Without A Net

Without A Net
By Vick Garbarini
Guitar Magazine
September, 1992

Marc Ford's first days as a Black Crowe got off to a flying start.
The former guitarist for Burning Tree arrived early at Chris and Rich
Robinson's Atlanta garage to begin rehearsal for what would become
The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, the Crowes' eagerly awaited
followup to their multi-platinum debut. The first surprise was that the
Robinson brothers had completely rewritten the album they'd sketched
out for Ford at the audition a couple of weeks before. The second
came as they began working on a new song called "Sting Me." They
began the song as a slow ballad, then revved it up to a full tilt
rocker. Which was better? Lead singer Chris Robinson began arguing
with his younger brother Rich; suddenly Chris' mike stand was arcing
through space- directly at Rich. "It hit him right in the head,"
recalls a still amazed Ford. "So Rich threw his guitar down, lunged
across the room, and grabbed Chris by the shoulders, throwing him up
against the wall. Glass, candles and books went flying everywhere."
Bassist Johnny Colt and drummer Steve Gorman had been through this
before, but even they seemed shaken. Meanwhile, Marc Ford stood
clutching the gold-topped Les Paul Chris had given him for Christmas,
wondering what in the hell was going on. "It was complete insanity,"
he confesses. "that was my first weekend with the band. I just
figured, 'Okay, this is basically what we have to deal with.':

"It was a perfect shot," asserts Chris Robinson with a mixture of
pride and regret. "God, I thought Rich broke my arm after that, and
then of course I stomped upstairs to my bedroom, slammed the door and
raged for a while." Thirty minutes later he was downstairs hugging
Rich and all was forgiven.

"It's 'cause Chris won't shut up, basically," grumbles Rich,
"but it's so superficial, I really don't remember what it was about
five minutes later."

"Musically, my baby brother is an enigma," responds Chris with
obvious admiration. "But because we're brothers, whatever I want,
he's going to do the opposite." He pauses for a moment, then grins
sheepishly. "Do Angus and Malcolm beat the crap out of each other
like this?"

So are the Crowes the brawling, arrogant bad boys of legend?
Well, not exactly. Running a hand through his hennaed hair, Marc
breaks into a gentle, bemused smile. "Chris and Rich are actually
fiercely protective of each other. Really, I haven't seen them fight,
except for a few words, since that day. Maybe they just did it for
my benefit," he muses, adding that "They do seem to have a way of
getting to the core of each other's nervous systems, if they need to."
There's a thin line between creative friction and self-destructive
craziness, but the Robinsons seem to have things under control. "Besides,
we knew you needed a headline!" Chris chides.

But the rehearsals were nothing compared to the recording sessions.
The Crowes charged into the studio with their brand new material (and
new guitarist Ford, having replaced Jeff Cease) and proceeded to knock
out in a week what it took Def Leppard five years to do. Every cut
was done in one or two takes, with songs evolving and mutating, literally
up to the moment of recording. "Chris and Rich were counting down the
intro to 'Remedy' when they stopped and said, 'Okay, we're changing
this part right now' and the rest of the band is going 'are you
serious?!'" Ford became so confused by the rapid-fire changes in songs
and parts that "it took all I had to concentrate on where to put my
hands and just get through the songs." But the experience was
exhilarating, and out of this creative chaos came a remarkably coherent
album that debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts. "This whole band
is doing on a wing and a prayer, really," asserts Ford. "In fact,"
he insists, "that's the secret to their success. You're really forced
to stop thinking about it all so much and just trust your instincts to
groove. It's not a question of following any trend or trying to be
like anybody else. It's about keeping things very alive and on the
edge. And it either works magically or it all falls apart. I think
it worked out pretty well," he adds with obvious relief. "That's the
key to the band."

It's also the key to why those critics who can't get past the
bellbottoms and open tunings- and so cavalierly dismiss them as
Stones clones- are missing the point. The Crowes are about extending,
not copying, the traditions they draw from. They're not just copping
a sound but struggling to stay hotwired to the spirit and energy
tha made all those Stones, Zep, and Free records so resonant to begin
with. They're on a crusade of sorts to recapture the spontaneity and
risk-taking and bring it crashing into the present moment.

In jazz, Wynton Marsalis picked up the lost thread of '60s post-bop
and carried it forward, as Robert Cray has attempted with the blues.
The difference being that Marsalis and Cray are praised, not
persecuted, for re-connecting with their traditions and expanding
them. "I guess we're just not politically correct," Rich Robinson
deadpans.

A few minutes later Marc and I rendezvous with the rest of the
band in the lobby of L.A.'s Sunset Marquis. We pile into the group
van and head off to the band's first post-album rehearsal for their
upcoming world tour. Chris bounces around the van like a bad check.
Long hair flowing, jeans featuring more patches then denim, he's the
skinniest humanoid on the planet. Also one of the wittiest, he rattles
off opinions on everything and everyone, from politics to pop culture,
skewering certain bands (usually the ones that have knocked the
Black Crowes). Meanwhile, Rich radiates a quiet, smoldering intensity.
Talk to them sincerely about their music and they both switch gears
into passionate overdrive. The arrogance and defensiveness flash by,
but usually as an honest response to attacks on them as "Retro" or
the hypocrisy they sense around them. They care desperately about
the music they're making- and how they make it.

"Everything on the new album is unconscious," claims Rich. "Sometimes
I'm afraid to go back and analyze how I wrote something 'cause I'm
afraid I'll start to subconsciously try to repeat some formula, 'How
did I write that hit?'"

Chris has the same take on the lyrics. Yes, he'll agree, there's a
theme running through the new record that revolves around hurt and
healing. There are Stings and Illness and Thorns and Disease, countered
by the positivism of Salvation, the liberation of "No Speak No Slave,"
and the transcendence of "My Morning Song." But he prefers to not get
too specific, and rightly so. Most great music comes from a place
deeper than conscious thought. Something integrates all those
elements and transforms craft into something ineffable that can
resonate with each person in an individual way. "That's part of the
mystery of it all," asserts Chris. "How can you stay real and in
touch- and out of your own way? That's they way the Stones wrote
'Sex Drive', isn't it?" he laughs. It's also the unspoken philosophy
that permeates the writing, recording and playing on the new album.
Keep that line open to the subconscious so creative surprises and
fresh energy can keep flowing, putting craft at the service of
something higher. "It's like the difference between spirituality and
religion," says Chris. "To me, religion can be a form of manipulating
something personal and sacred, like government does. And in a watered
down way, so does the music business. If there's anything that the
Black Crowes have nothing to do with, it's manipulation."

Seen through the looking glass of the press, the Crowes have often
come across as aggressive and touchy. In person, they're certainly
opinionated- but not in a negative, mean-spirited way. Unlike many
bands who say "correct" things in public, and are bitter behind the
scenes, the Crowes' bark is worse than their bite. Chris Robinson
flashes a goofy smile as he does his imitation of certain "corporate"
bands: "Hi, we're all just so happy that our album's #1 and we just
LOVE everybody," he oozes. "Then they're back in their tour buses
grumbling about how they hate this or that band, blah blah!" Chris
snorts derisively. "I mean, HELLO!, you don't love everybody, get
real. Just play some music tha takes me somewhere and shutup!"
There's more heart than heat in Chris Robinson's diatribes. "During
the '60s and early '70s the counterculture, and even the way you
looked, were at least a statement about your values. Our music is
nothing but an extension of our lifestyles. As manic and as seemingly
desperate as that music is sometimes, that's the way our lives are.
It's all there, the ying and yang, the euphoria and the hard times,"
says Chris. He worried about keeping himself, and his band, in touch
with their creative spark- and expects no less from others. "That's
why we're afraid to analyzed what we're doing too much," he continues
earnestly. "What if we start second guessing ourselves too much?
'Uh, how did I write that hit? What's the formula?'" He shudders.
"Look," adds Rich quitely. "The reason Chris gets so defensive- the
reason we all do...well," he hesitates, "it's because we're all
scared...you know what I'm saying? We're scared of the ultimate..."
He shrugs, lost for words. "This music is our baby, we put out souls
into it. And then some jaded asshole from the press or some other
band says, 'Hoh, just a Stones ripoff,' or 'the record Rod Stewart
never made.'" He grimaces. "The don't know us or where where we're
coming from. I didn't even learn that open G tuning from the Stones,"
claims Rich. The brothers have been trading records for years,
everything from Gram Parsons, Otis Rush and Little Feat to Thelonius
Monk, and old Blues. "When did the Stones ever write a song like
'Black Moon Creeping' or 'No Speak No Slave'?" Good point.

At rehearsal, the instinctive chemistry Marc Ford spoke of kicks
in as Rich likes his capo up the neck of his Telecaster a few frets
and breaks into the awesome, climbing riff from "No Speak No Slave."
The band swings in behind him in perfect synch, John and Steve's
elastic rhythmic pocket creates an exquisite tension for the guitarists
to play off. Marc Ford kicks in with a dirty, raucous wah-wah solo
that lifts the song to a new level. It may sound cliched, but Ford's
replacing Jeff Cease really does echo the Stones replacing Mick Taylor
with Ron Wood. but Ford adds Hendrixian fire and Page's angular riffing
to Wood's rawnesss, resulting in a volatile hybrid of blues-rock styles
that lends and edge and fullness to Rich's chordal vamps. Still in
open G, Rich slips off the capo and slides into the gnarled intro to
"Sting Me." Chris grabs the mike and sings "I've got nothing up my
sleeve 'cept this heard and a chip on my shoulder," neatly summing up
the band's philosophy admist a roaring wall of sound as Rich cranks
out those Stonesian chords. "Black Moon Creeping"'s ominous chunk
n' funk maelstrom owes as much to Lowell George and John Lee Hooker
as it does to Led Zep and Keith. Marc and Rich end with a duet solo
in different tunings. They pull of the tricky interplay perfectly-
even though it's ony the second time they've played the passage
together. Rich gives me a blank look when I ask about soloing in
open tunings. How does he keep track of the scales? "I don't even
know what scales are," he shrugs. "It's all pretty unconscious, I
just play by feel." Marc Ford, who plays in standard tuning, adds
that "Rich doesn't even know the names of the chords or keys he's
playing in. He has to turn around and ask me and Johnny. There's
the obvious chords you play in an open key, but Rich always tries
to stretch them and get into other, stranger note clusters. It opens
up amazing harmonic possibilities for me to weave in and out of,"
agrees Ford. They end with a soaring rendition of "My Morning Song,"
all searing slide crescendos and wiry riffs- think of Zep's "When the
Levee Breaks" filtered through the Clara Ward Gospel Singers.

Contrary to legend, Mrs. Robinson didn't mix melted down copies of
Exile On Main Street and Physical Graffitti into her son's baby
formula. Chris and Rich grew up in suburban Atlanta, the sons of
a '50s singer who weaned them on folk music and country. "He was like
a Bobby Darin, Brill Building type who became a real folk purist.
Doc Watson and Jimmy Driftwood, Flat and Scruggs- he wouldn't listen
to Dylan or the Byrds," says Chris, "that was a bastardization."
Saturday mornings at the Robinsons' ranged from "Sly and the Family
Stone and Joe Cocker to Vassar Clemons and the Clancy Brothers,"
recalls Chris. It wasn't until he was 19 that Chris and Rich
discovered the Stones, particularly Exile On Main Street. "I'd spent
the first night of my life on mushrooms, it was about six in the
morning, and somebody put on 'Torn and Frayed,'" recalls Chris.
"Suddenly I didn't have to feel so isolated from everything." Having
unconsciously digested and integrated the same blues and country
records, Robinson felt an odd kinship with the Stones based not on
Classic radio, but on shared sources. Rich absorbed a lot of his
musical tastes from listening to his older brother's records, but his
early inspirations would surprise even his most ardent fans. "The
first two records I bought were Prince's Dirty Mind and AC/DC's
High Voltage. When I listen to 'Down Payment Blues', there's a kind
of desperation there that makes you want to gasp for air. That got
to me."

Though he became an Exile devotee shortly after Chris, Rich still
bristles at accusations that the Crowes copped everything from Keith
and Co. "Or course the Stones inspired us, along with many other
bands. But we didn't copy or steal from them," he asserts. "To me,
art is something that comes from inspiration. Well, to certain jaded
asshole critics I'd say this: Where do you expect us to get inspiration
from- the future? You get if from the past. Are you going to call
Dali a rip-off artist because he occasionally painted a landscape?"
In fact, the Stones have admitted to slavishly copying their blues
heroes note for note in the early days. "People are going to accuse
us of theft.? Well, let me play you Exile or Let It Bleed and show
you where Keith and Mick took credit for writing 'Love In Vain'
and 'Stop Breaking Down.'"

What the Robinsons really loved about the Stones, besides the
music, was their attitude. "They didn't just have a career, they
had a relationship with people- fans, journalists, whoever." And
those open tunings that have pegged Rich as a Keith disciple? "I
didn't get into open tunings because of the Stones," he insists.
"Keith didn't even invent that tuning. He got it from Ry Cooder,
I think. The rumor in the industry is that that opening riff on
'Honky Tonk Women' is actually Ry playing. I got into open G because
I heard Nick Drake, this English songwriter, singing 'Pink Moon.'
He always seemed to have a place to go lower, and you couldn't do
that in regular tuning."

Rich, who just turned 23 the day of our interview, thinks he
may do a reverse Keith and "discover" regular tuning when he's
30. "I think in terms of chords and songs, though I do like to play
solos sometimes." On the new album, Marc and Rich traded solos on
"Thorn In My Pride," and on "Hotel Illness" Rich plays both the dobro
part and the solo. Which brings us to the touchy question of what
happened to Jeff Cease, the original lead guitarist on Shake Your
Moneymaker. As usual, Rich is characteristically blunt. "Jeff didn't
even play some of the stuff on that record. He didn't play any
guitars on 'She Talks To Angels.' On a lot of his solos, our
engineer and myself showed him what to play." Rich sighs. "After
10 months on tour, he still couldn't play them and we needed him
to catch up and it wasn't happening." But what about Cease's
comments to the press that implied the Crowes didn't approve of his
lifestyle? "Think about that one for a minute," counters Rich.
"Why'd the Black Crowes kick you out? 'Well, the didn't want me to
play basketball.' Come on, what are you talking about? I read that
and I wasn't mad, I was just stunned.

"Look," Rich adds wearily, "after 22 months on the road and a half
million records sold, I wanted to write another record and play with
a guitar player I could work with."

Chris Robinson agrees that "it's all about these songs. Shake Your
Moneymaker was not that great of a record as far as the playing
goes. We were a baby band." The brothers wanted the second record
to still reflect where they were coming from while stretching their
boundaries. In a sense, the new album's evolution began as soon as
they started touring behind Moneymaker. "Our first arena show ever
was opening for Aerosmith, who were one of our idols. Our manager,
Pete, was ecstatic." Rich smirks. "So we got out there and started
playing new songs!" Needles to say, Pete was no longer ecstatic.
"He was standing on the side of the stage screaming 'Play your damn
record!'" Opening later for ZZ Top, the Crowes kicked off with a
new tune, "Words You Throw Away," that generally went on for 14
minutes. "And we only had 45 minutes opening for ZZ Top," laughs
Rich. "We'd barely get in five songs. But we thought that was
so cool- keep it fresh." Their daring paid off in the end. "Words.."
eventually was boiled down to a little number called "Remedy," which
became the seed for the new album. But the Top tour was also where
Chris began to earn his reputation as the Mouth of the South,
delivering homilies from onstage about the evils of corporate
sponsorship as a Miller Beer logo flapped in the breeze above him.
Eventually, the beer suits had them axed from the tour.

"We got along with the band alright, at least at first," asserts
Rich. "I was always an AC/DC buy, never a ZZ Top fan- the cars
and girls in the videos were a bigger image for me." But at the
first sound check Rich spotted Billy Gibbons sitting backstage with
just a Les Paul and a slide. "I went, 'Wow, this guy is fantastic!'
He just had the coolest tone. Then during the show they came out
with these big goofy Gibsons and all that sampling. I was a little
disappointed, because they can really play, that's the sad thing."
It wasn't the beer the Crowes objected to as much as the idea of
something they held sacred, their music, being hawked like peanuts
under anybody's logo. The corporatization or rock is a threat to
its essence, and they feel it's time to draw some boundaries. "Here's
a scenario for you," offers Rich. "A band signs a contract for a
million dollars with any label. Now here comes a beer company that
offers you 10 million to sponsor your tour. If you take that money
you're greedy anyway, right? So who are you going to show more
allegiance to, the guy who brings a million dollars or 10 million
dollars to the table? So then you play a show and the head of the
beer company comes and brings his kid. You say 'fuck' on stage.
The guy comes backstage and objects, bad for their image. And so
it starts. They begin showing up in the studio. So now, not only
do you have your producer and record company guy looking over your
shoulder, you've got Budweiser and Reebok. Soon the Taco Bell guy'll
be there saying, 'Well, when you use the word "slave" in "No Speak
No Slave," that might offend some people, so take it out.'" It's
called heading down the Slippery Slope. "There's bands like us
and U-2, Mellencamp, Springsteen and others who just aren't into
that," concludes Rich. "I think like-minded bands need to get
together and say 'Hey, corporate America has taken over every aspect
of life and made it suck. It's halfway taken over our music. Let's
stop it where we can.'"

Back on tour, the Crowes either drew raves or were slagged by the
critics and some bands for their music, their hair, their bellbottoms,
even their shirts. It was the same old counterculture/lifestyle
stigmatization. Only this time it wasn't the establishment on their
heels, it was their peers. Chris tends to adopt the "a good offense
is the best defense" theory of dealing with slights. "I was backstage
at the Allmans saying hello to Gregg, and his girlfriend says, 'Oh
look, he's dressed up like the old days.' And I'm like, 'No, you're
just dressed like you don't know what to be anymore,'" snaps Chris.
Then there was the Pink Pop festival in Holland last year. The Crowes
took the stage early in the morning. "And there was Nick Cave, staring
at us like we were the foulest wretches on earth," remembers Chris.
"So I said, 'Well, Nick, have you smelled your breath lately?'"
Later Chris jumped into the crowd and "slugged this kid for throwing
money at me when the lights were out." And there was the time at
the Greek Theatre when Chris noticed a famous rock personality and
his manager slumped in their front row seats smirking at each other
while the rest of the crowd was on their feet dancing. Chris took a
towel off the drum riser, wiped his brow, then threw it at the
astonished celebrities, admonishing them to either "Stand up and have
a good time like everybody else or take your jaded asses down to the
bar and sit there till somebody asks you how long it took to tie your
fucking headband on." They left.

But it was certain heavy metal bands that inspired Chris to the heights
of creative revenge (and Southern Harmony), specifically Junkyard
and MSG. "When we opened for MSG, they were there every night
yelling, You suck!' They hated us, man." So Chris and Johnny, figuring
their tormentors were both a bit thick and probably homophobic, added
a new twist to their stage show: "Johnny and I would begin rubbing
each other all over and I'd hump his leg whenever those guys started on
us," admits Chris. "We figured if one thing was bound to upset them,
it was two guys pretending to have sex," he rolls his eyes and grins.
But was this trip necessary? Does he feel his hair-trigger responses
were a bit too defensive and overreactive? Could his quick mouth have
lead him into unnecessary conflicts? Why not ignore them? "I don't
really see it as defensive," counters Chris. "I see it as maintaining
an open forum." Brother Rich is less certain. "When Chris gets in
trouble with other bands, I sometimes think, 'Why do you have to lower
yourself to that? Even if you're right...'" He grimaces. "It's
silly, but in actuality, he's scared- just like the rest of us. Because
every night we're putting our asses on the line, and who needs that
abuse? Who the hell asked them anyway?"

After almost two years of winning friends and influencing people,
the Crowes were ready to head back to see the studio with 25 new
songs to choose from for their sophomore effort. "I'd been worrying
for months about the new songs," confesses Rich. "Suddenly I said
'The hell with it, let's just write a whole other record.'" Amazingly
enough, they did just that, keeping only two of their older tunes,
"My Morning Song" and "Thorn In My Pride." It was an astonishingly
bold move for a relatively new band facing the industry's heightened
expectations. But that's precisely why they felt compelled to take
the leap. The Crowes knew tha for them, playing it safe would be a
threat to their creative spirit. "See, the first record was about
reflecting our influences," says Rich. "This record was totally
written by just Chris and I alone in his house, with no music around-
nothing. There was no net underneath us. We just knocked it out in
two weekends. 'No Speak No Slave' was written in 10 minutes based
on that ascending riff. 'Morning Song' was the same thing, but done
in a Dallas hotel room one night when we were bored. 'Hotel Illness'
was written, literally, the first time Rich played it, as was 'Thorn
In My Pride.'"

The Crowes were determined to record their new material in the same
spirit of spontaneity and freedom. "On the first record we were told
to 'Play it straight.' This time we said, 'Screw you,' we're keeping
what we want in terms of arrangements, like on 'Black Moon Creeping,'
our producer wanted to cut that slow passage at the end- we weren't
supposed to stray too far. But we said, 'We like it and it stays.'"
If some of the songs on The Southern Harmony... seem like jams, rest
assured, they are. "Thorn" and "Morning" evolved a bit between
writing them and the studio. But all the others had only been played
three or four times by the band before recording them, usually in
one or two takes. Needless to say, there were a few overdubs. For
Rich, Marc Ford's last minute hookup with the band "was the final
spoke in the wheel we needed. Chris had always had Marc in mind,
'cause they were friends. I wasn't a big fan of Burning Tree, but
I loved Marc's playing. And for the first time I felt there were
really two guitar players playing in synch, rather than me playing
something and wondering what was going to happen when Jeff jumped
in. I didn't have to worry about it, 'cause I knew Marc would have
it covered." The two would talk briefly about a part, with Rich
giving Marc a sense of where he wanted him to go. And Marc did the
rest, usually in one take. "Marc's solo in 'No Speak No Slave' was
a single take, as was the one in 'Sometimes Salvation.'

"I like it when two guitarists play complementary parts that make
interesting chords and mesh like a wall of sound," says Rich. "Like
on 'Black Moon Creeping.' That's me at the end just playing three
notes and him playing some weird thing, but it sounds so full."
Marc used his Les Paul on most tracks, though for the solos on
"No Speak No Slave" and "Remedy" he reverted to his Strat Plus armed
with Seymour Duncan pickups. Rich used his Bigson 335 for "Sting
Me" and a Gretsch White Falcon for both the intro and slide work
on "Morning Song." The rest of the time he switched between a brace
of old Les Paul Juniors, vintage Telecasters ("one with a B string
bender on it that I used on 'Black Moon Creeping'"), and three
Gibson Dove acoustics.

Rich fought for the slower version of "Sting Me," but "our manager
was like, 'Come on, if you're going to let me have any say, let's do
the fast one.'" The 14-minute opus was chopped into fragments and
rearranged as "Remedy." Like many of the Crowes' compositions,
"Remedy" features Rich's trademark descending chord patterns. "I
remember George, our producer, talking about how when Chris would
sing it, it just kept going down," says Rich. "George wanted to
change the chord progression but we didn't let him." Some of the
slower tunes were written in open b and Bb, tunings Rich says he
picked up from Keith's ex-roadie Alan Rogan. Rich sees "Thorn"
and "Morning Song" as the two songs on the record that take you
on internal journeys, lyrically and musically. "Thorn" has this
little Nick Drake-like intro and then the drums kick in. Finally,
there's this amazing, huge part where the piano comes in. It's like
a rollercoaster ride. "'Morning Song' is gospel," says Chris, "that
uplift is intentional. That's why people like the Swans and Nick
Cave get on my nerves," he continues. "It's like they're into that
obvious dark side- and wallowing in it rather than cathartically
processing through it, like Lowell George," he adds, or "'Tears
of Rage' from Big Pink. That's what gospel means, that's what the
blues is all about." Chris has an ancient autographed promotional
copy of an early Dylan album where Bob talks about singing the blues
to help get out of them, not to masochistically marinate in them.
"Some of those English bands seem to think oppression and alienation
is exclusive to them," Chris sneers. "Please!"

By now, if you think the Crowes used some high tech studio
wizardry to achieve the hot immediacy of The Southern Harmony...,
you obviously have not been paying attention. "I mixed 'Thorn
In My Pride' with our engineer Brendan at the Record Plant- and I
hated it," says Chris. "They had this huge board with digital
computers and shit, which Brendan loves. Forget it, I went over
to Hollywood Sound, got on that little Nerve board, and hot-mixed
the whole rest of the album in one evening. What else do you
need?" According to Chris, that's why their records sound different
on radio. "I don't have an ear for hit records," he admits. "That's
the only reason we're any good- we don't know what the fuck we're
doing, we just do it. You can analyze it all later." For the
Crowes, structure and discipline has to come from inside, not from
some codified set of rules and formulas. This is a band that thinks
with their hearts and feels with their heads.

Obviously they're on to something. The next morning at breakfast,
the band gathers in the hotel lobby to check out the new Billboard.
The Southern Harmony... enters the charts at #1. The guys are
pleased but subdued, even a bit somber. After all this, they don't
want to lose their sense of themselves. "You know, Woody Guthrie,
he never separated himself from folks," reflects Chris. "Maybe the
Crowes are going to be one of the bands in the next five or six
years that brings it around to what's important, I don't know."
And what is important to the country's newest #1 band? Rich Robinson
looks pensive. "Maybe if I still have a vital relationship with my
music, the audience, my band in 15 years or so I'll have the right
to talk about 'success,' and what it means."

Chris Robinson pauses, then breaks into an impish grin. "When the
critics start saying that Mark Farner of Grand Funk is cool, then
I'll know things have really changed! I don't care if he is a
born-again whatever, 'Nothing Is The Same' from Closer To Home
is a bad song," Chris chortles. And you gotta admit, the guy had
great bellbottoms!"