Black Stone Cherry: From ELO To Southern Hard Rock

BLACK STONE CHERRY has been making music together longer than you would think, especially jamming around old records by acts like Jeff Lynne. A different style, yes, but a major influence on the band as a whole. It’s no wonder why the band have included a cover of ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA’s Don’t Bring Me Down on their upcoming album, The Human Condition. A lot of stories like that, and more, were revealed when Distorted Sound chatted with the band’s drummer, John Fred Young, as well as his hopes for the new record. As The Human Condition comes out on October 30th, what other unexpected tales and secrets are discussed in this interview?

“Many people probably don’t know this but we were highly influenced by Jeff Lynne and ELO,” John Fred starts off with. “When I was probably like nine or 10 years old, my dad got me to listen to some of his older records. I pulled out a couple and he said ‘hey, so put this in’, and it was an album called Armchair Theatre by Jeff Lynne, and this album came out in 1993, or 1994, and the record just changed my life. It really did. I remember I listened to that record for years, that was like my soundtrack to life.”

Whilst the band’s self-titled debut was released back in 2006, BLACK STONE CHERRY have been playing music together since 1999, practising covers and writing their own songs. “When the band would stay at my house a lot, and we would we would just write stuff and I introduced them to the Jeff Lynn record,” he explains. “So for us, it became actually one of the greatest tools for our band, because we all started listening to it. And I think I got into finding out how he did melodies. I think he was so instrumental in helping inspire us to write the way that we did. It influenced inwardly, it is influenced in terms of classic rock influence.”

“I’ll tell you what, now it’s really hard for me because I’m kind of like having like a bunch of kids you can’t pick your favourite,” John Fred replies when asked what his favourite song from The Human Condition is. “Again was a song that we had written back in 2007; when we originally we went in the studio, it kind of felt like that it was a great song but we felt like that the lyrics and things were just kind of a little dated so we took the bridge of the song and then we totally rewrote the entire song around it and it became Again and the production is really cool.”

He continues talking about the album creation, saying, “when we were in the studio we went through probably 12 or 13 songs that we had kept for years and years and the songs were amazing songs and adjusting for one way or the other. We didn’t put them on a record in the past because we already had this particular record and we couldn’t, but when we got in the studio, we were kind of just sitting there with a blank page and we didn’t have a direction where we wanted to go. It was a brand new thing for us because normally we have everything lined up for go in there and we know we’re gonna play like a song for new songs so we just sit there and we’re like hey let’s go for that we can.”

So what does John Fred hope for once The Human Condition is released? “I hope people just dig it and they like it,” he answers. “We have such an amazing collection of fans all across the world, I never took anything we did for granted like getting to travel and tour and meet different people. All four of us were very, very humble and very generous guys. We know how lucky and fortunate we are because we’re just four full country dudes from Kentucky, from a really small town, we get to go and do this and play music and do that for a living.”

“I think music is so important to the soul, you know, and that might sound like a movie line,” John Fred finishes. “We play music, we write music, and entertain people. It’s one of those things where I think that when we do come back and we will, you know when this virus is going away, when artists and bands get to go back and start playing, I think it’s going to be some of the most amazing live shows. We’re just looking forward to and I think that we’ve got a great record to go tour on when we do get to tour. I think people are already enjoying it so I’m just really happy that we’ve got so many great fans that have supported us and keep enjoying our records so can’t wait to get this thing out and be able to tour off of it.”

The Human Condition is out now via Mascot Label Group. 

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