and I think that's what it is- just a little wiser. You see a lot
more places, have a lot more temptations put in front of you. And
when it's all over and done, some people just like to testify about
what temptations you took hold of and what temptations you let go of.

"I like to call it 'Curses & Clues' or T.S. Eliot and Willie Nelson
on acid."