With a title like Screamin’ At The Sky, you knew this was going to be a rocking album. With sonics exploding and lyrics straight on, Black Stone Cherry has made their eighth studio record a memorable one. They have outdone themselves yet again by focusing on the lyrics and giving them an adrenaline shot with guitars, drums, and bass. For a band twenty-three years old, they know not only what they want but their fans as well. “I think our original goal was just to be able to go out and play music,” drummer John Fred Young told me back in 2020 when the band was stuck at home during the pandemic. “Back then we were kids, we didn’t have families obviously, but we didn’t have a backup plan, we didn’t have anything in our minds except for, let’s go play rock & roll.”
That small dream that started in a tiny house out back of Young’s family property in Kentucky with Young, singer Chris Robertson and guitar player Ben Wells has metamorphosed into hit records, sold-out shows and a reputation for being the go-to band on big-ticket tours. With a catalog of rockers like “Lonely Train,” “White Trash Millionaire,” “Feeling Fuzzy” and “Me & Mary Jane” add in “When The Pain Comes,” “Nervous,” “Not Afraid” and “R.O.A.R.” from their latest album and why would you ever want to miss out on seeing them live when they pass through your neck of the woods.
Conscious of wanting to rock out but have meaningful lyrics has always been a top priority for BSC, according to Young. “It’s always straight from the heart and I don’t mean to sound like cliché or anything but they come to us, you know. It’s through personal life events. So I think that’s what makes those songs genuine. It’s not something we set out to write, it’s something that we go, you know what, this happened and we’re going to let it come out and that’s not something we try to do. So they’re genuine and they mean something to people … [and] if you’ve written something that will live on forever and generations will listen to it. That’s cool.”
With a new tour supporting legends Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top, you have plenty of shows left to catch them; albeit playing a limited set but a knockout set at that. Thrilled to be back on the road after the confining times of the pandemic where they weren’t able to promote Human Condition, it’s pedals down for these southern boys. With the addition of Steve Jewell on bass, who brings a surge of energy to an already charged-up group, Black Stone Cherry are back, baby, watch them roar!
Speaking with Young a few days ago before he headed out for some weekend shows, he talked with me about the new album, this killer ticket tour, Jewell fitting right in with BSC and learning to tone down and play for the song.
You guys are currently out on the road on a big tour. How long has it being going on?
Let’s see, we did Shiprocked at the start of February and that was wonderful. We did about a week out there on the open water and had a great time. Then we came home for about two days, home just enough to wash clothes, and then we headed out with Saint Asonia. We did a really cool co-headlining tour with those guys and that was about a month long. So I guess we started with Skynyrd probably about three weekends ago and it’s been awesome. Those guys are legends and heroes to us, growing up and listening to them; and obviously ZZ Top too. Getting to be out with them is a big honor for us.
Speaking of ZZ Top, what makes Frank Beard such a great drummer, at least to you?
Well, if you go back and listen to all those records, you can hear he’s a world-class drummer and it’s just crazy to be out with those guys and think about all that stuff. Like, growing up, my favorite record was Tres Hombres and Rio Grande Mud, and then later on Recycler and Eliminator. Obviously Dusty passed [in 2021] and I hated to hear about that. The last show Dusty played was in Louisville, Kentucky, and we opened for them on that show – it was a one-off – and then he passed a couple of days later. But those guys are legends. Nobody will ever be ZZ Top and Frank did some great stuff on those records. It’s just cool. It’s like, being out with Skynyrd and ZZ Top and watching these guys that are world class musicians go up there and play these phenomenal hit songs that you hear on the radio sixty times a day, or 6000 times a day (laughs). You have to kind of pinch yourself every once in a while and go, “Oh yeah, okay, this is real life,” (laughs).
So tell us about making Screamin’ At The Sky
We were talking about where did we want to record and where did we want to do the drums at, cause you have to have a great-sounding room for drums. With technology now, you can get amazing guitar sounds and bass sounds anywhere but the drums, you want to try to get a great drum sound in a great room. We tossed around some ideas and there’s an old theatre called the Plaza Theatre in Glasgow, Kentucky, and we do our annual Christmas charity shows there every two years and the sound in there is amazing. The place was built probably in the 1920’s or 1930’s, so we actually hauled all our gear over and set it up downstairs in the basement dressing room and we recorded the drums there. When we got that done, we went back to my house and recorded everything else in my back two bedrooms. I built a vocal booth out of PVC pipe and moving blankets (laughs). It was DIY but we made it work. We had our buddy Jordan Westfall, who does our front-of-house for us, our engineer on the road, and he engineered and mixed it for us and did an amazing job.
We actually did it in two sessions. We recorded one portion, about seven or eight songs, in the wintertime. So we’re hauling all this gear and the drums and mics and everything into the Plaza Theatre and we’re going down these icy steps and trying not to fall (laughs). After we got those tracks done we went out on the road and then we actually went back in in the summertime.
I remember the first time that I sat down and recorded some drum tracks. Chris and Steve got some scratch guitar tracks, you know, reference to the songs we were going to play, and I remember going downstairs and listening and I was like, man, it was like listening to John Bonham recordings in the castle. It was amazing. I thought, we really captured a great, great organic drum sound and I’m really pleased with the record. We wrote the record at soundchecks and on the road and we’re super, super proud of it. We got a new single, “When The Pain Comes,” that is actually doing really well right now. It’s on the radio and I think it just moved to #22 this week. A lot of stations are playing it and we’re really thankful people are digging it.
You said this album was written pretty much on the road. You must have some really good equipment on the bus for recording.
Yeah, it’s pretty wild. Chris brings out his laptop and he’s got a small interface and we kind of get in the back of the bus on days off and when we’re in kind of writing season, that’s what we call it, and we’ll put like what we call thumb drums down, which are just kind of place markers, and if somebody has a riff or an idea, technology has been great for the process of demoing stuff, for sure. I think there was even a solo or two that Chris recorded on the back of the bus that we might have even used on the record. But at the end of the day, I think the most important thing is having an amazing song that really reaches out and grabs people. That is going to always replace the amount of studio gear or anything you have.
But we’re lucky. We’re still writing stuff that people, our fans, really still dig. And we’re always trying to reinvent the wheel but also keep it to the core of what we do as Black Stone Cherry, and what we’ve always done. You can’t make the same record twice, for sure, cause you’re going to grow; you grow as artists and you grow as a band and writers. You don’t hardly have the time anymore, the turnaround time, or the budget for it, to go into the studio and just demo stuff. You kind of have to have that done so when you go into the studio, you’ve got everything the way you want it. Of course there is stuff that always changes in the studio. But we’ve written a lot of our records that way, on the back of the bus and at soundchecks, hotel lobbies, things like that, on the fly.
Chris’s lyrics continue to be very revealing and very emotional. Was there a song in particular on Screamin’ At The Sky, lyric-wise, that made the hair on the back of your neck stand up when you heard him put those words out?
I think a lot of this record, it’s very transparent with a lot of emotions that we were all feeling. Of course we all four write lyrics and music, we all four have these different interpretations of how we feel, and when it comes together that’s what’s nice about having four guys that write in a band. But I love the heavy stuff. I always have, and always will. So like “Nervous” and “When The Pain Comes,” “Screamin’ At The Sky,” all of those songs are bangers, just sick to play live, and every time the guys come up with a killer riff, it’s always magical and stuff. But I think two of the songs me on the record that probably stuck out more, just because of the topic of the songs, was a song called “Here’s To The Hopeless.” That song, I remember when we were writing it, it was like, man, this is an anthem. It’s got a great positive message to it. And there’s a song called “R.O.A.R. (Raindrops On A Rose)” and that song is really special. Jordan our engineer, him and Chris started writing that song back during, I think, 2020. So those two songs definitely I think are my hair on the back of the neck songs. But we’re proud of the whole record, from top to bottom, every song on there. There’s just a lot of great stuff.
So it’s not easy to figure out what to add into a setlist
As you progress, I think as a musician in a band, if you put out a lot of records it’s hard because on a new record, you want to play just about darn every song on the record. But you’ve also got to play the stuff that you put out in the past. It’s like we got to play “Lonely Train” and “White Trash” and “Blame It On The Boom Boom” and “In My Blood” and “Burnin’” but at the same time, you got to play your current single off the record. But there is also so many songs on records that you want to play but it depends on if you’re opening or not. We’re opening for ZZ Top and Lynyrd Skynyrd, we’re doing thirty minutes, so we can’t obviously do a lot. We do maybe seven songs but even on a headlining show, if we’re doing an hour and a half, it’s hard to get everything you want to in there and that’s the bittersweet thing. Sometimes you don’t get around to playing everything you want. But it’s a good problem too cause you’ve got that catalog of so many albums and we’re fortunate enough to have eight records. It’s a good problem (laughs).
On which of these songs do you see Black Stone Cherry’s sense of humor the most?
I don’t think there was a lot of humor on this one really (laughs), if I’m being totally honest. It was probably more on the side of true transparent emotion on this one, I think, than probably humor. Probably the next one will be a comedy record, I promise (laughs). We try to always balance everything out, you know, the dark and the light. We did do a really cool cover this time of “What’s Love Got To Do With It” by Tina Turner. We were actually in England and we were like sitting in a hotel and we were going to do a premier for the Live From The Royal Albert Hall DVD and we rented out this small theatre in London and we flew in and went to the hotel and we were just hanging out and doing some promo that week while we were in London. I think we were at the Hard Rock and I was sitting in the lobby and Chris went to his room for a minute and her song came on and I was like, man, Chris could tear that up lyrically, he could sing the crap out of that. When he came back, I said, “Chris, we need to do a cover of this, man.” So one day we were on the road when we got back to the States, and at soundcheck, I said, “Let’s see what it’s like,” and we started working on it and that’s a special song. Obviously, she passed away and we had no idea that we’d be covering that song and she would be passing but she was such an iconic artist and I’m glad we did our version of that.
How easy was it for Steve to become one of you guys?
We’ve known Steve for probably fifteen years, at least. Steve fit right in, man, he’s just a country boy like we are. He had grown up in the music scene too. He’s about eight years younger than we are and he doesn’t have as many wrinkles (laughs). He’s just a super, super, great human being, an amazing musician, funny as heck. He played guitar in a lot of local bands and had done stuff in Nashville. Him and a bunch of our buddies around home had a band called Otis that were a great blues rock band and he played guitar in that band. But man, he’s just a monster bass player and it’s super fun being onstage with him. He’s all over the place and such a great entertainer. We’re just all kind of cut from the same cloth of growing up around southern Kentucky so it fit perfectly.
Speaking of southern guys, I spoke with Artimus Pyle a few weeks ago and he mentioned you guys.
Oh, did you talk to Artimus! We love him! Artimus is like the coolest dude, man. He came up and did a show at the Plaza Theatre I was telling you about, him and The Headhunters did a New Year’s Eve show there. I came over to see them, and him and Fred during Fred’s drum solo started doing a double solo and they got me up there so I switched out with Fred and there’s some footage of Fred and Artimus and then I stepped up and it was Artimus and I doing a solo together and then Fred gets back up. It’s really cool and he’s such a great guy and talented musician. He’s a living legend for sure.
What it was like during the pandemic for you guys? When we talked for Human Condition, you were being John Fred the farmer.
Yeah, I did a lot of farming things with my uncle. I cut a lot of wood that year, but man, my dad and uncle have cattle and they’re always getting out of the fences every other day so there is something going on here at the farm all the time. I had some really pretty Orpingtons and this amazing, awesome black rooster and he was just the sweetest thing ever. But we have a bunch of coyotes down here and it’s like, man, it’s so hard (laughs). Everybody loves chickens but it’s just part of nature and it happens sometimes.
But I always try to look at the positive on anything that’s a negative. It was a change, obviously, a great disruption for everything on Earth. That year we toured six dates. We played some shows with Steel Panther in Florida and maybe one in Tennessee and one at home. It was just crazy, not being able to tour, not being able to go out and do what you’ve done and worked for your whole life. Definitely don’t want to go through that again. But I think that the positive of it, my wife and I had our third daughter born that year in August so I was home and that was a great time to me to just have time home with my family. But it was a nightmare (laughs).
Is there a song in your catalog where you had to actually tone yourself down because you were going so far over the top on the drums and it wasn’t right for the song?
That’s probably every song (laughs). There’s a bunch of different, I think, mindsets that drummers have and I think some guys don’t show off and play for the song and there’s guys that do their own thing, like Keith Moon. I think I fall somewhere in the middle there but I probably lean more toward the Keith Moon. I always want my drum parts to stand out and be noticed and be unique and different; but also, as you grow as a musician, you understand where to put those things. I think as a songwriter too, I’m terrible at guitar – I can’t play guitar for crap and my dad tried to teach me as a kid, bless his heart – so I picked up the drums. Growing up, I loved The Beatles and the Motown stuff.
But I’ve always tried to find drum parts that actually complement the vocals. I’m kind of in an amazing situation cause I’m in a band with dudes I love to death and respect and they’re fabulous musicians so when it comes to studio stuff too it’s cool because there’s a lot of times if I get stuck on something, they’ll help me out. They’ll say, “Hey man, try this fill or try something right here.” Just like on guitar parts, I’ve hummed guitar part ideas and things to the guys. But as far as recording goes, I think when you’re in there, I always look at it as I’m going to play what I feel but also play what makes the song feel amazing. And just have fun with it and I think that’s the most important thing – to express your personality.
There’s a cool thing that Drumeo did, the drum channel, where they take a famous drummer and they give him a song that is stripped of the drums and it’s totally in a genre that he would never play. Like, they had Liberty DeVitto from Billy Joel, they threw up a Deftones song, “My Own Summer,” and he crushed it. The drummer in the studio is playing to a guitar, vocal, and bass track and the drums are stripped out so it’s the drummer’s interpretation of what they would play on it. And they try to find songs that these drummers never heard. If they have a Jazz guy, they’ll play like some kind of crazy rock song. If they’ve got a rock drummer in, they’ll play something off the wall in like Jazz or whatever. It’s a really, really cool thing but I think one thing that makes a great drummer is being able to play many different styles of music but put your thumbprint on that drum track, make it sound like yourself. I think that is the best advice I could ever give any young drummer, or any young musician: play what you feel and make sure you put your thumbprint on it. When you’re growing up you have these musical idols and you’re trying to imitate these amazing artists, and that’s part of it for sure, but as you grow you start taking what they did and you form your own thumbprint.
Did you do anything new with the drums? Cause you don’t have a big kit.
No, I don’t. I have like one rack tom, two floors, bass drum, snare and I use a gong on my left side a lot of times; it’s just a bass drum that is turned up vertically and it has mounted legs. But I don’t have a really big drum kit. When I sit down on somebody’s drum kit and they’ve got a bunch of toms and stuff, I love it cause I can play around. But I’ve always stayed with kind of a smaller kit. I think probably for me, I think I may be more creative when I don’t have as much if that makes sense. I try to pull out or create different patterns and things like that from less, you know. Sometimes less is more. But it is fun to get behind somebody’s double bass drum kit that has ten toms. That is really fun.
Like Mike Portnoy
Oh yeah, he’s got a big kit for sure but I don’t think anybody will ever touch Terry Bozzio’s kit, though. That’s a monster in a different universe. I got to sit behind that kit. I went out to a drum workshop back in 2013 and got to sit down behind his kit and it was pretty neat. That would be a twelve hour load-in for sure (laughs).
Portraits by Jimmy Fontaine; Live photograph by Leslie Michele Derrough
