Chris Robinson had already secured his place in the rock-and-roll pantheon before forming the Brotherhood in 2011, but that doesn’t mean he views his current group as a late-career side-project. Born out of his love for ‘70s California psychedelic rock and Grateful Dead-inspired improvisation, the Brotherhood is a true band, featuring noted musicians like longtime Ryan Adams collaboration Neal Casal (guitars, vocals), latter day Black Crowes member Adam MacDougall (keyboards, vocals), Mark Dutton (bass, vocals) and George Sluppick (drums). Immediately after forming the Brotherhood in 2011, Robinson whipped his new outfit into shape the old-fashion way: they piled into a small van with almost no road crew and played almost 120 dates, including a stretch of small, West Coast clubs and bars they dubbed the California Residency Tour. Then in 2012, during The Black Crowes hiatus, the Brotherhood released two expansive studio albums, Big Moon Ritual and The Magic Door, and honed in on a new, distinct sound that owes as much to the Dead as it does Robinson’s best known band (Longtime Dead sound engineer Betty Cantor is an admitted fan and recently recorded a live album for the group).
Though he devoted a good chunk of time to the Crowes last year, Robinson has already made the most of the group’s 2014 break by releasing the Brotherhood’s third studio album, Phospheresent Harvest, and prepping for an extended run with Bob Weir & RatDog. He’s quick to admit that playing with the Crowes gives him the luxury of flexing an experimental muscle, but Robinson is also molding a band he plans to nurture for years to come. While en route to a SEVA benefit, Robinson walked through his recent recording sessions, reflected on his work with The Dead and explained how being from the ‘outer south’ prepared him for a life in rock and roll.
It’s been a few months since the release of Phosphorescent Harvest. Since the first two Brotherhood albums were recorded at the same time and released before the band started touring extensively nationally, in certain ways this is the first set of Brotherhood songs written since this band has had a specific sound and image. Can you start by giving us a little background on when you started work on the album and how the Phosphorescent Harvest material has translated into your live set?
Well, in an overall sense, they all have to fit, somehow, into the live show. It would be amazing to be at a place in your life where you could make studio records that have nothing to do with the translation in front of people. But this band is born of a real, in a way, almost a need for the writing—that’s the fuel, that’s the impetus. The goal is to have something to say as a songwriter.
With the first two records, we basically we went in the studio after that first year, and we set up as we did every night on tour, and we just just played our entire repertoire, which was perfect. We didn’t have to rehearse; the songs were like all ready [Laughter.] There’s a little bit of method in the architecture of the whole idea. So that’s what you get with age, man.
But this time we definitely felt that we wanted to… We knew we were gonna make a recording that wasn’t as expansive, so instead of recording 30 songs, we kind of just said, “Let’s focus on 14, 15 tunes this time.” We had been playing a few of them live but they changed quite a bit by the time we got to the studio. But, for me, one of the luxuries of this whole band is that we are fairly anonymous in the music world. [Laughter] That relative obscurity—the freedom to do exactly what you want—is great.
I was just one of those people that was damaged enough even before I got into this music life to think that’s what real freedom was. It wasn’t selling billions of records and being a slave to your own ego and your own popularity. I mean, if that happens—very few people have it in them, I think, to continue that kind of thing, which is kind of evil, maybe. I don’t know [laughter].
Anyway, the idea is that you want to stay pure, and that is harder to do when there are people pulling at you from every side for the almighty dollar. In this case, we don’t have any money, so we’re free to do these things. And I think it also helps bring you to where you want to be creatively. Instead of being part of a system where you’re spending other people’s money and you’re living a certain lifestyle with other people’s money, in a sense it gives you a real sense of immediacy and a real sense of the present. We know why we want to be in this band and what this band means to us, what the songs means to us, what our little scene means to us. When we go to cities where we have our audience and people are really hip to what it is, that’s a super unique, special opportunity to have.
I think all the songs are seeded with that kind of vibe or theory, if you will. So it gives us a great place to just be super expressive and use a lot of texture, a lot of color. And after you do it for a few hundred shows and a couple years go by or whatever, then you really have a sound. We want to really nurture that sound. It’s our weird garden and we’re going to tend to it.
As you said, on the first two albums you essentially presented your live repertoire, which you were concurrently developing on the road. Do you feel that the band as a whole wrote toward the specific sound the Brotherhood cultivated since those early recordings on Phosphorescent Harvest ?
Yeah, I think that happened. And I mean that’s something that transpired probably in those first nine weeks. We piled in a van and did 15,300 miles just in the state of California. And it was just us—just the guys in the band and Brian, our tour manager. Which by the way, it’s still just us [laughter]. But that’s the thing, here we are.
It’s not a project in the traditional sense, where you say, “I’m gonna make a record,” and then, you take some money and make a record—or however you choose to do it— and then say, “I’m gonna put a band together, then we’re gonna go on the road, and I’ll see what I’m gonna do next year.”
That’s a dead-end sort of way to do it. The music business is gone, that industry is gone—and thank God, by the way. I mean that with all the joy in my heart because I think it was a corporate driven thing, man. And I think there’s a lot of people in the world who are searching for deeper meaning and deeper context than just status and what’s easy. And some people are getting less and less fooled by, “Wow, why is the only stuff that I’m hearing and seeing always coming at me at a price?” And that price is that those types of bands are a product. This isn’t. This band is real, in my humble opinion.
My thing is, if you’re working in the major label system right now, you might as well work for Delta Airlines, or you might as well work for BMW or General Electric or whatever, ‘cause that’s what you’re doing. And that’s cool, man. People wanna be famous and make money. But, some of us wanna make music, and we understand the connection that we have. I still go to concerts, and I still love buying vinyl records and being a listener. I mean, Jesus, we have to get a trailer for our tour bus, not for our instruments, just for the amount of vinyl records we carry around. And as I get older, my relationship with that—as a creative person and as someone who’s just soaking it in—is more advanced, even, than as a kid.
And even with the other things in life—family, kids, life, playing with this band, everything that goes on with people—music is a powerful, powerful vibration. It’s a real gift, man, to be able to do it. I think the first nine weeks, on that tour of California, that was a great opportunity for any of these people in this band to look at each other and say, “That was fun, but I’m not committing to this full-time. You’re crazy!” or whatever [laughter]. But it was the exact opposite; it fell into place and our musical conversation was very interesting. And it only gets deeper, the creative process.
What has that creative process taught you specifically as a songwriter and a musician?
My partnership as a writer with Neal has taught me a ton. Also, this band has allowed me and encourages me to grow as a guitarist, and that is something that really wasn’t there before, besides maybe someone to strum along or write with. So all of it is about progression, and we live in an age where it seems like America will go kicking and screaming, man; they don’t wanna progress in a lot of ways. And I think it’s super exciting—I love that we have this time right now, too. If you’re creative and you have the energy and you wanna work hard and you have passion, it’s a great time to be a musician.
And, by the way, I’m not an idiot. It helps that I was in the fuckin’ Black Crowes for 20 years and sold like, you know, a million records [laughter]. But that has nothing to do with this man! You know what I mean? I’ve never put the Black Crowes on anything. This isn’t the Black Crowes, so…
On the one hand, the fact that you had the Crowes and were able to explore that style of music obviously puts you in a position to start a band at this period in your career and jump on the road and tour. But at the same time, was there a point where you said to yourself, “You know what, I don’t have to shoehorn all the music I like into the Crowes. I can make a band like the Brotherhood, which sounds different.”
That’s funny—it’s definitely problematic. It’s something…because I hardly have changed any of my [goals], except I did maybe become more hardcore about what the creative process means to me and what it means for me to have my part in the big song—music as eternal. You have to kinda look around and say—someone can say, you know, “I believe in this” and then in the same sentence, you know, someone can say, “We should sound like this, because this is what we sound like.”
And then to me that sounds like, “We need to keep doing this because this is what makes money,” or something. And I get it, man. You know, I have kids, I have a wife, I want to take care of my family, I want my wife to have nice things, I like to go to the record store. But I’m just not that person, you know? I don’t care that I’m getting into my 50s, I don’t care that I’m not a giant star.
If it’s not happening, and if it’s not real, I don’t want to do it. I didn’t get into music to be, you know, like David Bowie and pretend I’m from outer space—I am from outer space [laughs]. I got no other place to go. It works for me, so I keep doing it. Actually, I’m from ‘Outer South’ [laughter]. That’s even worse than outer space—I’m from the Outer South!
But you know what, man, that’s the way people are; you change. Someone said a band is like a marriage, and I said, “Yeah well, in the case of the Black Crowes, a band is like being married to your high school sweetheart.” You know what I mean? You have to go around, you have to deal with that for a couple of decades, and then some. By the time you’re a grown man, you’re probably, you know, eating less Chicken McNuggets, and settling on movie dates or whatever. You know, everything changes, like I said…
*It sounds as though another change has been that you rediscovered your love of improvisational music? In part, your love of the Grateful Dead and the California jamband scene inspired you to form the Brotherhood. *
Well, I mean, in the mid ‘90s the Crowes [played that style of music] and even after that—I’ve always been that way, right? From being a teenager and listening to the art of improvisation, I was always into jazz. It doesn’t matter how much blues and R&B and country music and stuff that I’d listen to, I was always listening to improvised music. Again, The Black Crowes, like anything else, was a conglomeration of people and ideas and influences, most of which were rock/blues based, and all that stuff based in roots music. But, again, my interest in avant-garde, my interest in funk, in soul—all of it, I think, adds up to the way we sounded. The most inspiration comes from a place where you’re completely free of any road map. Again, I’m completely influenced by Garcia and the Grateful Dead, and the moments that I like when I listen to that—when I got to see that—even in the ‘90s, would be the places where when those moments happen. That’s an addictive feeling when you like music.
I am lucky to have the gift and honor to play with Phil and Bobby—everyone is in a group space with nothing tethering us to ground, and you can create something [unique]. That’s why you set it up and you try again every night. Some nights you get there and some nights you’re sweating trying, but it is all about getting to that place where you feel comfortable. It’s like psychedelic drugs in a way. Some people aren’t very comfortable being tripping or getting outside on the inside, and getting their inside on the outside. You know, the Black Crowes played with Bruce Springsteen last summer. If that guy attempted to play something that hasn’t been played a billion times, I imagine those people would riot [Laughter.]. I’m being totally serious: It just depends on, really, where your vibes are, man.
You are one of a handful of modern musicians who’ve been able to play with both Bobby and Phil regularly during the last 10 years. What has been a highlight of playing with Bob and Phil and how would you describe your relationship with each of them?
Oh my god, there’s so many. I mean, like I said, after you’ve played for hours—I mean you can really start breaking it down to hours, and stuff…
I mean with Phil, it’s completely different because I love him and I love his family so much. Whether he likes it or not, he’s a real father figure to me. So there’s so many moments like that with Phil. But then again, you know, being onstage for Phil’s birthday, and playing “Attics of my Life”—I mean, not that we were improvising there—but there’s a million things that I just get goosebumps. Even two summers ago, I sat in with Furthur at Red Rocks, and we played “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” the Bob Dylan song, which was super improv, and then we jammed on a “Hard to Handle,” and we did two solos, which was pretty epic—so you never even know when it’s coming. Know what I mean? But playing with Bob has been great. He is such a sweet and nice guy—and funny, too.
Exactly, yeah, it’s the freedom with people you know so well.
And I also think, it gets back to songwriting. One thing I think people always forget about the Grateful Dead, or the difference between them and a lot of stuff that came out then, would be the writing. They’re incredible, and they were writing songs when The Beatles were still making records and when Bob Dylan was at his most potent—when he was still this cultural sort of force. I mean you have to put it in context of what some of it was. That’s why those songs went on. And again, I think that’s what you’re looking for. You’re looking for that kind of depth.
*Absolutely. The brilliance of the Grateful Dead, in one of many ways, was their ability to write great songs and then to twist them around live. You touched on this for a second before, but I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about your relationship with Neal Casal? He was obviously an established songwriter/musician/sideman himself and played with people like Ryan Adams before he joined the Brotherhood, but you have really evolved as songwriters together since the Brotherhood formed. How has your musical relationship evolved in that time and how has that, as you said before, challenged you as a guitarist? *
Neal and I are very similar in an aesthetic, but I’m far more kinetic, like, “Bam, boom, this, this, that” [laughter]. I throw a lot of stuff around, where Neal will take more time. I mean, he will take in all the ideas and bring all his ideas, but he has a great, more calm, sort of Zen method. So I think my sort of whirlwind, manic, creative highs benefit from his more laid back, sort of, “We’ll get back to this in a couple days.” I’m just like, “That’s it!” So that’s what I’ve found with other songwriting duos. And it seems as if that’s where our stuff is headed. I mean, this record was almost 50/50 compared to the first batch of songs, in terms of what we contributed to each of them. And it’s like anyone in this band. I’ve never told anyone in this band, from the day anyone showed up, what to play or how to play or anything. Adam is making his contribution, in terms of composition, more and more, and I think that’s something really interesting. Like I said, there’s no reason to be precious about it. It should be like I said. This is a real organism, and let’s see what happens. Let’s see how creative we can get. As long as we’re feeling it, that’s the base place to jump off. I think it’s good because any great—or any successful, is what I mean, in terms of the output—songwriting team, I think is about two different voices and approach?
Have you guys already started working on a new album, or at least a set of songs that could form the basis of a new album?
Yeah, well, I mean, we’re there. It’s on the horizon. So we’ll be in the studio in the New Year. Then, you know, we wanna get right back out on the road. This is priority number one, I think, at least musically, for all of us. The more we keep our heads down and don’t really deal with anything, the better it seems to be going [laughs]. And let me tell you something: this vegetarian can deal with that kind of thing.
As a final question, Bobby Womack recently died. I know he was an influence on your music. Did you ever have a chance to meet him?
You know, man, Bobby Womack has a record from 1971 or ’72, I think, called Communication that’s just, to me, one of the best vocal performances—everything on that record. Ridiculous. And again, besides his writing, he was Sam Cooke’s guitar player. People don’t even write about that. I got to meet him on an airplane a couple years ago flying after a gig in Memphis in the afternoon. I got on the plane and he was sitting there, and I actually asked the flight attendant, “Is that Bobby Womack?” She said, “Yeah!” I got to talk to him for a little bit and he was super cool.
He told me he thought Jimi Hendrix was weird because he would buy a sandwich on a Monday, eat half of it, and then not eat the other half until Wednesday. [Laughter] I was like, “Yeah, I guess that’s weird man.” It’s pretty weird if you don’t have a refrigerator, I guess. I don’t know.
