Rolling With Blackberry Smoke
Late-Summer Jam Session With Frontman Charlie Starr
Charlie Starr probably doesn’t have anything against the other seasons, but these summer months are far and away his favorites. This time of year is when his band, Blackberry Smoke, is at its busiest, rolling along smoothly day after day to place after place.
While other touring musicians may grumble about the constant travel, the affable Starr considers it an incredible adventure. Rather than lying around on the bus or holing up inside a hotel room, he makes time to stretch his legs and see the sights. If the weather cooperates, that could mean a quick fishing trip, or at least a hike in the park.
“I’ve never been one to just sit whenever we arrive to whatever our destination is for the day,” says the singer and guitarist for the Georgia-based band. “I just love waking up in a different place every day. I never get tired of looking out the window and thinking, ‘Where are we today? What’s there to see here?’ and get out in the sunshine and look around.”
Blackberry Smoke—23 Years And Counting
Glancing at the band’s itinerary during our interview, he perks up at the thought of heading to New Brunswick in southeastern Canada. That gives rise to stories about other spectacular settings that he and the others in Blackberry Smoke have gotten to experience during their 23 years of touring.
“We’ve been fortunate enough to see some stunning things around the world,” he says. Spain, Italy and Greece stand out in his memories, and so does the coastal town of Byron Bay in New South Wales, Australia.
“It’s probably the most beautiful place that I’ve ever seen,” Starr says. “I was pointed in the direction of the beach and when I walked over the hill I saw the tallest waves I’ve ever seen. It was like a movie. People were out there surfing right behind big signs that said, ‘Do Not Get in the Water.’”
Charlie Starr’s Alabama Roots
Starr loves that Blackberry Smoke’s hard-to-categorize music has provided them with such rewards. Their eclectic sound stems in part to his own musical upbringing in the small town of Lanett in eastern Alabama.
His father sang and played bluegrass and gospel music, and his uncles on his mother’s side were in a popular gospel group called the Swanee River Boys. Around the house, his mom often listened to classic artists like the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, and Bob Dylan. His older sister turned him on to more contemporary rock.
“She really liked Van Halen and Peter Frampton and Ratt,” Starr recalls. “I think her stuff was coming from boyfriends. I thought one of them was the coolest dude ever. He had AC/DC’s Back in Black and Highway to Hell and Van Halen’s 1984 on cassette in his car and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is great!”
The Blackberry Smoke Reaches
With such a most-of-the-above approach to music, Blackberry Smoke appeals to a broad range of audiences. Out promoting their most recent album, Be Right Here, produced in Nashville by Dave Cobb, they’ve been headlining their own shows and also serving as the opener for both Whiskey Myers and Cody Jinks. Regardless of the situation, Starr says his band focuses simply on doing what it does best rather than trying to change things up to pander to a particular type of crowd.
“What I learned years ago is to never try to second-guess an audience’s expectations or even try to get ahead of it,” he says. “I failed miserably at that several times over the years.”
Starr characterizes the pairing with Jinks as a win-win for sure.
“He’s a great dude and he’s become a great friend,” Starr says. “He sells a ton of tickets and has a lot of fans and I think we have a good bit of overlap, so it seems to work. We’re not doing something that’s so different from one another.”
The Bon Jovi Debacle
Even when the billings aren’t a perfect match, Blackberry Smoke tends to cultivate new fans with their musicianship, precision songcraft, and regular-guy likability. One notable exception is a Bon Jovi show that stands out in Starr’s memory as somewhat of a disaster. Five years later, he can laugh pretty hard about it.
“That was probably the strangest one ever, and it was for one show, in Stockholm, Sweden,” Starr says. “Bon Jovi’s fans did not care for us one bit. We were not playing what these people wanted to hear at all. And we all walked off the stage and were like, ‘Whew, that was rough.’”
For the crowd, the worst was yet to come.
“And I’m not throwing shade at Bon Jovi, because they’re legendary, but they went onstage and there was as problem with the p.a. It kept cutting out while they were playing and there were probably 40,000 people in that arena … I mean it was a huge arena, like a soccer arena, and people were leaving by the thousands, frustrated by the sound. It was just a horrible technical issue they were dealing with.
“At the end, I’m standing there with Brit Turner, our drummer who is now deceased, and I said, ‘Well, that’s probably the closest we’ve ever gotten to being booed,’ and he said, “Well at least the people stayed.’ So it was all in the way you look at it, I guess, hahahahaha.”
Editor’s Note: To connect with Blackberry Smoke on the road, check out the Tour section of blackberrysmoke.com. The Video section offers official song videos, including some from the new album, plus footage from concerts and TV appearances.