It is only three days until the explosive Maid Of Stone Festival door opens. Black Stone Cherry hits the stage headlining on Saturday for their “one and only jump over the pond and back” for the foreseeable future. The band celebrate 25 years next year. For Chris Robertson, who recently celebrated his 40th birthday, it does not feel like 25 years. “I’ve been playing music a long time now,” he told MetalTalk, “but at the same time, it kind of feels like we’re just getting started.”
Black Stone Cherry have had a great history of large shows, from a headline on Stage Two at Download to the impressive Royal Albert Hall. For the latter, you imagine an incredible amount of pressure being aware of the weight of the venue itself and knowing it’s being recorded.
“I just look at them all the same,” Chris says. “If I mess up, I mess up. It is what it is. All the shows deserve the same attention, the same love, and the same dedication.”
The Royal Albert Hall for Black Stone Cherry was a little different. “You walk in there and you go, holy shit, people are coming here to see us tonight. We’re not here to see something. People are here to see us. You take a step back. Just like the first time we did Wembley Arena, it was the same kind of thing.
“You play these iconic venues that you always assumed you would show up to as a patron instead of as a performer. It’s kind of surreal, even though you’ve got that mentality of ‘when’.
“It feels like it’s gonna be a pretty good climb, and then all at once you’re there. It’s insane. But The Albert Hall was really, really special for me and maybe some extra nerves ’cause I had lost my dad just a couple months prior to that.
“He and I had talked about that show so many times, just extensively, about how cool it was we were playing there. He couldn’t believe it, asking if I was gonna go see the Queen’s quarters and all that stuff.
“But unfortunately, he passed last day of June, first day of July, that same year. It was kind of bittersweet that night. But I took a picture of him and had it on my monitor in front of me all night. So if you can see the video, you see that little small white piece of paper. That’s my old man. I had him with me all night.”
When Black Stone Cherry played Things My Father Said, it was such an incredibly emotional moment for the whole crowd, and even more so for Chris Robertson.
“It felt like he was right there with me,” Chris says. “It’s different. I became the oldest living male on my dad’s side of the family at 36 years old, and it really, really weighed heavy on me for a pretty good while.
“I really, really struggled. I kind of had a little bit of a breakthrough this year, to where I started feeling better about it again. But man, when you lose somebody like that, that’s not only your dad but truly your best friend. My dad lived 300 yards from me, if it’s even that far, up until he passed, the last 6 or 7 years.
“But it takes those shows when you’ve got something like that on your heart and you have no choice but to just be completely broken and honest in front of a room full of people. The music kills you and the people singing it back to you do more for you than I could ever imagine.
“Doing that song on that tour, I didn’t do it the first night. I started doing it the second night, and it still hurts to do that song, even four years later. It hurts like hell to play that song.
“But there’s also a healing quality of it. I finally got to where I could listen to it and smile at points. It’s a beautiful, beautiful connection that we have with the people who enjoy our music. It truly feels like a big family of people. It’s a rare occasion when we’re over there that there’s any kind of disturbance in the crowd or anything. Everybody’s just there to enjoy the music and celebrate with each other. That’s what we love about it.”
I told Chris that I lost my best friend of 42 years in January, but music ties us together, and there are songs that I hear that always remind me of him. I carry it in my heart just as Chris carries the DNA of his father. “I’m him made over pretty much,” Chris says.
Life is the leveller, really. “They can’t all be good days, or we wouldn’t appreciate the ones that are good,” Chris says. “We live in a crazy world. It is insane when you look around the news and everything going on around the world. I just hope and pray that people can get back to the core of being just, you know, let’s be good people.
“Let’s love each other. I know it sounds like the flower power of the ’60s, but the truth is we all judge each other entirely too damn much. We’ve all got a problem with something somebody does, and it’s bullshit, man.
“Just be you. Worry about what you’re doing, and let them worry about what they’re doing, and I promise you, everything will get better. I scrolled through the news before, and I’m just like, golly… I don’t even know what to look at, what to focus on. There’s so much going on. I’m ready to go play rock ‘n’ roll for a bunch of people and have a good time, so let’s do that and focus on that.”
Social media, I say, may be great for getting the word out there on certain things, but there is so much argument on social media sometimes. “It can be one of the most damning things for mental health on the planet,” Chris says. “I’m a firm believer of that.”
But at Maid Of Stone, at least people can have some kind of release. “The whole point of a concert or a sporting event or going to a movie is the escapism of it,” Chris says. “That’s why you come to see us. You’re not gonna hear about all the other stuff. It’s gonna be about rock’ n’ roll for that night, and that’s what it is.”
Black Stone Cherry played Hellfest last year, and the French were definitely up for it. But without being jingoistic, the UK does have a special love for the band.
“Inherently, we have a bigger following in the UK than we do in France,” Chris says. “But dude, I’ll say this. We’ve done Hellfest a couple of times. We hadn’t done it since they moved to the new location, and man, that thing is set up beautifully.
“I remember watching the YouTube video of that one back. I was like, damn, that was a pretty good show. The crowd was into it. I remember it was really odd because of the way the Metallica stage was set up. With the big round in front, the majority of the crowd is pushed back a little bit.
“So you would hear them delayed a little bit. It’s different, but we’ve had so many fun festival appearances over the years. It’s just super awesome. We’re super fortunate for that.”
Three months ago, the band released This Is Black Stone Cherry’s RSD album, the Record Store Day album. “A record store thing is something that not everybody gets to do,” Chris says. “When we were approved for it, we wanted to put together a collection of stuff that had never been on physical release before.
“But also a collection of stuff that if you’d never heard our band and you just saw that sitting on the shelf, that it would be a pretty damn good introduction to who we are, what we do. From the heavier stuff, the softer stuff to the live stuff. A little bit of everything.
“I feel like we were able to do that, man. There’s some cool stuff that was never released, period. Then there’s stuff that was never physical and then some live stuff like the Hellfest stuff. It’s just a really cool collection.”
For their set at Maid Of Stone, Chris told us in Part One of this interview that Black Stone Cherry were keeping it under wraps. I tell Chris I am reminded of a friend who saw Neil Young a few years ago. Neil Young just played all of his new album back to back.
“I get it,” Chris smiles. “You’re Neil Young, and you can technically do whatever you want. But I’m pretty sure people wanna hear Old Man and Crazy Horse and Rockin’ In The Free World and the songs that made you Neil Young.
“But, as a concertgoer, if I’m paying my money, my hard-earned money, to go see my favourite band, I’d like to hear my favourite songs. At least a few of them. Obviously, bands can’t go in and play everybody’s favourite song. You’d play every song in your catalogue at some point.
“You know, you gotta have awareness enough and care enough to go, OK, we need to play these songs. Like these songs need to be there, and then we can fill in the rest with kind of what we want to play, and we know that works well.”
Does this mean we will hear Blame It On The Boom Boom, White Trash Millionaire and Things My Father Said? I guess you will have to be with Black Stone Cherry at Maid Of Stone to find out.
Maid Of Stone: A Festival That Rocks
Now in its third year, Maid Of Stone has firmly established itself as a must-attend event for rock fans. With a wide variety of music styles covered, their festival’s reputation continues to grow.
Set to be a highlight of Festival Season, MetalTalk will have more news very soon. All our coverage for 2025 will be found at MetalTalk.net/maid-of-stone.
Tickets Available Now. For full details and to grab your tickets, visit MaidOfStoneFestival.com.
MetalTalk’s Maid Of Stone 2024 coverage can be found at https://www.metaltalk.net/tag/maid-of-stone-festival-2024.
For MetalTalk’s Maid Of Stone 2023 coverage, visit https://www.metaltalk.net/tag/maid-of-stone-festival-2023.
