Halloween will mark the two year anniversary since The Black Crowes last took the stage, and rather than simply reflecting on what could have been, the band’s charismatic and straight-talking frontman, Chris Robinson, is forging ahead on his own. Forming a new band, New Earth Mud, Robinson is presenting another side of himself, one not previously visible, hidden well within the emotional and creative struggles of The Crowes. And contrary to expectation, rather than writing songs of resentment and bitter rock angst after years of notable turmoil, his new work is a comforting breathe of maturity, only possible with a true sense of self-fulfillment. A lyricist heavy on disclosure, he was always able to convey token misery and anguish with The Crowes, but writing new, powerful songs rooted in love and compassion would inevitably prove just how far his diverse range could go.
When New Earth Mud was released last fall, Crowes fans were immediately torn between shunning the simplistic, timid melodies or cautiously embracing this post-Crowes era. Accustomed to bellows and seductive swagger, audiences were being greeted with refined acoustic guitar lines and wispy ballads. And as the debates roared on, so did New Earth Mud. Building a solid repertoire, refining their sound and touring with Elvis Costello, Robinson – along with keyboardist George Laks, bassist George Reiff and identical English twins, Paul and Jeremy Stacey on guitar and drums, respectively – has developed a contemporary twist of the great rock acts of the 70s – when radio wasn’t something to shudder at.
With everything going on in his life – a new project, album, an apparently happy marriage to actress Kate Hudson, a baby on the way and currently on tour with Warren Haynes’ Gov’t Mule – Chris was somehow able to find a little time to fill us in on everything. When he finally called, it was mid-afternoon and he was en route to another show. “Where are you now?” I asked. “Um, Toledo” he answers. Certainly not what I expected, I let out a bit of a laugh. “Yeah, I always stop to walk our Pomeranian at a truck stop in Toledo” he coyly adds. And with that, we dove into The Mud.
The New Earth Mud album, and your live shows are much more intimate, and patient than the full-out rock of The Crowes. Was that a natural progression, or a purposeful switch?
I don’t think there is too much stylistically that’s purposeful. It’s definitely a natural progression. Ideally, what it truly is, is this is my music, in a concentrated music form that hasn’t been diluted. And I don’t mean that in a negative sense. The nature of working with my brother, and the nature of The Black Crowes, it was a place, musically, where we collaborated. And I collaborate with this new group on a certain level, definitely on a live level, and I think that’s where it is. It’s been well over a year, in the spring it will be two years, since I made the last album, and we’ve played close to sixty shows on top of a few legs of acoustic touring. So the dynamic live, of the New Earth Mud, I wouldn’t say is as intimate as the record sounds. The record now, in the right context of space and time, was definitely clandestine…
Now that it has been a year since it was released, and the album is still being consistently debated in many Crowes fan circles, what are your own reflections towards it?
Well, I think it’s telling about a band like The Black Crowes. It’s obviously a once in a lifetime experience to be involved in something like that, and I’m super proud of the work we did…and it was all provided because we had an audience. But then I find it funny that the things that started limiting The Black Crowes would be the same type of musical attitudes that would creep into this initially. I guess it’s innately human to put things in those realms, you know, to debate whatever’s better, but it’s two totally different times and different groups of people. Part of the idea of being a solo artist was about the freedom…the freedom to make small, intimate records. Truly it’s a love album, full of love songs – and it’s funny, the new record that we’re about halfway through with, is so different and removed from that on a bigger scale – but I think in general, I want people who like The Black Crowes to like this. Obviously there’s something about my music that they like, but I also think this is about, hopefully that freedom to step in and out of these parameters that have been set up for whatever reason in terms of music, the modern music listener, the audience. What we’ve come to expect from artists, what we’ve come to expect from music.
As much as I think they’re the biggest load of shit, the sheer idea that that fucking Creed band can’t go on stage and have a bad performance without someone suing them, it’s like, you know what, that’s you’re problem man (laughing). It’s called, don’t go see them again. I mean, if I want to get up there and literally just roll around and do whatever, that’s the artists’ right. But if you want to break it down, water it down to something else, then again, because the artist only feels validated by financial success, and fame and fortune, they’re willing to let go of some of the creative reigns in terms of, what is the life of the artist. So I’m very humble in the tradition I get to work in, not only as a musician, a performer and a writer, but also just as someone who’s been allowed the opportunity to express themselves, and that’s what I do.
In the Crowes, you had the freedom to run around the whole stage without limit, but in this new band, playing more guitar, and performing in a more controlled setting, have you found it provides it’s own opportunities as well as constrictions?
In terms of being a frontman of that style in The Black Crowes, that was something that the music dictated to me. And unlike a lot of other frontmen, I find it really hard to pander to an audience, and tell them that I love them all the time and “oh I’m in this city, and isn’t it great” or to just say the same things [every night]. If you enter out into this whole trip, where music is your life, performing, you’re inviting people to come along, not just to witness. And I’ve always been that way since I was a teenager. So for me, again, it’s just very logical. I think there’s the same amount of energy, same amount of force behind it, it’s just different. It’s the old analogy of, you can take a blank sheet of paper, and you can either draw with a pencil one line right through the middle, or you can color in both halves and leave that line blank, and it’s still a line.
Well in terms of great frontmen, now that the years have gone by, what about hearing your name in the same context as Steven Tyler or Mick Jagger?
To be honest, you know, I saw Aerosmith on Monday Night Football, I saw Mick Jagger on HBO, and on The Emmy’s they showed a clip of him doing like this dance, and I remember that because I watched the concert on HBO with Paul Stacey. And as much as I respect The Rolling Stones and what they’ve done, they’ve done some great work, but when I’m included with people like Neil Young and Jerry Garcia, you know, or Crosby, Stills and Nash or Bob Dylan, or something like that, to be honest, then I’d probably be more comfortable. But yeah, in terms of getting older, it’s all in your mind. You know, I’m about to be 37, so I don’t know what it’s like to be 60 and doing this (laughs). It’s a hard thing to look into the future when you’re really trying to spend as much of your time in the here and now. And I don’t want music to become other people’s nostalgia either. Granted, success is important…and ambition, and ego and drive and those things dictate to you that you’d like to be at a certain level of success. I know that from leaving a band like the Black Crowes (laughs). Like last year, being on a 15- year-old bus with your whole band and playing clubs in the middle of like this harsh winter will really snap you around. But I find music to be important. It’s great stuff of reality, great stuff of legend and the way we communicate our emotions and our experiences. This year I went and saw Greendale, and I walked out of there just floating on a cloud. It was so incredible and I just loved that it existed. I loved the way Neil [Young] chose this modern day-psychedelic statement to make about an agenda between love and hate, if you just want to make it simple. That’s something I could walk away from and feel super energized by. And those moments are important to me…having those moments for people are still important for me. And it takes a little bit of extra work when you start with something brand new.
Rather than the metaphorical rock ‘n roll lyrics of your earlier work, these new songs, like “Katie Dear” for instance, are pretty straightforward. Is it actually more difficult, with the level of vulnerability, singing love ballads?
eah, it’s definitely a weird, cathartic thing, leaving a band like The Black Crowes. Thematically, I’ve always drifted towards the melancholy, and love is the most melancholy of all. But Black Crowes lyrics definitely have a harder slant, a darker slant, a more masculine slant, whereas writing that group of songs for the New Earth Mud album, I’ve always had those pieces and I’ve always found it easy to verbalize what’s happening internally, and externally. But actually, the last two Crowes records, By Your Side and Lions…By Your Side more than any other record, I had been listening to a lot of Hank Williams again, and Otis Redding and Muddy Waters, and I really wanted to simplify things in terms of George Jones records and the great country writers to where things are really simple. So I think my writing has been drifting towards that, but I still maintain the cryptic nature of the poetry, which is also important. The freedom with this [band], the melody works a lot easier when I’m writing the songs, so the imagery is going to flow differently. But I’ve always found it really easy to talk about how I feel. It just goes to show, that with a little bit of time, you can look at something and think, “isn’t it weird that people can’t deal with love as an emotion?” Like, what happened to us? Is everything Linkin Park, where…(sings) “the teacher was mean, and nobody knows who I am, and everybody says that I’m…” you know what I mean? (laughs). That high school, everybody’s against me thing doesn’t look good on you when your 29, 30 years old and you’re a multi-millionaire. Like I said, it’s about creating something beautiful, and beautiful can be melancholy, beautiful can be strange, beautiful can be disturbing, beautiful can be lovely, it can be all of these things. My quote is like, “love is not for cowards”…that’s the whole thing (laughs).
Writing and recording the album in Paris…did the romanticism of the city play an influence on those songs as well?
Yeah, on a certain level. And on the other level, geographically speaking, it was free. Of course you’re inspired to be in that place, at that time of year…but I’m inspired any time I’m in Paris. That’s why that city still exists, holds the status that it has for all the great artists who have come before. I think the average Parisian lives within a certain artistic framework that we don’t recognize. But definitely the best thing about the last couple of years has been bonding with new musicians, and not just the New Earth Mud, and to have that freedom. It’s been tough, ‘cause all the little accomplishments we’ve achieved since I left the Crowes have all been on our own. And we’ve done these things, really without any infrastructure within the music business. Like going to Paris…there was a bit of a sampler on the record, but we filmed a whole DVD, and it’s like me and Paul unloading the truck from his studio in England and, you know, when was the last time I did that? And then on the streets of Paris…and it just all fits together.
Blender Magazine recently had you and your wife on their “hottest rock ’n roll couples” list. How has the whole paparazzi, People Magazine photos thing affected the two of you, especially now with a baby on the way?
Well, for both of us, we truly believe who you are, and what you are, in a public realm is all in the work. This bizarre, bizarre fascination with celebrity is definitely getting to the far end. I told Kate we should just put bags over our heads and write “generic celebrity photograph” on the front…I mean, what’s the difference? It’s a made up industry, another way for people not to work or be involved in their own lives. They’ve made an industry around celebrity that doesn’t exist for some celebrities and doesn’t exist for people…it’s a made up world. It’s annoying to me, because at the end of the day, having people camped out in front of your house is a fuckin’ bummer no matter who you are. At least for me, I do enough communicating on the stage, and through my albums and things. Granted, for my wife it’s different, she’s (in an announcer voice) “an incredibly powerful and influential movie star.” But with babies coming, yeah it’s definitely annoying man. But again, for me, I just shrug my shoulders and try to stay out of it as much as possible.
Obviously the Robinson brother’s situation, and all you guys have been through is rock legend at this point, but rather than saying, “I’m never doing that again,” you not only started a band with another set of brothers, but this time it’s identical twins. How has the interaction been this time around with New Earth Mud?
It’s definitely a different dynamic when everyone’s in their 30s and we’ve all been through a lot of life stuff. The one thing about The Crowes is, you’re not just bringing 15 years of being in a band together, but me and Rich are bringing everything. So in that sense it’s completely different, but in another sense, they’re identical twins and they’re English so they’re fucked (laughs). But again, it’s a different time, it’s a different group of people, a different music, and other factors in life in terms of where everyone’s heads are and souls feel, so it’s really hard to put those two together.
There was quite a bit of excitement after you joined Gov’t Mule to sing “Sometimes Salvation.” Was there a period of time where you wanted to distance yourself from those Crowes songs before performing them live again?
Well I don’t sing any Black Crowes songs in my set, but Warren [Haynes] asked if I would do it, and I said “yeah, of course.” I mean, Gov’t Mule has been playing the song in their set for a little while, so we’ve done it a couple times and it’s really fun. It’s nice to see that it’s a powerful song, and that people really respond. A little teaser now and then doesn’t hurt anybody.
You’ve played with everyone…Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, The Dead, what about playing with Warren?
We’ve been friends forever. We took Gov’t Mule out when Warren and Allen [Woody] first left The Allman Brothers, their first tour was with The Black Crowes. And I’ve sat in with Warren all around the country and vice versa, so it goes back quite a ways.
You’ve had great success over the years, and now moving forward, you’ve just signed with Vector Recordings, a label with a different approach to the industry, so what are your aspirations at this point in your career?
For me, true success can only be measured when it’s on your own terms. And this goes hand in hand with Vector Records. If I was on a major label, right now, the way the industry is set up, it would feel like I was making records for someone else, and I want to make records because that’s the way I feel. I want to make records because this is the music I believe in. And I want to make records that people have in their homes and their own experience. So Vector is a perfect fit for me now, ‘cause the dialog has been spoken and they realized what kind of artist I am, what I’m looking for, and vice versa. So within that, if we have a song that can go on the radio, good, if we make videos, good. I mean, I’m definitely not limiting myself, but I have a different way of going about it (laughs), so it’s really good.
