This week in late January 2024, brothers Chris and Rich Robinson are as far apart as they ever were. Geographically speaking at least – 2,000 miles to be precise. Chris, the elder Robinson, sits in the winter sun-dappled backyard of his home in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, Rich in the music room of his place in Nashville, Tennessee. Their most obvious common bond just now is intermittent dog trouble. Chris bolts from his seat at one point to stop his dog, Benny, from escaping through his garden gate and onto the road. Rich begs pause to scurry away his seven-month-old puppy.
Differences between the two brothers are as immediately apparent as they have been since they first stepped out at the forefront of The Black Crowes. Chris has his Zoom camera turned on. His sharp-angled face looms in and out of the frame with all his fidgeting. He’s baggier under the eyes and with pepper-flecked hair these days. Rich keeps his camera off. Both are good talkers, but Rich remains on point while Chris more often than not gets to it eventually but with sundry twists, turns and abrupt diversions en route.
Much ballyhooed, their divisions should never actually have surprised. As most anyone with a brother will know all too well, there is no one quite so familiar and yet so alien as a sibling. “That’s the truth of the matter,” Chris acknowledges. “Rich and I can agree on a lot of stuff, but we are completely different – and I mean in every way.”
Back together again as The Black Crowes for more than four years now, the Robinsons are here to talk up Happiness Bastards, the band's first album of original material in 15 years. Begun during the covid pandemic and recorded over two weeks last year in Nashville with garlanded country music producer Jay Joyce, it's at once familiar sounding (there's Stonesy stomping aplenty) and different again (the funky syncopations of, say Cross Your Fingers, or the thin, wild mercury groove of Bleed it Dry). Mostly it sounds unburdened and as best emphasised by its hard-driving second track Rots And Clowns.
“There’s a lot of AC/DC in that song,” says Chris. “How much fun Rich and I had doing it. As Rich was playing his solo, very inspired by Angus Young, we were both of us laughing. It was like we were back at mum and dad’s house listening to Let There Be Rock. That’s what you hear on this record.”
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Robinson brothers starting to make music together. Chris and Rich were born 57 and 55 years ago respectively, in the Atlanta, Georgia suburb of Marietta. Both of their parents, dad Stan and mum Nancy, sang and played music. Stan professionally as a folk musician in the 1950s, when he scored a minor hit with a novelty tune, (No.83 on the Hot 100 in 1959). The brothers’ first try-out was as a basement punk rock band, Goo Goo Mucks, named after a Cramps song, was when Chris was a mouthy 17-year-old and Rich a shyly sensitive
