For a young band, Black Stone Cherry has been together a long time. All still in their early to mid-20s, vocalist/guitarist Chris Robertson, guitarist Ben Wells, bassist Jon Lawhon and drummer John Fred Young joined forces in June 2001, and they’ve been rocking ever since. With their third album, “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” released earlier this year, and singles “White Trash Millionaire” and “Blame It on the Boom Boom” building momentum at rock radio, the band seems poised for a major breatkthrough. While on the Carnival of Madness tour with Theory of a Deadman, Alter Bridge, Adelitas Way and Emphatic, Robertson sat down with Live Metal’s Greg Maki to discuss the new album and more.
LIVE METAL: Black Stone Cherry passed a pretty big milestone, I guess you could say, earlier this year: your 10-year anniversary.
CHRIS ROBERTSON: Yeah, man. June 4 was my 26th birthday. It marked 10 years of us being a band together. It marked 10 years of me and my fiancée being together. I’m in a better place right now than I’ve been in quite a while. Dude, I dealt with depression and anxiety for, like, 11 years and finally went to the doctor. It’s funny; I was in the psychiatrist’s office on May 31, that morning, the day the album came out. I got onto medicine, and I’m in a better place, the band’s in a better place. We’re all better than we’ve ever been.
When you first started out, I’m sure you wanted to, but did you think you might get this far? Was that something that even crossed your mind?
You know, when we first started jamming back home in Kentucky, we just wanted to play music ‘cause we all loved it. Then we started writing songs, and we were like, “You know, maybe we can actually do this, and go out and be a band and actually make a living at it.” So far, we’re out here being a band. I don’t know if we’re making a living at it, but we’re having a lot of fun doing what we do. Very fortunate.
You’re out on the Carnival of Madness tour. I know you’ve toured with some of these bands a lot in the past. So how’s it going?
It’s going great, man. We never toured with Adelitas Way or Emphatic before. They’re both really good bands. We’ve toured with Alter Bridge a lot; we’ve toured with Theory of a Deadman a lot. We’re actually getting ready to do a tour with Alter Bridge in Europe when this tour’s over. We got a month off. I’m gonna go home and fish a lot and work on my old truck. I got an old, classic truck that I work on quite a bit. But it’s been a great tour so far. All the Monster people that are a big sponsor on the tour are great. The Paul Reed Smith guys are great. In De Goot’s one of the other sponsors, which is our management company. It’s been an awesome tour. The Carnival of Madness was successful last year with Shinedown, and it’s been successful so far this year. It’s been great crowds. You get five bands in one night. It might tire some people, but it definitely works.
Before you’re about to go onstage, do you have any rituals or things you do to get ready?
Not really, man. I literally smoke a cigarette, take my medicine, and that’s pretty much it.
What about after the show?
When we’re finished, I normally take a shower, go watch the last two bands, or come to the bus and play guitar for a while. I use GarageBand a lot. We only play 35 minutes on this tour, so your energy’s still going. So you get in the shower and you get out, and then you want to come back and play guitar, get creative and stuff. So I normally do that.
With three albums now and some B-sides, is it hard to whittle that down to a 35-minute set list?
Yes, it’s very hard. Right now, we’re doing three songs off the first album, three songs off the new album and one song off “Folklore and Superstition.” That was hard, man. We’ve put out seven singles, but if we do all the singles, then our set’s not gonna flow right—we’re gonna have to change guitars after every other song ‘cause they’re all different tunings. So we just whittled it down to a set that we thought kicked ass, just a heavy, rock set. We’re not doing any of the laid-back stuff in this set at all.
As you mentioned, you’re going to Europe next. You seem to have taken off more there from the start. What has it been like to go over there?
It’s amazing. We do really well in Germany and the U.K. I don’t know. They’re all about the live rock show over there. Radio success has been better over there than it has in the States thus far until this album. We’re doing pretty good at radio with this album. There’s more outlets for rock ‘n’ roll music over there, as far as TV goes ‘cause they’ve still got channels that play rock ‘n’ roll videos and nothing but rock ‘n’ roll videos. We’ve been on MTV one time, true MTV one time, in the five years we’ve had a record deal. That was at the VMAs the other night when they played the “Abduction” trailer right before Taylor Lautner went on, because our song was the song in the trailer. Our new single, “Blame It on the Boom Boom,” is in the trailer. So that was the first time we were played on MTV. At least it was during the VMAs, one of the most aired things that they do. It just seems like there’s more outlets for rock fans over there to grasp a hold of something and to visually see things.
The new album, the title really jumps out at you right away, “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.” Is there a story behind that?
Not really. (laughs) We were trying to find titles, and we thought of several different ones. Ben called me and he goes, “What about ‘The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea?’” I was like, “That sounds cool. Where’d you find it?” He goes, “It’s an old saying that goes ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea.” I said, “Well, we gotta call it ‘Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.’ That just makes it all make sense.” And we all loved it, and we just thought it kind of fit. This album, for me, it captures all the emotions a person feels throughout a year. And between the devil and the deep blue sea is a spot you end up in sometimes, where you’re caught like a rock and a hard place kind of thing.
On a lot of the songs on this release, you went away from the kind of storytelling you had done, especially on the second album. Was that a conscious thing?
I don’t think it was a conscious effort to do that. I think it was more so we wrote songs about how we felt. We’d been doing this for nine years when we started writing the songs, and there’s a lot of emotions and a lot of stress and a lot of things you go through being in a band and touring and being away from home. I think, for the first time, we just sat down and made a rock ‘n’ roll record that was just emotional, instead of making a rock ‘n’ roll record that was a storytelling record. The first album was kind of really wide open. The second album was kind of a storytelling, swampy, voodoo kind of record. And with this record, it’s just a rock ‘n’ roll record, man. It’s got all the emotions that we felt in the last year.
Speaking of being away from home, you left the South to record for the first time. What effect did being out in California have on the album?
The weather is definitely a lot nicer in Southern California in December and January than it is in Kentucky. (laughter) I can tell you that much. It was good. It took us out of our element. (Producer) Howard Benson and his team, you can’t ask for a better team of engineers and producers and techs. They’re incredible. They do their job like no other, and they’re very, very good at it.
I was kind of wondering with “White Trash Millionaire,” especially with it being the first song on the album and the first single, was that maybe a statement, saying you’re going out to California, working with a big-name producer, but you’re still the same guys?
We didn’t look at it that way. That’s a good point, though. For us, it was just, we wanted to lead the album off with a song that was fun, that wasn’t too serious. It ended up being the first single, and once we found out it was the first single, we were like, “Well, hell, let’s just put it the first song on the album.” That way when people flip it around, they see that’s the song and it goes from there.
You’ve got some others that seem to me to be just good-time, party songs, like “Blame It on the Boom Boom.”
Yeah, that one and “Let Me See You Shake.”
You hadn’t really done songs quite like that before.
We had written songs like that, but pretty much, like I said, we just stopped thinking about shit so much and just did songs. If we liked it, we were like, “Hell yeah, let’s record it.” Then we whittled the list of 50 songs down to 15. That was hard. But we felt like we picked the best songs. There’s some songs that I wish would’ve made the cut but didn’t. But we’ve got those songs from here until forever.
As far as the songs go, it’s not all fun and games. A song like “Such a Shame” is pretty serious. What was the inspiration for that one?
We were in Germany and we played this show in this little club that’s on the Reeperbahn. The Reeperbahn is world famous ‘cause there’s prostitution—it’s legal in Germany. You look out there and you see these girls, and they’re just beautiful. They’re doing drugs and they’re selling their body, and you just wonder to yourself what made them choose that life, what forced them into becoming a prostitute, what forced them into drug habits and all that. We just kind of thought about that. We’re from a town of 1,800 people. There are people back home that have drug problems, and I’m sure there’s people that sell their bodies. But just to see it that blatant in public was a culture shock for us, and we wrote that song on the back of the bus.
You worked with a few outside writers. One of them really jumps out at me because he’s one of my favorite guitar players—John 5. What was it like to work with him?
It was awesome. That guy, he’s incredible. We wrote “Killing Floor” with him and Bob Marlette, and damn, he’s a good guitar player. He came in and we riffed out for a while until we found the riff that stuck, and then we wrote the song. The song came together pretty quick. The way we write songs, we write music first, then lyrics come second, lyrics and melody.
I noticed, also, you had some backing vocals by (Halestorm vocalist) Lzzy Hale.
Yeah, on “Won’t Let Go.” What had happened was we were in the studio, I had finished all my vocals, and Jon was gonna sing the harmony and it was just too high for him. I tried to sing the harmony, it was too high. None of us could sing it, and Howard’s like, “I’ve got this guy, there’s a studio guy that comes in and does harmony vocals for me sometimes on records, stuff that’s just too high for people to hit.” Lzzy, I think, had been out in L.A. writing with Dave Bassett for their new record. I called Howard up from home, and I was like, “Dude, fuck the studio guy. Just call Lzzy. We’re friends with her, I’m sure she’d be cool to do it.” So he called her. I originally wanted her to sing, like, half the song. We ended up just doing the harmony on the chorus and a few tag vocals that she did. She nailed it, man. She took the song from being great to just fuckin’ awesome.
You’ve got a cover on this album, “Can’t You See” (Marshall Tucker Band). How did you choose that one?
We started doing that song in Europe. What had happened was we were getting ready to do “Things My Father Said” one night, and Ben’s guitar was severely out of tune for some reason. I had been listening to that song ‘cause I’m a big Southern rock guy. I just started playing it. It’s three chords, the traditional version, and we jammed it. We did it that way for a long time. Then we were cutting demos and we only had one song written, that we had written with a guy, and we wanted to record two songs that day ‘cause we had the studio for the whole day. So we recorded a version of “Can’t You See,” and the label loved it. We liked it, but it was still too traditional-sounding. The label wanted us to record it ‘cause they loved the song. It was more or less a country song than anything. The day before we recorded the drums for it, we sat down and came up with all the riffs and put the song together. Then after the drums were finished, we kind of put it all together, made the riffs even more different. It was kind of one of those things where after the drums were there, we just built everything else around it.
You’ve got such a rich, soulful voice. Who are some of your vocal influences?
Freddie King was a big one. Ronnie Van Zant from Lynyrd Skynyrd, which he’s more of a country singer than anything. But Freddie King was a big one. Even Hendrix. He doesn’t get regarded as a singer much, but he’s great. Here lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of Bob Marley. The Four Tops, Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Howlin’ Wolf—a lot of the really gritty, soulful blues artists. Wilson Pickett. Stuff like that are my bigger influences when it comes to singing.
What about guitar?
Guitar playing, well, I’ve got Hendrix tattooed on my arm here, so obviously he’s one. Freddie King. Jimmy Page, obviously. All the greats. Billy Gibbons. My biggest influence guitar-wise was probably my dad and my grandfather. My dad’s a local musician back home; that’s all he’s ever done. But he’s just a phenomenal guitar player. And my grandpa is a bluegrass musician. He builds acoustic guitars and mandolins by hand in a little shack he’s got over by his house. They’re probably my two biggest influences musically, period.
In the first 10 years of this band, is there any one thing that really jumps out at you as being the highlight?
Playing the Download Festival the three times we’ve got to play it. Touring with all the bands we’ve got to tour with. And meeting Jimmy Page was pretty incredible. Met him at Wembley when we were touring with Def Leppard and Whitesnake. But man, I gotta say, the one thing I’m most proud of is, like I said, I had to go to a psychiatrist a while back because of my depression and anxiety, and we’re all brothers out here, from the crew guys to the band guys, and the one thing I’m most proud of is how supportive they have been through this whole process. And I’m proud of the fact that I admitted defeat and went to a doctor and got help, because at the end of the day, we’re all out here for the music, but we’re all out here for each other. And me going through that hard time and them getting me back home and taking care of me through all that is the one thing I’m most proud of about this band.
It’s unfortunate, but in the music world today, you don’t find bands that have been best friends for 10 or 15 years, that were best friends before they started a band. John Fred and I have known each other since we were 5 years old, and I’m 26. Our friendship’s old enough to go buy a beer. But that’s the one thing I’m most proud of, the strength and the brotherhood the four of us have with each other and with our crew. Our crew’s all local guys back home with the exception of our guitar tech; he’s a friend we’ve known for four years. But that’s the one thing I’m most proud of.
Looking ahead, where do you see this band in another 10 years?
I have no idea. I guarantee you, unless one of us were to pass away or something like that, we’ll be on the road, touring, playing somewhere. Hopefully, we continue to grow and get on a bigger scale, but if not, we’ll be more than happy just playing our music for people who enjoy listening to it.
Anything else you’d like to say?
Fans, friends, enemies, thank you for everything ‘cause you’re the reason that we do all this. You give us the ability to do our job every day and give us the greatest job in the world. We’ve been given the easiest, greatest job in the world. As far as the 35 minutes we play onstage or an hour and a half we play onstage, it’s the easiest job in the world. It’s all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes that people don’t see that makes it a hard job. But thank you for liking us, for hating us—either way, you inspire us.
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