North American syndicated rock radio show and website, InTheStudio: The Stories Behind History’s Greatest Rock Bands, shares a much happier time with the Brothers Robinson on the twenty-fifth anniversary of The Black Crowes’ debut album, Shake Your Money Maker.

The impressive nine originals co-written by Chris and younger brother, guitarist Rich Robinson, put much-needed soul back into rock’n’roll. Tracks like “Twice As Hard”, “Jealous Again”, “Thick and Thin”, “She Talks To Angels”, the gospel- tinged “Seeing Things” and the impeccable cover of fellow Georgian Otis Redding’s “Hard To Handle” fueled the Crowes’ debut for the long road to the top. Debuting at #174 on the Billboard album chart in 1990, Shake Your Money Maker would spend 54 weeks building, eventually rising into the Top 5. Along the way their retro style, unabashedly channeling 70's-era Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart & the Faces and Humble Pie’s blue-eyed soul dynamo Steve Marriott, found an audience and the music lured them to buy over five million copies of Shake Your Money Maker.

 

 

Don’t infer too much from the Black Crowes announcing their break up on the twenty-fifth anniversary of their auspicious start (it wasn’t the first time, after all), but the timing is not without irony. Chris, the older singing Robinson, expresses to InTheStudio host Redbeard this observation.                                         

“Our regional identities are being stripped away by technology. That is horrible. I did get to grow up in the (American) South. In Atlanta, Georgia you were twenty minutes away from the best bluegrass music in the world, or the best blues you’d ever heard. Same music, just different neighborhoods. You know?”  - Chris Robinson

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