Thursday, July 17, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Music: Crowe in flight

Former Black Crowes frontman Chris Robinson digs New Earth Mud

By Brock Radke

Finally, a straight answer to an often-asked question. And from a well-known pot advocate, no less.

Mercury: So you've been writing new material for your second solo album...what direction would you say your newest music is going in?

Chris Robinson: Well, if I absolutely have to pigeonhole it in one direction or another, I'd have to say it's the crystal-tipped spear of the new psychedelic revolution.

After a reply like that, why not go ahead and ask a general, lazy, loaded question geared toward eliciting a rant?

M: Do have any specific opinions on where the music industry is headed?

CR: No, nothing really negative. Except for when you drive by the roadkill that is what's left of the music industry, you better hold your nose, man. The beauty of what's going on now is that the bar is being set higher. I think we're hopefully on the verge of a sort of renaissance.

Life seems to be very good for the former frontman of famed Southern rockers the Black Crowes. After the Crowes broke up/went on an indefinite hiatus in late 2001, Robinson took some time off and then ran off to Paris with guitarist/songwriter/producer Paul Stacey to record his first solo disc, New Earth Mud, which was released relatively independently late last year.

New Earth Mud didn't reveal a shocking secret side to the lanky 36-year-old, but Crowes fans and critics accepted the record as a sweet piece of mellow, neo-folkie, morning-cigarette blues and acoustic soul. And it allowed Robinson songwriting freedoms he might not have previously addressed.

"It would be hard to describe the Black Crowes as not free," he says. "But when you start something as a kid, and then 15 years later you've sold 10 million records, you're in a different place. Then, it was always a struggle to maintain our freedom. But now, having been to all those weird, sad, or joyous places, I'm lucky to be in the position I am in."

Robinson will be road-testing some of his newer songs on his current trek, a tour he said he'd be foolish to turn down because of the opportunity to play with Costello. But it's hard to say if some of those tunes will make the cut for his next project, as he likes to play it very loose when it comes to studio time.

"New Earth Mud was kind of a vehicle for me to stop and look around and express the way I felt, and try to put as much emotion into it as I could," he says. "It's nice to get out and see how ideas play live, but it's always been hard for me to plan or chart ahead for these kinds of things. I do know that with the next album...it will be grand, sonically. I hope to make a bigger statement and have some longer songs and have it be more theatrical and dramatic. That's just how I'm feeling right now."

Perhaps one of the reasons the Black Crowes were known to be such a tumultuous rock band is because Robinson pretty much does things depending on that, how he's feeling, right now. But because he understands that habit, he doesn't close out any possibility.

"I'm not really into reliving anything in the past, and the way everyone behaved when [the Black Crowes broke up] makes me think that's it, but hey, the doors are always open," he says. "Maybe when we're old-timers. I never get the feeling that I want to get out there and sing `Hard to Handle' anymore, but you never know."