FTV: Black Crowes 2026
From the Vaults: The Black Crowes 2026
It has been a while since we checked in with the Brothers Robinson. When the Gallagher brothers, Liam and Noel, buried the hatchet in 2025 and went out on their first Oasis tour in a long, long time, all bets suggested that it would implode. Maybe viewing this reunion as a Sign of the Apocalypse was a false flag. As it turned out, it was a wildly successful stadium tour and by the end, the band was even teasing they might go further and record new music. If the same logic is applied to Chris and Rich Robinson joining forces again, then they doubled down on the Apocalyptic angle by releasing TWO albums of new music since their reunion.
The brothers have been in a band together since 1984 when Chris dropped out of college to join his younger brother in Mr. Crowe’s Garden. Their father had been a folk singer who along the way had a minor hit, opened for artists like Bill Haley and Phil Ochs, and played the Grand Ole Opry with Lester Flatt and Eart Scruggs. The biggest influence Mr. Robinson had on the brother’s musical career was his record collection. Mining their father’s LPs turned them on to Johnny Guitar Watson, The Yarbirds, and the Modern Jazz Quartet. Their garage band beginnings were pretty typical for young guys trying to put a band together. According to Bill DeMain’s Classic Rock Magazine profile (Issue 351, April 2026), “They sneered at slick rockers of the time – Loverboy, Night Ranger – as they mined the grittier past, covering songs by Love, Gram Parsons, and Humble Pie. They woodshedded and burned through drummers and bass players with Spinal Tap speed.” They also started writing their own songs and changed their name to The Black Crowes.
In 1989, a chance encounter with producer George Drakoulias helped them land a record deal with Rick Rubin’s Def American label. Rubin also signed on to produce their first album. Rick suggested another name change to ‘Kob Kounty Krows’ but the brothers wisely avoided it with the ‘good old boy KKK’ attention it would have attracted. Rich says, “I was nineteen when we made Shake Your Money Maker. At that age you’re kind of prepared for failure, because if you’ve lived any kind of life, you’ve failed at things. But you are not prepared for success, especially on the level we had. We were just like, ‘Hey, we made a record!’ We didn’t consider success, we didn’t even consider failure. We’ll go our way, play some shows, it’ll be fun.” In a matter of two years, they were in constant rotation on the radio and MTV, and they appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine (who voted them Best New Rock Band).
Shake Your Money Maker went platinum. The Crowes ended up on bills opening for ZZ Top, Robert Plant, and AC/DC. In a 22 month period, they played 350 shows. Rich continues, “We went from playing in front of fifty people in Tuscaloosa to sixty thousand at Donington. That’s a fast ascendance. We all climbed Mount Everest together.” He also noted, “This was before the fighting and the ego and the drugs.” This last line sums up the middle history of the Crowes, but in the beginning, they even managed to avoid the ‘sophomore jinx’ second album. Their follow up to Money Maker (The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion) reached the top of the Billboard 200 in 1992. Sales of the next five albums regressed between 1994’s Amorica and 2001’s Lions leading to a hiatus between 2002 and 2005. When they regrouped to record and tour again, the band reached No. 5 with 2008’s Warpaint. Their greatest hits double album (Croweology (2010)) and a 20th anniversary tour was followed by a second hiatus, another tour in 2013, and finally a less than harmonious breakup in 2015.
By the time the Crowes mounted a 30th anniversary tour to mark the release of Shake Your Money Maker, the only original members left were the Robinson brothers. I was fortunate to see the Black Crowes live twice before the bottom fell out of the original lineup (when the WOAS-FM West Coast Bureau was still in Los Angeles). At that time, there had only been minor changes in the core group. The first show at the L.A. Palladium saw Luther Dickinson playing guitar opposite of Rich. By my second show at the Wiltern Theater, Jackie Greene had replaced Luther. Both concerts were great and Steve Gorman’s drumming was well worth the price of admission. My only regret was deciding to not see the second night they played at the Wiltern, but it was the right decision at that time. Only the encores changed between the two nights they played.
The discord in the band snuck up on them like it does for so many bands. Brothers will naturally find things to disagree on (see the Gallagher brothers and Everly brothers for starters).
Over consumption of chemical substances tends to feed egos and ego driven dust ups lead to bands splintering apart more times than not. Acrimonious break ups that are played out in the media become a battle of ‘he said, he did’ that drives the wedge between band members even deeper. The final break up and the firestorm of accusations about who said and did what seemed to paint the Black Crowes into a corner that they were not going to be able to come out of.
Chris formed a Grateful Dead-like ensemble called The Brotherhood and toured behind some okay albums. He never apologized for them not being the Crowes, he just explained that they were playing music that they wanted to play. Rich’s fortunes seemed to be a little better.
First he teamed up with R.E.M.’s Peter Buck in the Silverlites. Then he and singer John Hogg formed Magpie Salute whose sound leaned more toward the Tedesci-Trucks band’s structure than the Dead. Their first release (the single Omission and covers of other tunes) was well received. There were enough interesting things going on for Magpie to tease listeners as to where they were headed. Their next albums (Highwater I & Highwater II) didn’t disappoint and showed promise they were on an upward swing, but then it was done. Everybody (including his band members) wondered why Rich pulled the plug, but nobody really found a satisfactory answer. Mining the old interviews he did before the breakup, Rich signaled why it went south when he compared the differences between the Crowes and Magpie. In the Crowes, he had Chris to bounce things off of and collaborate with. In Magpie, he was the leader and lightning rod for everything and (in my opinion) he found it to be a lot more stressful and a lot more work than he expected.
The other factor, no doubt, was the plethora of offers that had been thrown at them about doing a reunion. After all the bad blood, getting back together didn’t seem likely until 2021 arrived and it became reality. Rich says they had turned down previous offers because, “We didn’t want to do any sort of BS money grab.” The 30th anniversary of Shake Your Money Maker provided them an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past. He continues, “When we got back together, we had grown a lot. I mean, we’re both in our fifties now, and we said: ‘Look, we don’t want to grab the money, go on tour, fight and have it be (expletive deleted). It doesn’t make any sense,’” Chris adds, “We didn’t take them [the big money offers] because we knew we needed to start from scratch.”
The obvious questions were, “Why wouldn’t they want to work with the original band?” and “How will their old fan base react to them ‘starting from scratch’?” Their explanation shows they had given some thought to both questions. Rich told DeMain, “We can’t bring back people that carry that old mentality to basically split Chris and I up. We need to strip everything back, and put our relationship first. We need to listen to each other. We need to keep it together. And so Chris and I’ve been really adamant about that, and it’s helped our relationship tremendously.” Chris admitted that therapy has helped him improve his communication skills: “Growing up is the hardest part of all this, but Rich and I are mid-century products of the Deep South; our emotional vocabulary is not vast. To be where we are today, we had to mature, and that meant going through what we went through.”
Unlike the six years before the 2021 reunion, they have been talking on the phone once a week and doing, “Just stuff like brothers do, you know?” Rich says. “We talk about the kids (Chris has two, Rich has seven), our dogs, cooking. We also talk about the day-to-day stuff of having to run the band and write new songs, and what new music we’re digging. But it’s night-and-day better. It’s much healthier. Making records is so much cooler. Touring is so much better.”
The 46 dates of the Money Maker tour were mostly sold out and led directly to the release of their Happiness B******* album in 2024. The recording sessions were helmed in Nashville by producer / multi-instrumentalist Jay Joyce. Though he is known more for working with country artists like Eric Church and Little Big Town, the Robinsons felt he was the right fit for them. Chris says, “We come rolling in with these rough song ideas and loud amps, and he is right there with us. When we’re in the studio, Rich is a little more studious, and I’m far more Jackson Pollock, throwing paint around, seeing what sticks [laughs]. And Jay rides that wave between us.” Rich adds, “We really like Jay as a person, we respect him as an artist. Unlike some producers we’ve worked with, I think he really understands the two of us and how we work, individually and together. He knows how to deal with Chris and I in ways that make it stay positive and move forward.”
How did the brothers arrive at this harmonious place? Living on opposite sides of the country probably helps, but what they do when they are apart contributes to their new found maturity. Rich has followed the John Mellencamp school and finds tranquility in painting. Rich doesn’t dabble in doodles, ala John Lennon. He is a serious painter. DeMain says, “Rich paints large canvases done in a colour-rich abstract expressionist style influenced by Gerhard Richter and Gustave Klint. He told the author, “I love depth and texture. Painting seems to activate a different part of my brain. There’s a different sensory scenario – smells and visuals and perspectives. I love it. It’s peaceful. It’s just you and the canvas. There’s no band politics [laughs].”
The more extroverted Chris does a lot of reading but that isn’t enough to expend his excess energy, He says, “Whatever is wrong with me has to do with a lack of drainage of the creative battery. I don’t tend to shut off. There is always something driving my aesthetic.” According to his Instagram profile, Chris and his wife Camille drain the battery by DJ’ing at parties and clubs around Los Angeles.: “We’ll play old soul, funk, classical Persian music, everything. What I’m saying is that just being in the world and travelling and absorbing art inspires me.” It seems that ‘peace at home begats peace in the band’ if I am reading their hobby outlets correctly.
Their newest record, A Pound of Feathers (2025) was approached with a different mentality than the albums the Crowes recorded back in their 1990 to 1995 heyday. “Let’s be honest, we’re not gonna have a hit record, man. But it’s fun,” is how Chris put it. Without the outlets that drove them up the charts back in the day (“No MTV and bands like Pearl Jam and Faith No More aren’t on the radio”) they have had to refocus their direction. “[Music sales] is not a youth-driven thing. There’s still an energy about it [recording] so we really have the freedom to just let it all kind of funk out. We always did whatever we wanted to do. But now, we also realise how we need to be excited about it. We need to feel fulfilled by this.” Rich adds, “Because of content and streaming services, people make music now to meet an end, like, ‘We have to make this record because we have to get it out on Spotify by this time.’ Whereas for us, a record is a statement. An amazing song is a gift, a gift to the world, a song that can move people.”
As far as how fans react to the new album, Chris concludes, “I get that our audience is older, but you’re gonna get the most out of it if you put something in too, so let yourself go, man, let yourself go. I want to tour and do great shows, and just keep on searching for that feeling, You know what I mean? I hope the Black Crowes people like this record and are surprised by it.”
Rich says he is happy with the new record and their working relationship: “You know, Chris and I have always been in the studio. We get along great now, but even back in the day, no matter how bad we were fighting, when we would show up to write or to record, we just kind of put all that behind us.”
Being somewhat behind in the listening to new music department, I reached out to Todd at the West Coast Bureau and asked for his opinion about the latest LPs. Todd is the biggest BCs fan I know and when he got into vinyl big time, he donated all of the earlier Crowes albums on CD to the WOAS mothership. His first reaction to my request arrived as two poop emojis, so I am thinking he isn’t fond of what he has heard in the new LPs. In spite of that, it will become my summer mission to give both a good listen knowing my biggest obstacle to liking the current Crowes will be the absence of drummer Steve Gorman. This is no knock on their current drummer, but Gorman was such a big part of the original Black Crowes vibe that he left big shoes to fill. Time for me to start listening!
Top Piece Video: The song that started it all – live during the Shake Your Money Maker reunion tour