#2177 - Chris Robinson
2024-07-18 02:19:58
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Okay, so that's the first season, like 1972 or 3, I think.
Columbo. I almost forgot about that show. They used to tell him not to smoke?
Well, no, like, the character, I can tell they're probably just building up. Like, you notice that he has a cigar in his hands. the whole series, or every episode. But it's funny, the 1972 people are like, please don't smoke in here. Or Mr.
Columbo, Lieutenant Columbo, he's always being reprimanded for it.
Interesting. I forgot about that.
And he's always, really, you know, Peter Fox, he's always like, oh, sorry. And he puts it out on us. He's never upset or anything.
Yeah, that was an interesting character, right? Because he was like this bumbling guy who was actually not. He was kind of setting you up the whole time. Letting you underestimate him.
Pardon me, but another thing. He's always about to leave, and he's like, oh, yeah. And he comes back.
And he's annoying people, and they're like, oh.
Incredible, though, aesthetic. And, like, the other day I'm watching this episode that Jonathan Demme directed, Steven Spielberg, I mean, like, all of these famous directors, start to cut their teeth on TV and on episodic things like that. But there's a real tone to it and stuff. It's cool in the way everyone looked. But one other funny thing about it that I've noticed in Columbo is it always starts with a murder.
And then usually a lot of times in the arc of the story, someone shows up to the crime scene. Usually whoever did it, or whatever, right? And so, but they're never upset. There's never someone that runs in, what happened here? Your uncle's been murdered.
Oh, I didn't do it. It's kind of like how it starts. instead of some dramatic, you know, like, oh, my God. How could this have happened? No one's even, they're just like, okay, well, you're bothering me now.
In cop shows, you can always tell police, even SVU, they're always like, I've had enough. Can you guys leave? And they leave. I'm like, is that how it goes? I don't know.
No.
It's weird how many of those shows there are where they catch the bad guy. Like that is, it's like something that I guess people with anxiety need to let them feel like. if someone is a bad person and they do commit a murder, they're going to get caught.
Like are the interest in those kind of dark scenarios, you're only interested in them when there's justice at the end? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, for sure. Because anything nebulous or whatever is like too real maybe.
Yeah, there's those shows, and then there's medical shows. Remember when there was a time where every other fucking show on TV was about a hospital?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And the only one that I really remember is Quincy. So Jack Klugman yelling at everyone. He's yelling about the sandwich.
He's yelling about the blood sample. When we were kids, we were hardcore. We were in that initial phase of American kind of hardcore punk stuff because we had just missed out the like 77,, 78, 79.. And then there was an episode about the L.A. scene and Quincy goes to the punk club.
Don't you see what you kids are doing to yourselves with the loud music and the anger and the pills or whatever? And there was a thing when we were kids and there was this song. I forget which band did it. But you were fake if you were a Quincy punk. Because they took the way people looked on Quincy or whatever, and that instantly became.
A fake punk.
Yeah, yeah. You're bullshit now.
When you started out, what was the inspirations for your band? What were you guys into?
I mean, it's hard to untangle because my dad was a singer. So our dad was a singer. And he was very, well, my dad was kind of a strange guy in general. A lovely guy, but dynamic to say the least. But he had like a hit in the late 50s called Booma Dip, Dip.
Like a top 40 kind of record.
And a couple of subsequent sort of rock and roll singles. And he was living in New York and stuff. And then, when he, that kind of pales out. And then he moves back to Atlanta and he immerses himself in like the folk music scene. And he was signed to a label called ABC Paramount.
So by the time I come along in 66, it's kind of, he's not doing it anymore.
What was he doing?
He was a schmata guy. He was in the middle. He was like Willie Loman. He was in the garment business. My grandfather, Ike Robinson, they were in children's wear.
My dad was in women's wear. And then ended later back in children's wear. But the one thing around the house that I remember earliest memories are him pilling out his guitar and singing folk songs. And just, I don't know. I'm a dyslexic person.
And so my, you know what I mean? So there was, I don't know if that has anything to do with it. But there was something about always singing these songs. It would like open up stuff for me. Almost like being high or in a, not in a psychedelic way.
But in a way that it changed the space. You know what I mean? And records started doing that to me very early. And that kind of is where, so it's kind of, we think it's normal. Other kids' dads aren't playing old folk songs at the house.
that I know. But by the time Rich and I, you know, we're kind of like angst-ridden suburban youth. For some reason my parents decided to move to the suburbs. Financial reasons. General apathy.
Ready to begin the mound of resentment and regret. I don't know. All the things. the suburbs represent me. You know what I mean?
I would say, for me, there was a television show. Do you remember Night Flight on USA Network back in the early days?
I remember the name. I don't even remember what it was about.
Yeah, it would be like, it would come on at midnight. And it would be concerts and like films. Like cool, like probably the first time I saw a racerhead. Or Rude Boy, the movie about the clash. And, you know, declining western civilization.
Punk things and new wave things. And I always had an interest in stranger things. You know, and things that weren't normal. Or, you know,
Mr. Roper, on Three's Company or whatever. You know what I mean? And this show, they had a show that came on at two in the morning. And it was from Los Angeles, called New Wave Theater.
And that was like huge, huge. Being a kid in the suburbs in Georgia where, you know, it's still pretty much like that band, all the people that listen to that band. Alabama, you know. They wear like trucker hats and flannels and like, want to beat you up because you have a Ramones record or something, you know. And that's how it was, you know.
Wow. So this show was like a real beacon of, you know, my mom was like, oh yeah. Peter Ivers. A very interesting character, Peter Ivers.
Well, the material has surfaced in many incarnations. Tonight they're here as 45 Grave. Piece of wax.
45, yeah. So this is what I'm really into. Don Bowles is the drummer in 45 Grave who was in the Germs.
Not a happy childhood amongst them.
No, but, well, I don't know. But they definitely made amazing, beautiful, cool, outsider art. And, you know, I think something that we have a hard time understanding in this day and age is art that's made because of the visceral interaction with you and other people. that has nothing to do with. I'm going to be a big star.
Some of the things I think, I mean, fuck, I'm like one of the last, I mean, the Black Crowes, we have to be one of the last bands of the time where we kind of felt it was our duty to never truly give in to the other side, you know what I mean, and kind of understand this. us versus them, idea, you know what I mean, and something that's inspiring and something that is like, you know, I was always interested in counterculture, you know, and anyone, again, that's like why the algorithm maybe isn't as perfect or it never will overtake everything, because there's always going to be the one person who's like, I'm going this way. That's not enough for me, you know, the deep dive people. And so we kind of found ourselves in the crosshairs of this kind of stuff, the cramps, we were in, the cramps, the gun club. So, and then REM comes around, their first record, Chronic Town.
And so my dad and my mom and dad had a lot of records, maybe 250 records, 300 records, you know, which was a lot of records back then. Bluegrass records, you know, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs records or Moe's Allison records, Jimmy Reed records, Johnny Guitar Watson, and then they had, you know, Buffalo Springfield records and the Bob Dylan records. I mean, that's a big, I mean, for millions of people, but something as a kid that I knew no other kids would go, you guys want to come over and listen to records? I'm going to put on, you know, the times. they are a-changing.
I'd be like, again, there would be a reason to get beat up, you know.
But that kind of stuff catapults us into, then punk rock comes along and it's like, oh, anyone can do this. You don't have to be, we'll figure it out later. what talent or whatever. You know what I mean? Like.
we just want to plug in and start going ding, ding, ding, and singing horrible things and trying to be offensive. You know what I mean? Because, think about, now you go to the, you know, now people walk around in Dead Kennedys T-shirts and it's like, oh, cool. But back then, Dead Kennedys made people, like the name of that band, the Circle Jerks, like the names of these bands made people upset.
Legitimate rebellion. Yeah. Instead of, you know, posturing. Which is a lot of what's going on today with Dead Kennedys T-shirts.
But, I mean, I think inevitably anything like that, I mean, Edgar Allan Poe. was that in a literary way in the, you know, the tail end of the Victorian age, but now he's just like a thing hanging in some goth kid's car, like an air freshener or something. You know what I mean? So things get swallowed up culturally.
Right.
And regurgitated, as just, you know, and it just so happens that Dead Kennedys have one of the greatest logos of all time.
Yeah. Well, there's always going to be adherence to, you know, what most people are interested in and what's popular. And then people that are trying to mimic what's popular so that they can become popular. And then there's always legitimate counterculture where people are just like, I don't buy with any of this.
Yeah. I'm looking for something.
Yeah. I'm looking for something that's real, something that's raw. And, as I think that's going to accelerate with AI music and, you know, all this electronic music. And again, as you were saying before, stuff that's sort of created to feed the algorithm. Yeah.
You know, there's, there's strategies to become successful, rather than just expression that resonates with people.
Let the people. Yeah. Yeah. In a way, I mean, someone took a chance, you know, a band like Alan Vega and, you know, like suicides, like someone, you know, the no wave music in New York in the late seventies, someone took a chance and said, yeah, I would think about how weird was that. You know, like bringing that into a studio where who was just in here?
fucking 38 special or some shit, you know what I mean? And then there's like this or whatever, you know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, it's a cool thing about early, you know, like the first Sex Pistols record, the Clash record's a little different, but even the dead boys or bands like that, like a lot of those early punk records and a lot of the post-punk records, those are bands. They're not making records, trying to sound, you know, Oh, I can make a record sound like I don't give a fuck or something on my garage.
But what, you know, you can do anything now with, like a button and, and, and people, and I like lo-fi shit too, of course. But back then there, there's bands, they're not making lo-fi records. They're in just like, that's a real band in a, but with great gear and people who are making like records that we would think are sonically like, Oh, that's correct. Right. And then you have like these punk people in there, just like, you can't turn it up all the way.
Well, we're doing that, you know what I mean?
Wasn't this sort of rebellion at, you guys had like a falling out with ZZ Top, right? When you were on tour, wasn't part of it something about corporate involvement?
Yeah, we were always, and it's funny. I just saw Billy Gibbons a couple of weeks ago in London and we've been friends for many years and a massive ZZ Top fan. I mean, what those records, especially the early records. I mean, they just sound delicious. You know what I mean?
I just, and when, what is it? Which one is it? Is it Rio Grande? I don't know. One of those records where you open it and there's like a giant plate of Mexican food, like growing up in Atlanta, like that was, I didn't know what that, you know what I mean?
Like you could get that. We had barbecue and we had soul food. You know, we have our own regional culinary identity, but to see stuff like that, I was like, wow, I gotta try that. You know what I mean? But no, we,
they, I don't even know if ZZ Top, where they were in their career, if they knew anything that was going on about like these guys that were the opening band, except for the fact that, you know, in the music business at that time, when you're still selling records and you're selling 250,000 records every week or whatever for a couple of years, it starts to be kooky when it was a thing, but they were sponsored by Miller Lite. And, uh, I just got into this thing where, you know, so we'd go on stage and do our thing. and there's big Miller Lite posters all over the state or whatever, you know? And I got in my little troublemaker mind, we're the black crows, you know what I mean? no one gives us money.
We don't drink this beer. No one gives us fucking money. You know, I'm standing under this sign cause I have to be here tonight, but I want you to know that no fucking beer company sponsors our music. No one owns us. No one, you know what I mean?
I have these,
these naive sort of thing about, like, I don't know. And we, my brother and I, talk about it a lot. And as we've gotten older and especially since we've put the band back together these last few years and have been in a really positive place and a really good place, I realized like,
you know, part of our, part of that, that we were involved in, we believed in like as if rock, the S what we feel is really the true essence of rock and roll. It's like, I, I describe it as like the movie quest for fire, you know, when they have to keep the fire burning in that little thing and they're going across the swamp and they don't want the Neanderthals to get it or whatever. That's kind of how we felt in a weird way about everything that was out at, you know, one minute you're in control, your kids were writing songs. We're in control of that. I'm in control of like, this is what we're doing.
This is how we look. This is what we are. And then you're in the grownup world and you've sold, you've made people tens of millions of dollars.
And I'm hardly a savvy business person. I never could be, I never would be. It wasn't in the cards for me.
And so part of our, like being hard about it or being difficult, not being compliant, was trying to, in our minds, keep this pure thing. You know what I mean? And in a way that still is part of what we are today.
How old were you guys back then?
Oh, in the summer of 89, Rich was 18.
. I was 23 when we made our first record.
Just a young rebel.
Well, you know, the other thing is, is rock, you know, you remember, rock and roll was culturally and socially, its place and its importance and its reverence was a lot different than today. Yeah. You know, I think it's one thing I think is cool about hip hop music is the hip hop stars have taken over the, that kind of attitude.
Yes.
Which I, when I see their fashion and I see, you know, I mean, there's lots of, hip hop's. not one thing, of course. And I'm 57.. I like what I like. You know, I like old records anyway, but when I hear new things that I like and I'm like, okay, so they're singing about drugs, they're singing about sex, and, you know, they're singing about, you know, maybe, maybe I can't really identify with the violence of poverty and stuff.
You know what I mean? Like the extreme nature of some of it, but, but it's still, that's another form of rebellion as well.
Yeah. And it's, it's, that's, isn't it? Hip hop itself is an interesting art form because there's not a push to popify it. You know, like the, the hardcore hip hop artists are very successful and the lyrics are rough. Yeah.
You know, they're, they're very hard edged lyrics, but yet these are the lyrics that, you know, get millions and millions of views. You can't even say millions of sold albums anymore, because it's like, that's, that had to be the weirdest thing to watch the sale of albums evaporate.
Not just the sale. You're absolutely correct. Not just the sale, but the, the meaning of a record, like of, you know, and again, in the big scheme of things, the record business isn't as old as, say, you know, the writing or whatever, but in the way that we would listen to music and you would, you know, there's a company that would find talent and put that whole thing, but yeah, making a record and saying, okay, we're songwriters.
Uh, this is what we're, this is our, this is our latest work. This is what we've been working on. This is our craft and this is our talent and our poetry and our, this is what we want to say now. It's like, you know, you know, an album, you know what I mean? Like, I personally think that it's still an important medium and I, I've yet to give up on it.
You know what I mean? Uh, if they said, right, you know, Oh, you know what I mean? What am I supposed to, that's what I've always, that's what Rich and I've always done. We, we write songs. It was one of the only things, again, the way we can, could experience the world was through that.
Cause he's, you know, as crazy as me, just doesn't talk as much, not crazy, but I mean, different, you know, um, artists, you know,
I think it resonates with a lot of people, which is why there's this resurgence of vinyl, right? Like people still want to listen to actual vinyl. They still want to see an actual album, you know? And there's, there's a lot of like looking at that. There's a lot of reminiscing from people that have like my age and your age, that were around when these things were the way you consume music.
I've been buying records since I was 12 years old. You know what I mean? Like, and it was weird. Maybe that's because my mom and dad had a lot of records, but you know, my wife and I, we just moved just around the block in LA and we've been together seven years, but we kept our records separate. I don't know.
We have thousands and thousands. I just put 4,000 records in storage because we don't have space for that. Wow. And, but I'm like, but it's funny because no matter what, I see a record store, I'm going in and I'm, I can, I could, and you know, after however many years of buying records, I know what I'm looking for and I don't buy records online very much.
I still like, I don't know.
I liked it. I'm like a kid when I, if I've been looking for something and I see it, am I, I'm like, I get a shot of like endorphins. I'm like, you know what I mean? I'm looking around like, I don't want to, you know. Yeah.
It's weird. It's geeky stuff. It's nerd stuff, but, but the record store was really important to me as a young person and a musician, because before you could go on your phone or before the algorithm, like there's another person that looks cool. I, Oh, you know what I mean? Like.
they have Chelsea boots on or like a cool band t-shirt. And the suburbs back in the eighties, it wasn't like, you know what I mean? If you saw someone, you took the chance to be like, we need to go to their house and look through their records. You know what I mean?
And it's funny. That's still that way. You know what I mean? I have so many friends in my life and we're friends because of records, you know what I mean? And it's like my wife and I DJ all the time in LA and we go to New York and we carry our records around.
You DJ? Like, yeah.
Like we have the, my wife's name is Camille. So we have the best DJ name ever. The captain and Camille.
Uh, we do, yeah. Concerts and bars and parties and gigs and stuff.
Really? Yeah. When did you start doing that? DJing?
Uh, I started like, well, back in the eighties, everyone used to take a turn playing records at the pizza place. They had two turntables called Fellini's in Atlanta, where all the, as my dad referred to them, dirtbags and low lives hung out. Everyone in a band, of course. but then in, uh, I think in the early two thousands, a friend of mine that worked at the great record store, other music in New York, my friend, Michael, we started doing these nights of playing like a lot of weird psych folk as a, as a kind of, as genre. And we both love those records.
and we called that, we called gurus galore. And, uh, yeah. And just when I wasn't doing the black crows, I had this band called the CRB. We were like a little psychedelic folk rock little group that toured around and made a bunch of records, but our, so we played two sets a night. So it was kind of like grateful dead model, like very heady trippy.
So, but the CRB in, especially in California, we always had friends, DJ the shows with doors open till after the show and in between sets playing records. Um, I don't know. She's something we've always done. And my wife used to DJ before I met her and stuff.
So it's just, just something you enjoy.
We, I, by the way, if I could make, if I could make money doing it, I would never do it. I, if I, if me and Camille could just play records, I would be the happiest person.
You would stop performing? No, I'm kidding.
I love singing. I love performing. I love being in a band. You know what I mean? I love, uh, it's changed a lot, like anything else, and travel and everything, but I personally, it's yet to beat the adventure out of me.
You know what I mean? You never know. Same thing about why I could go online and buy whatever book or record I want right now. Anything, almost anything, you could imagine, you know,
is available,
is available, but you know, I, I, I know when I'm in Denver, I'm going to this certain bookstore and I know that what, that they have really curated things in there that I'm looking for. I can wander into, you know, you never know who you're going to meet. You never know what you're going to eat, who, you know what I mean? The laughs and the, you know, it's still a lot of stuff out there for someone like me, a lot of, uh, stimuli,
real experiences. Yeah.
That are good and human.
Yeah. Human experiences. Yeah. I mean, that is what live music and live performance is all about, right? I mean, music is great.
Live music is something really special.
I tell you the, you know, the pandemic was weird for the world and it was, you know, for artists and musicians, we had, you know, no one's, no government bailout for the guy who, you know, playing guitar or whatever, but as hard as it was, one of the, one of the worst parts of it to me was not, not just being able to do what we do, but not going to see bands. You know what I mean? I, I have a little, I have a label called silver arrow, and we've been doing this for a few years. The black crows records come out on silver arrow. It's a little different, but I'm always going to see bands.
You know what I mean? I'm, we go, whether it's the rolling stones or whether we go see a band at a little club in LA, and I'm always looking for new, you know, things to people that are interesting. If I could help them out in their careers, a lot of it is with really young artists. I want to put them in the studio. I want to give them good experience.
I want to give them a great record deal, because the it's changed the model. But we, but to do that, you have to go out and get in it. You know what I mean? And it's, we always laugh. I'm like, is there anyone older here tonight than me?
You're like, Oh, there's one. You know what I mean? It's a freaky dude who still goes to see bands.
Yeah. Well, people don't want to let it go. And why should they?
I mean, in LA right now is a great time. I mean, there's a lot of good music going on in LA and there's a lot of bars where, you know, we know, if someone has a, it plays great records, we'll go listen to them play records. You know what I mean? There's a lot of good record, people, bands. There's a lot of cool.
LA is very alive right now.
No kidding. Well, like what parts of LA are this happening?
I mean, it happens all over, but especially more downtown and like to the east.
Downtown.
I mean, yeah, you have to survive getting into the place. Downtown is so fucked up. I know.
But that's probably something that adds to the feeling of it.
You know what it does? And it's funny. Cause I had a nostalgic moment about when we started talking about, look, man, I'm. don't get me wrong. My parents did the best they could.
They're just fucking people too. But part of the other part of adventure and the other part of being interesting and night new wave theater, my mom was like, they all look like mental patients, just like you, you know, like great, but was to go to downtown Atlanta in the eighties was dangerous too. You know, during the crack epidemic,
it was a violent place. And, and we were, you know, obviously we were white kids from the suburbs. Traversing like this urban place to get into these little underground clubs to see these bands. that added to it. You know what I mean?
It added, and just the aesthetic, you know what I mean? I was, I still am, an obsessive influenced by the beat writers and beat culture. And so for me, like, you know, Jack Kerouac, isn't writing about the suburbs. He's writing about the, you know, Mexico city or whatever. You know what I mean?
Like all the Gregory Corso or Allen Ginsberg, all these poets and people are writing about all these experiences that don't seem to be happening in like a neighborhood where they call the houses, a five, four, and a door, you know what I mean? So a certain angst is cultivated. Yeah. You know, that only the only thing that could satisfy that would be something that I felt was gritty and real.
Well, there's a, there's something about, if you can, I mean, I haven't been to downtown LA to see music in quite a while, but the last time I went there, I saw Gary Clark Jr. and honey, honey at this very small place, with, you know, maybe there was like 200 people in there. I took my daughter and it was like a late show on a Monday night, like 1130.. And here we're seeing Gary, Gary Clark Jr. and honey, honey play a cover of a midnight rider.
And it just, it just felt so special because there was no one there.
And you survived.
And you survived. And you get out, you're like, let's get out of here. Where's the car? Let's get the fuck out of here. But you know,
it's weird about that. And I get it. And we, but I haven't, I, I, I spend a lot of my time reading. I read a lot of varied materials. And one thing that comes up is humans are dangerous.
Yeah. And places where there's a shit ton of them are usually pretty gross and dangerous. Yeah. Well,
it's just a numbers thing, right?
It's totally numbers thing. It's other things. Ills as well. Sure. That are hard for us to deal with.
And, and look, if we're lucky enough to be walking upright and some, how mentally stable or whatever. Right. Um, but, but you're, but I think cities have always been dangerous places.
They certainly have.
Ancient Rome was a dangerous place. Oh yeah. You know what I mean? I mean, it was so wild. We were just in Sicily and we went to Palermo for the day, and it was wild.
Have you ever been to Palermo? Wild.
Yeah.
That city is like, like an electric wire that's got sparks shooting out of it. You can't get ahold of it.
That's where my grandfather's from. Yeah. Palermo. Yeah. When we went to Italy, one of the most interesting places.
Is this water?
Yes. Yes. And there's coffee in this, if you want. Cheers. Um, one of the most interesting things is just Italy.
in general. It's like, I, every time I go there, I'm like, maybe I should live like this. Like they, they fucking know how to relax. People know how to relax. Like with the way they sit down and eat.
No one sits down and eat for 40 minutes. You sit down and eat for two hours.
French people have it dialed in pretty good. They do. As well. Yeah. And they have pasties, which is the, you know.
What is pasties?
Pasties is a, it's, it's a aperitif from the South of France. You ever see it? It says Ricard. Marseille. Marseille is famous for pasties.
It's a, it's. all Mediterranean cultures have an anisette-based drink. Italians have Zambuca. The Greeks have Ouzo. Arat in Lebanese people.
And there's all sorts of them. In the South of France, they drink one that's a little more, uh, sophisticated and a lot more herbs and things in it. And they say, you always know in France someone from Marseille because they always have a pasties in their hands. Mmm. It's like four, it's a high alcohol level, a lot of sugar, but it's delicious.
You put it in ice and dilute it with water and it makes it all this kind of milky color. Mm-hmm. It's genius.
Well, it's just, you only have a certain amount of time on this planet and they've chosen to live their time in a more relaxed manner, more community-based, and just. people like to sit around and talk.
Do you think that any of that has to do with embracing a certain middle classness, or even lower middle class, you know what I mean? Right. Like the working, you know what I mean? Even in a blue collar way, I think, you know what I'm saying? Right.
Whereas here, it seems that's been stripped away from something to be proud of. Unless it's kind of, in a way, distortedly proud, you know? Yes. Distortion of what that could be.
Right. I know what you're saying. Yeah. Well, in here, it's supposed to be. your main goal is to get to be the type of person that can look down upon that.
Yeah. Yeah. Totally.
Yeah. Your goal is not to exist in that and just accept it. This is life. Life is, you have money for food, you have money for your house. You're not wealthy, but you're okay.
Well, if you look at media, sitcoms from the 70s, whether it's Archie Bunker or whatever, they're just people with jobs and even Taxi, or Barney Miller or whatever. You know what I mean? And now, then it turns into Full House, where somehow all these people and these kids live in this amazing house and everyone has clean clothes. You know what I mean?
There's no struggle.
Yeah. Totally.
Yeah. And no,
it's not just recognition. I think it's, and it's not celebratory. It's just like, look, man, this doesn't make the man. Right? My material things don't make me who I am.
It's who I am, how I feel, what I've learned.
That's the big problem with what we're sold in Western culture, that the goal is to acquire things and to achieve a certain financial status, and then you'll have made it.
I get it. Pastis doesn't grow on trees. You know what I mean? I gotta pay for that shit.
Right, but it's not that expensive. You know what I mean? It's just, there's a distortion of goals. You know what's fucked up about that,
though, like when we were kids and I get it, like I said, I made the choice in my life. Mom and dad, we weren't, you know, we were middle class people, but I made the choice.
When I said I'm not going to university, I'm going to be in a band. My dad, that was like the last dollar I ever saw. Not even like, hey, you know what I mean? And,
but I made that choice. That choice wasn't made for me.
Right.
You know what I mean? And, within two years, I'm on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine and we're fucking around. You know what I mean? Like selling millions of records. I get that.
You know what I mean? It's not lost on me, but it gets back to where we started talking about. there will always be a part of me.
that is making music, because it's really maybe the only place where I'm truly free. You know what I mean? I have the freedom. You know, it's funny. I tell this story.
We were on Saturday Night Live two times. The second time was on our second album, Southern Harmony. And we went on the show. It was the number one album in America. It debuted at number one.
Our new single was a song called Sometimes Salvation. We were going to play that. And we were going to play one of our big hit records. And at the time, it was called Remedy. And we had just written this song called Nonfiction.
And I was like, let's play Nonfiction. And it's funny, because it's different. My brother and I, Rich, was like, yeah, fuck it. You know what I mean? It's a cool song.
The guy, whoever was the music guy, he was like, you can't do that. And I was like, well, I mean, we can do what we want, I think.
He was mad because we were smoking weed in the dressing room. I'm like, didn't John Belushi OD in the bathroom? He was like, what do you fucking care? Call the cops. I told him, call the cops.
We get arrested and Saturday Night Live for smoking weed will be bigger than this. But the guy, now that I'm older, I realize I'm just totally being just horrible, like kid. But he goes, you're making a big mistake not playing this single. And I said, okay, well, here's the deal. You're on this show next week with some other fucking band.
And then the next week after that, and then the next week after that, well, this is my band. So let me make the mistake. I'm not going to let you tell us what to do. And if it's a mistake, then we'll fucking eat it. Won't we?
And I'm still here.
And where is he? Well,
it's funny. Someone told me he has a, I forget his name. I read it to him once before. He did not like our attitude. He has, he was on a podcast about Saturday Night Live or something and said we were the worst people he ever dealt with in his entire career there.
And I was like, well, thank you.
That's funny. The worst how? Cause you just didn't listen to him?
Yeah. Yeah. We didn't do what he wanted.
That's not what you're supposed to do with artists.
Especially when you're young and you're still like the fire is like so intense. You know what I mean?
That's always the problem with executive mindsets versus artistic mindsets. Right? And you have some producer character who just wants everything to go according to this very specific plan they have laid out. And you're trying to take an artist. and, first of all, just trying to take an artist and making them sing one song is kind of crazy.
Right?
Yeah. I mean, I think we see that now. Yeah. We see people like, I'll do it. I'll do it.
You know what I mean? There's someone who's ready to jump up and do anything. And I think that's been a part of showbiz. But that's kind of what we were saying before. I think the talent show thing, you know, the vote for me.
Right. You know, when no one was voting for us.
Right.
We were unvotable. Right. And that was part of the reason that we were drawn to these characters and these people and these other outsiders and these other, whatever kind of spectrum we're on, or whatever. that's different. That we were, like, you know, music to us represented.
everything anti-vote for me.
But did it feel weird to transcend that and become mainstream, massive? Yes.
It's still weird sometimes.
What is the juxtaposition? I mean, it has to be so strange. You're these rebels and then all of a sudden you're the number one fucking band in the world.
And then, yeah, and it's, it was tough. It was maybe tougher for me because I was more boots on the ground, in the scene and with people, and now it's like, especially in the 80s in Atlanta, it was like, uh,
you know, fuck major. Anyone who signs with a major label, man, fuck that. You know what I mean? And I'm like, yeah, you know, power to the people, or whatever, you know, and then it's like, you're on MTV 30 times a day and, you know, in between fucking Toyota commercials and Snapple or whatever, you know what I mean? So, and it's weird, because our politics are so in line with so many of the, like, the alternative politics of music, the way, you know, uh, that would lay the grunge, or whatever, you know, so, you know, I'm the same age as all of the grunge bands, but I don't exist in the 90s in the same way.
We weren't, you know what I mean? Right, right. Because we were doing something, but it is funny, you know, people say, well, Kirk, no fucking label is signing Kirk Cobain today. But, as a matter of fact, Kirk and our generation of people were, we were talking about compliance and defiance. You're making a mistake.
Fuck it. It's my mistake to make. It's my band. It's my art. And people.
may, we may, and my kind of generation, it's not about being old, but now I think there's so much compliance. Okay. I don't want to cause any trouble at the record label.
this is, we're all distorted right now with social media and all the different avenues for people to get attention and to get famous. It's so, so easy. I shouldn't say it's easy because it's rare, but common. So, it's like, it's more, it's more highlighted, which way you can go to achieve success. But do you remember that famous time where Kurt Cobain and Nirvana were playing and they were forcing them to lip sync?
Yeah, yeah.
And so, what did Kurt do? Did he start reading out of a book or something like that? Like, he did a bunch of wild things?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. I mean...
See if you can find that, Jamie, because it's kind of hilarious.
Yeah, I know.
Nobody did that at the time and they were telling them, no, no, no, you can't play live. Yeah, here it is. Set to perform the recent single Smells Like Teen Spirit, the British music chart television program Top of the Pops. Time to show the policy requiring artists to sing live vocals over pre-recorded backtracks. As you would expect, Kurt Cobain and his bandmates would not let this go without having some fun.
So, they started fucking around in the middle of the song. The result was, and still, one of the greatest middle fingers to live performances ever, the band literally made its own Shred video.
Yeah, amazing. Yeah, because he got to sing the live vocal over the track. Yeah,
so he started fucking around and coming up with new lines. That's great. Yeah. I mean,
we loved the replacements. You know, that was like a band, like, their being on Saturday Night Live was a disaster. But we thought, that's our band. You know what I mean? I remember every fucking person that we knew in Atlanta that Saturday night that the replacements came on and made in TV.
on Saturday Night Live. We all were at parties and watching it and getting completely shit-faced. Watching, they like shaved their eyebrows off and shit and were rolling around and changed clothes, and people were like, oh dear. You know,
we were like, yeah,
cheering it on. Like, that's how you, that's it. Isn't that part of one of the goals is to be that big of a pain in the ass to the, and who are you being? a pain in the ass to? But some authority.
Right.
Something that says you can't do that, or this is the way it goes and that changes, you know, but I think as a youth, that's definitely something I'm not feeling with a lot of bands. I mean, I think it's there in the punk scene and stuff like that, but they're not getting access to that. Green Day is still that way.
The carrot is still dangled right in front of everybody's face. It's so close now. You know, especially with people that make it independently, through YouTube and TikTok and all these different venues. There's just so many different ways that someone could become massively successful now.
See, this is where I become the time traveler. I am from the last century. I get it. I find, I don't, you know, I think a guy smashing his nuts on a rail on a skateboard is as funny as anyone, but I've seen it. You know what I mean?
Yeah.
It's not like, you know what I mean? It's not like Steve Coogan or something. You know what I mean? Like Kraft and like Subtext and like all this other weird cerebral stuff with comedy or whatever. I just don't, I will never,
I guess, it's just me as well. The things that I, the cinema that I enjoy, the books I read, the records that I listen to, there is, all of them, if there's one thing in common, there's a level of craft.
There's a difference between having, it's the difference between having a fine meal at a very nice restaurant versus eating garbage. Yeah. Eating tasty garbage. And TikTok is tasty garbage.
Yeah, you're right. That's absolutely, I've never thought about it like that.
It's bad for you and you can't put it down, and you keep going to it and you over-consume it.
And at least when you do, when it's just visual, you don't get a big stain on your shirt.
But you get a stain, I think you get a stain.
on your brain.
Yeah, I really do. I do. I think so much of what's going on today, like, even if I just waste 10 minutes scrolling through TikTok, when it's over, I just feel like, confused. Like, what am I doing? Like, why am I fucking paying attention to this shit?
I don't have any, I never had my, I never did any of that.
You don't have Facebook, Twitter, nothing?
No. I mean, the band has one, I guess. That's perfect. I don't, personally. Good.
I never tweeted or any of those things.
Good for you.
And it's funny, my phone, like, I'm still this way, you wanna,
my best friends, like, the three or four people in the world that, like, I'm super, super, the closest people, we talk on the phone. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Like, I love talking on the phone.
For hours. You know what I mean? About whatever. So it's, I, I get it, but I don't, I'm one of those older people, I just, Well,
you developed in a different time, and this time is fucking bizarre.
I can't imagine spending your life, grown ass people, spending all of their time playing video games. That's a real thing.
Well, at least that's exciting.
It is?
Yeah, video games, some video games.
Why does it give you a shock?
No, some video games are so immersive, man. You have 3D sound and incredible graphics. Running through corridors and people are chasing you, it's very exciting. And it hits all of your dopamine receptors and just, like, it fires you up. I mean, video games are pretty fucking amazing now.
But it's just that the world that we're living in today is, it's not designed for human beings. It's designed to capture human beings. Capture your attention. It's not, it's not a, like, if you're spending your time going from a coffee shop to a restaurant, to a bookstore, to a record store, to a live concert. Yeah.
To an art gallery.
These are human experiences. These are human experiences. But if you're spending your time arguing with people on Twitter all day, like, nothing is more depressing to me than seeing old rock stars argue about politics on Twitter. It is so goddamn depressing watching rock stars virtue signal and, uh, attacking people personally for having differing political beliefs. Like, and then looking at their timeline and realizing these poor fucks are addicted to this shit and they're doing this five, six hours every day.
Get off my lawn!
Yeah,
it's get off my lawn.
Get off my lawn!
But it's, you know, it's fucking rock stars. It's like, good lord, man. Do you have friends? Like, get out. Get out of the house.
Stop doing this.
We just, you know, it's funny, we were gone for three months. We did the States on this latest tour. We played a lot of new songs from our latest record. It was amazing. And then we finished in Europe.
And my wife and I stayed in Sicily and went back to London at the end.
And I've been doing it for 35 years. of that. You know, 1990, first time I go to Europe. And it's still like, I don't care 35 years, it's a lot of shows. I don't care if I wake up and I'm tired.
And we have friends all over the place, which is a beautiful thing. Friends in Amsterdam, friends in Paris, friends in London, friends in Madrid, friends in this, you know, Germany, whatever. But we're.
constantly out doing, you know what I mean? There's no way. we're not hitting the town in any town and finding what it has. that makes maybe it unique or special, whether that tastes or whatever. I mean, it's, I, it sounds silly, but like I said before, there's still adventure in the world.
And I'm not talking about jumping out of an airplane adventure or, you know, that just stimuli.
I think it's good cognitive nutrition. I think it's actually good for you to experience different cultures and see how people hang out and see their restaurants and see, you know, weddings.
And you see everyone's doing the same shit. You know, they're just styling it a little different.
Doing it in a different way. But it flavors your understanding of human beings.
That's why my very, very special place, the thing that I love almost more than any other thing, is Jamaica.
Really?
I've been, I was lucky enough to have a dear friend introduce me to Jamaica 30 years ago. And I have friends there and uh, I have a whole life there. that has nothing to do with anything other than Jamaica, shit. And I go to the country and, like, we like, have like a country kind of life there. You know, by the ocean and no resorts, you know.
The food there is fucking incredible.
amazing food in Jamaica.
Jamaican food is so delicious.
And you have to get out there and eat it, and they have like anything else. You know, the fruits there, the vegetables there, the seafood and, and you know, they say in Jamaica that the goat, a goat in Jamaica, only has one bad day, man, you know. Yeah.
It's not even a whole bad day.
It's just a.
quick moment. One bad moment, and that's a wrap.
One bad moment and the rest we're all happy with.
Yeah, and the rest everyone's eating it. Yeah, that's one of the things I loved about Anthony Bourdain's show. You know, that he would go and really immerse himself in these cultures and eat their food and hang out with their chefs and hang out with the people and get toured. You know, someone would take him on a tour around the town.
You know what happened to, sometimes he would be tired and hungover. Oh yeah,
most of the time.
Yeah, but, but again, you know, I have people, I mean, I get it, man. Everyone has a tough thing, but it's like, oh dear, I don't know, you know, I better get this. I'm like, okay.
If you enjoy what you're doing, being tired's not that bad. No. If you enjoy what you're doing, it's like, so what? Just get up, have a coffee, let's go.
And I, bullshit you not, if, for some reason, I had to like get a quick 20, 25 in, I could curl up right there and do it and you wouldn't even know I was here. I believe you. I'm like expert. That's 35 years of being on the road.
Knowing how to power nap.
I gotta get, I gotta go down, or I'm gonna like be in an intersection waving a gun around with my pants down by my ankles or something.
I've learned how to sleep instantly on planes. I get on a plane and almost always I'm out cold.
Me too. I annoy every single person.
I'm traveling with. Yeah. Like how does he?
sleep so quickly? She's like, what?
How'd you fall asleep that quick? Even with my?
Jamaican dog in my lap. We brought a, when my wife and I were married in Jamaica and we have a little street dog that we brought back.
Oh, that's cool.
Bammy Longface. Yeah. Bammy, she's 35 pounds, but I can even sleep with my Jamaican street dog on my lap.
Ah, that's cool. So Jamaica's your spot, huh?
And they just got hit very hard with this hurricane. So it's, my friends are okay and stuff, but they're, everyone's really shooken up over it in Jamaica.
Ah, it's scary shit, man.
And it's been a bad, they haven't had something like that since 2007 and this was worse.
I saw live footage of it. Some live cell phone footage of it. It's just, unless you've experienced that live, when you're around the sky and the sky becomes an angry monster and everywhere around you is dangerous and the winds are 120 miles an hour. and just like, it's so humbling.
I've never, I mean, I was in a tornado in Atlanta in the early 70s and that was,
I mean, I was probably too young to be like traumatized, but I remember my feeling, my parents' trauma, about this thing going over our house or whatever.
Oh, it's fucking terrifying shit, man.
When it was over, though, when you're a kid, it was like amazing. Like, the whole world was one big pine sap jungle gym. I mean, for weeks, we were just, because you're just climbing in all the fallen trees, and my dad had some old Pontiac and that thing was like a U. in the car, some giant pine tree smashed it. Wow.
So, it was like a surrealist thing, too, as a kid. You know, like, wow, everything's been shaken up.
Yeah, it's also a lesson in the temporary nature of things. You can look out and think, this is my lawn. This is where the cars park. This is how things are. And then, all of a sudden, the sky's like, not today, bitch.
Yeah, yeah.
Let's throw a tree through your fucking house.
What was that commercial in the 70s that Mother Earth gets angry? Remember that? It was like shampoo or something, but it was like, oh, there was their catchphrase and it would be like,
you know. Oh, yeah, I remember that. I don't know,
it was like a, I think it might be shampoo or something.
Something stupid like that.
But, it's true. You know what I mean? You have to do it. I mean, shit, fuck. Katrina is still something like, you know, I love New Orleans.
New Orleans is one of the most special cities in the world and it's still amazing. It's still vibrant, dynamic, alive, but I think the scars of that place are still there. I mean, that was.
devastating. Brutal. Yeah, unbelievably brutal. I mean, when hurricanes hit places and devastate them, it takes decades for them to recover, especially without aid. And then, sometimes it's like the people that are there, they just don't want to do it anymore.
It's like, when you realize you're in a place that this happens and there's other places where this doesn't happen, you just get the fuck out. You know? But there's a humbling of being attached to nature in that way that I think, like, I grew up in Boston, and there's something to the people that live up there that understand that every winter it's going to get so cold that you could die outside. Right. That's a reality that no one in L.A.
experiences. Because in L.A., it's like...
Earthquakes, fire, floods, zombie apocalypse.
You get a little bit of that, but you can kind of get away from that. It's not going to overcome your entire city.
You can build a very high fence and have the state-of-the-art security system.
The fires are wild. I was evacuated three times living in L.A. Because we were in the valley. Yeah, yeah. Three separate times.
The last time, the two houses across the street from my house burnt to the ground. It was wild. It's just wild going through your old neighborhood and seeing just house after house. Like, there's 40 houses in our neighborhood that were burnt to the ground.
We were in Marin County, Northern California, and out in a place called Lagunitas, and this is four or five summers ago. And we just, you know, kept shit in the car. Guitars. You know, there's one guitar. I just can't live without.
Some pictures. Just in case. Both our cars filled because you're out, you know, just ashes falling in the yard every day. Scary.
Well, when it goes bad, it goes real bad. I was filming Fear Factor once and it was about an hour and a half away from L.A. And, um, the fires get so bad. we had to stop shooting and drive home. And on the way home, we were off the 5 freeway and on the way home, the entire right side of the highway for an hour was in flames.
Like, completely in flames, like a Lord of the Rings movie. Like you're waiting for demons to ride horses over the top of the mountains. It was, but it's, there's something about those, those kind of scenes. that's like, it puts you back in check. That's like, hey, man, like.
maybe the things you're concentrating on aren't all that important for real.
I think it also touches us in a, in a, in our animalistic DNA of like, still being that person, you know, these people, again, it's Quest for Fire, being these people who are really not just, completely immersed in their environment as well for survival and sustenance and everything.
Yeah.
That it's still like in the way, I guess, you know, there's an instinctive thing in those moments that, that has to be the exact same chemical reaction in every human being. Mm. In any expanse of time that we've been like this. Yeah.
Yeah. When we were in Sicily, we were at one, I guess there was an eruption there recently.
There's one today or last night.
Yeah. That's right. I was seeing it on the news, but when we were there, there's, we were, um, at, near this one island that had a, a constant eruption. at nighttime. You could see the red at the top of the mountain, just a little bit of red, like, bubbling up off the top of the mountain.
It was so fucking cool.
I've never really got close to something like that. Like I've, you know.
Have you ever done a tour in Hawaii? We fly over in a helicopter. No. Hawaii is wild. The big island is wild because it's growing every year.
Yeah. The lava is constantly flowing into the ocean. You can literally watch the island expand in real time. That's wild. And you fly over in a helicopter, so you're flying over, you're looking down at the lava pouring out of the earth.
Is this Italy? Mount Etna, look at that.
Isn't that wild, man? Sicily, yeah. That's incredible.
Not to be confused with regular Italy.
Yeah, Sicilians think of themselves very differently. Look how beautiful that is, man. God, that's so fucking cool. We visited Pompeii, too.
I did that as a kid. That's crazy. And it's still one of the coolest. But I was like, you know, it's funny when I look back. You know, they have like, up the streets, they'll have like the fountain at the end of the street where the water would come and you could see like where people lean their hand.
There's like an indention for the centuries of people leaning in to get a sip of water. Yeah. And I just put my hand on that as a kid. Just like, I could, I almost couldn't stop like thinking about that. I do that all the time.
I do, you know, I do that with my kids. when I'm like fucking around. I'm like, shake the hand. I shook Chuck Berry's hand. Bo Diddley's hand.
Little Richard, I shook Little Richard's hand. John Lee Hooker. You know, they're all like laughing.
Damn, you met John Lee Hooker?
I did one time, yeah. Wow.
That's a guy I'd love to meet.
It was, his handshake was like amazing. It was just like a, he touched my hand and it was just like a, like a cloud. It was the softest, like pillow. I was like, wow. And it was early, you know, early days.
We headlined the Memphis Blues Festival and he went on before us and I was like, I just don't think that's right. Right, right, right. I know we're selling a lot of records, but that's,
It's crazy.
That's John Lee Hooker, man. Yeah. Never get out of these blues alive. Yeah.
Boom, boom, boom. Yeah, he was as cool as it gets. That's amazing, man. Have you ever met anybody that, just like gave, you're like, I can't even believe I'm talking to this person.
Yes. But, one time it was Dr. J. Oh, wow. I was at some party in Vegas.
This was back in the mid-90s. Some VH1 thing or something. And I was standing outside. I was at the Hard Rock, and this is the guy's name, Steve Wynn, who owns the thing, the Hard Rock. Wynn?
Yeah.
Or something.
He owns a bunch of that stuff.
Yeah, and this was 30 years ago. And I was there and he was like, Oh, hey, Chris, have you ever met Julius Irving? And I was, I mean, I was like, I loved Dr. J. so much.
growing up. He and George Gerber were my heroes. I played basketball. And I was like, and he was just so cool. And he was like, Hey, man, nice to meet you.
And I was just, I was like, a little kid. I just couldn't believe that I met Dr. J. I shook Dr. J's hand.
I gotta throw him in there, too. Wow. And the other one would be.
Robert Altman, the director. Oh, really? I met Robert at a, at a party. I was at a party, like a Donatella Versace party in London. And there were a bunch of famous people there.
But everyone sat down at a table and, you know, and different things. And he was, I was just like,
oh, and he was with Richard E. Grant. They were making Gosford Park. Richard E. Grant also, I was impressed to see in me because of the film Withnail, and I is one of my favorite movies of all time.
And there's Withnail, you know, like there he is. I mean, it's Richard, but, but there's Bob Altman, who is, you know, lord of my imagination and, you know, one of the best film, my favorite film, some of my favorite films of all time. And so, after, when the dinner kind of like is less whatever, people are up talking to other people, I just go over to him. I'm like, fuck it, I'm just gonna sit. You know, because I would be a little bit timid or shy in that situation.
And I would never think anyone, I still to this day never imagine. anyone knows who I am or what I do, or whatever. It's a good way to go through life, actually. You know what I mean? I'm being totally honest.
Yeah.
And then you find out most people don't know who you are, give a fuck, what you do.
But I go over and I introduce myself and I instantly recognize that he smells like weed. Like he's, you know, got a roach in his pocket or something. And I'm like, Bob, are you holding? He goes, yeah, you want to get stoned? I was like, yeah.
So he pulls out a joint and we're sitting there and we're just talking about weed. you know, he's like, it's hard to get, I get this from California, you know. And I was like, wow, man, you know. And we smoked a joint and talked a little bit about music and jazz and London. And that was kind of it.
And he was like, oh, you should come by the office. And I never took him up on it, like the production office, just because I just, I felt out of my depth. You know what I mean? I should have. But, but that, that was like one of those things I will always remember.
It's interesting when you meet the people that were heroes to you and they're just, they're human beings. They're just normal. And then you realize, like, especially in your case, like you've become that to other people. And then some kid will come up to you, Chris Robinson? Yeah.
And you're like, yeah, fucking normal person, just a person. But to them, you're, you're the black crows. You're not a normal person. You're a fucking God. You know, it's, it's weird.
You're an inaccessible, like plateau of society that very few people ever experience.
I think music is a part of that as well. Yeah. You know, like you said, I mean, and I, you know, there will always be, I don't know, there, I think that there's a connection in the, in creation, art, you know, where does the idea come from? I mean, I think there's people who can manipulate that and make like, I'm going to make a pop song and it's going to sound like this. And not saying that it's not special, not good, but then I think there's other things that there's, I'm not using it in a Christian way or whatever, but there's a divine spark of something that happens or whatever.
drops in your lap, imagination, wise. The muse, you know, the muse is real.
The muse is real. I think it is real too.
And the one thing that I, I do believe about the muse, and I consider the muse a female presence, a female dynamic, you know? And I feel that, that the muse, at least my, the muse that I feel, is, it's a very jealous thing. And I don't mean it in like any possessive way or anything weird, but just like, the second, your devotion is turned somewhere else, the muse could leave you. That might be as superstitious as throwing salt over your shoulder or whatever, but I honestly believe that. And it makes it difficult in life, because life isn't just the muse.
Life isn't just the dream world that I live in, and my imagination. And the ideas have to come from somewhere. It's not just singing and dancing, and you have to have ideas. What is this? You know, for me, I've always had to be involved with every aspect.
The album covers, the stage design, the fucking laminate. Everything has to fit into a world that I can feel like I want to inhabit, you know? Something that's comfortable and interesting. And I think, if you remove, so, it's not just the musical part of the muse, it's the whole thing. And I think if you're like, oh, you know what?
I'm going to get into, I'm not, if my reverence for that goes away, and even in the slightest, I feel that she will turn her back on me forever and I'll have nothing, no more poetry, no more music.
Well, you're probably right. Because let's assume the muse is real. The muse would probably reserve its greatest inspiration for its most devouted followers.
I think so.
Yeah. The most devout followers are the ones that are going to be adherent to a ritual, sit in front of the computer or the notepad.
or however you write,
and just spend time. Yeah, I could never,
ever write lyrics on a screen. I could never do it.
You write it on paper?
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
I'm like completely.
Does anybody write lyrics on screens?
I think, yeah. I think a lot of people.
Like artists that you know of? Yeah, yeah. Interesting.
I think a lot of hip-hop people write rhymes on their phones.
Yeah, I know a lot of guys do that.
I've seen, I know a lot of rock and roll people who are like, hey, you know.
Well, the phone thing's convenient. I transfer all my notes to phones because it's, and occasionally I'll write something on the phone. The best thing about the phone, honestly, is like sometimes I have an idea, maybe I've had a couple of cocktails too, which is like, you know, memory is slippery. When you're drinking with friends and you're having a good time, but you have an idea, I'll just like run into a bathroom stall and I'll hit the voice recorder and just say it.
I do that too. I do the voice recorder as well, for like if I'm plucking around a guitar and I get a little something that I like. Mm-hmm. Or when Rich and I are writing songs too, like if we're not, but you know, I've never had a home studio. I've never wanted that.
Really?
I want to go to a place.
and part of my thing is I like everyone's contribution. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? I mean, in The Black Crows, Rich, and I write the songs, but the contributions can be musical or it could be anything.
Right.
I mean, sometimes it's the engineer and the producer and the band.
It's the vibe of those people being together.
And it's all of that circulating and percolating and making something, everyone in on it. You know what I mean? Like an old submarine movie or something. You're being depth charged and everyone has a job to do, so you don't die.
Right.
You know? But I think that's important for me. You know, like I love, I mean, Prince is one of my. musically, I mean, there's an argument you made that maybe Prince was the baddest motherfucker of all time.
Definitely an argument.
Yeah. I mean, because there's people who can write, there's people who can play, there's people who can produce and record, and there's people who can dance and sing and perform. That guy did it all at its ultimate level.
Every musical instrument.
I mean, yeah.
Yeah, he was insane. He was so good. And he was so different. I remember when the first album came out, it was just that picture of him with his shirt off, with like his hair, you know, and you hear the songs and you're like, wow, this guy's out there.
Yeah, the second record, Prince.
Is that the second record?
Yeah, the first one's called For You, and there's a picture of him, kind of like, it's, he was,
For You, is that one with Jack Me Off?
No, that's later.
Oh, okay.
For You, the first single is Soft and Wet. Oh. Which is before Jack You Off. It has to be Soft and Wet. And so I always laugh because I was, you know, by the time we're in the suburbs, I live in Atlanta, you know, I'm obsessed with black radio.
at the time. I'm only listening to V-103 FM Atlanta. My first concert is Slave and Cool and the Gang and Sky at the Omni. Oh, I'm going to see The Time, Vanity Six, SOS, Lakeside, Cameo. Oh,
wow, Morris Day.
Yeah, that was one of the best concerts I've ever seen. Wow. At that, you know, at that time in my life, and only listening to that radio. So the first Prince single comes out, and it's Soft and Wet. It's a great song.
It's like funky and cool. This little kind of disco breakdown in the middle. A little roller skating shit in the middle. And I'm like, but I didn't really know what Soft and Wet was. yet.
You know what I mean? I was like, is this like a washcloth that he left in the back? What is this? Yeah.
No, he was a character.
I never met him. I never even, I saw him, I only saw him in concert once.
Really?
And it was fantastic. He was amazing.
He was doing a residency once at House of Blues in Vegas. But it was like really late at night and I had to do something in the morning and I passed on going. To this day, I kill myself.
Yeah, because he would do the concert and then go play another eight hours or whatever.
Yeah, well, he was going up really late. It's like, it was after midnight and I was like, I got shit I have to do tomorrow. I can't do this. I can't be that tired. To this day, I'm like, fuck.
You know, it's funny, the other person I met that put me very much at ease, but when I first said, hello, that I was totally freaked out was George Jones. Oh, wow. I met him at the Ryman Auditorium after Johnny Cash passed away.
It's like meeting Jesus at the Sistine Chapel.
man. I mean, I was like, I got ushered into this dressing room, you know, as a guest. Chris Christopherson was there. I was amazed to meet him. And, but I'm like, fucking George Jones.
Old Possum's right there. And I end up talking to him, and he was really, really sweet, man. I wanted to talk about Kansas City Chiefs. He loved the Chiefs. And I used to watch football back then.
And, but I will always remember. So, they were, he was taking over for Johnny Cash singing,
I think it's Johnny Cash. Maybe it was Waylon's part. I don't know the song. that great. The Highwaymen.
I was a highwayman on the Columbia highway.
Yeah.
And he was the dam builder. Mmm. On the Columbia River or whatever. But, he, he kept looking at the lyrics and he went, I'm a dam builder?
And Chris Christopherson was like, man, it's not like, he goes, I don't think my fans want me to, I'm a dam builder. I mean, he just kept thought it was so funny. And I was like, what amazing, you know, that I got to be in there. But the other funny part of that is, they were like, Chris, we take a picture with George and Chris. And I'm like, I'm getting my fucking picture taken with George Jones and Chris Christopherson.
That's pretty wild.
This is the, like,
coolest thing.
And I'm like, I'm like in the middle. You know? And I'm like, man, this is the coolest day ever. And then, the door opens.
Look at that. My ex-wife is there too.
Wow.
But then the door opens and Al Gore gets in the picture and ruins it. Get out of the picture!
How did he get in there? I don't know. Did he start talking about the climate? Well, yeah.
That was his initial climate thing. But I'm like, let's talk about your wife, telling people what they can listen to. Tip of Gore. Get out of here. Who are you?
Self-righteous. Yeah,
people forgot about that. She was the one who made, well, it actually helped albums. Because when they put those warning labels.
Everyone wanted them.
Everybody wanted a warning label one. Yeah.
I never even got a warning label. Oh,
I remember when N.
W.
A. had the warning label on them.
I mean, all of it. But I mean, I'm like, you guys are really seriously upset about the band Wasp. I mean, like,
it's really ridiculous now in hindsight. But I remember, you know, I was in high school at the time. It was a big thing.
Well, they're telling you what to do again. You know what I mean? And a lot of it was racist. You know what I mean?
Oh, yeah. But it was like, well, I guess it was out of high school. It was like when rap music was really starting to emerge and those lyrics were so shocking, like early Ice T, Ice Cube, all that stuff.
it happened with rock and roll. Sure.
Elvis Presley. They wouldn't let him shake his hips on TV.
I mean, it happened with Chuck Berry, too. You know what I mean? And there's that, the initial phase of the cosmic fucking blood and brimstone of rock and roll ends pretty quickly when it starts. And then you turn into like the Paul Enka, Pat Boone sort of style until the Beatles really come back around. Right, right.
You know, you have lots of cool records in between there, but they're small.
But it's interesting, like that where things come in waves. They come in waves of great artists, for whatever reason.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think, I mean, at least if you look at like, when I look at my age people, we were just, we were close enough to the Beatles and close enough to the Sex Pistols and close, you know what I mean? And the Stones and Zeppelin. That shit's long gone for a lot of younger people, you know, as time moves on.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
I have to ask you a question because, before I forget, did Rick Rubin try to get you guys to change the name of your band? Yes. And did he really try to get you to change the name of the band to KKK, the Cobb County Crows?
I know that the king of yoga, or whatever the fuck, he's selling, whatever, you know, whatever his, you know, but under that beard, that guy, and it's funny, because good for Rick Rubin, whatever, he can do, whatever he wants. You know, he has very little, but he did say, that's a true story. And by the way, it was unimaginably offensive. Unimaginably.
Why would you say that to us? Explain the conversation.
How does it happen?
Because I think, well, we were called Mr. Crow's Garden and it's a book. It's like a children's book from like the twenties, called Mr. Crow's Garden, with an E, so it's a name, you know, he was Mr. Crow.
And we were kind of, you know, into, like psychedelic, you know, like it was our, whatever, that was the name of our band. So when we made Shake Your Money Maker, a few years had gone by since we first were Mr. Crow's Garden, and now we don't sound like that. And George Sikoulias, our producer and our A&R guy and our lifeline to the music business, to the world, who signed us and stuff, he was like, we need, you know, we got to change the name. So there was a little bit of time where before we'd said we'll be the Black Crows.
And that's when Rick interjected that. that's what he, because we're Southern, aren't all Southern people fear-driven, ignorant, bigots? Isn't every one of them?
But he didn't say it that way, right? So how did he say it?
No, he said it like, it'll be cool, it'll be like controversial. I'm like, yeah. Jesus Christ. Yeah.
So I, and I, and how did he bring it up?
Like, I think this is a cool, you're from Cobb, Cobb County. See, we're not from there, but my, when we, we're from Atlanta, by the way, it's fucking hard to get it to change Wikipedia that they're like, we're being rich or born in Marietta. We're not, we're from Atlanta, Georgia, you know, third generation Atlantans. And I was like, my grandfather was born in Atlanta in 1906.. You know what I mean?
So it's hard to get that shit changed. But he was like, oh, so you live in Cobb County, C-O-B-B. Well, you should change it to Cobb County Crows and put them all Ks. And we were like, it's, it's, that's so foul and disgusting.
It's also, it's such a crazy idea to not have like context to it. Just to, to, to imagine that you're going to call a band the KKK. Like, what the fuck? Cobb County Crows actually sounds cool.
With Cs. You know,
it was the Cobb County CCC. Nope, no problems. Great name. Nothing wrong with it. You probably achieved the exact same success as the Black Crows.
But,
I don't know, because the poet in me and the, the, the armchair occultist, would believe that, that the only way we got, we achieved what we achieved, became. what we became, is because of the way the, the, some reason, also leaving the E in it, made, that was the one thing that I said we would do. So it's, you know, and by the way, leaving the E in it was also great, and it's still great to this day. when we're, someone requests something or wants something from you and they misspell the name of the band, we're like, no. Fuck that.
No. You could've,
could've looked that out a little bit,
a little bit of a search. It's right there. You know what I mean?
It's not that hard to add an E. I just can't imagine that conversation. Someone saying,
I can't imagine it either, to be honest.
Rick is a friend of mine. Just to, you know, for clarity.
I don't hate Rick Rubin or anything. He's a genius. He did say that.
He's a fascinating guy. I mean, he's a very interesting thinker, and I can imagine this idea intrusively embedding itself in his mind and then coming out of his mouth. I just can't see how anybody would.
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