INTERVIEW: Ben Wells – Black Stone Cherry
American rockers BLACK STONE CHERRY have been steadily growing in fame and popularity since their formation in 2001, with bigger tours, festival performances all helped by regular album releases, and even a blues EP for good measure. It’s been two years since their last album, Kentucky, was released in which time they have toured the world and have now written a new album, Family Tree. Never liking to do the same thing twice, they continue to develop and change, perhaps the secret to their continued success. With BLACK STONE CHERRY‘s new album Family Tree due out later this month, Distorted Sound caught up with guitarist Ben Wells to see what he thinks of the album and touring.
Family Tree is coming out next month, how do you feel about it?
Ben: We’re very excited; it’s an album that we’re very, very proud of. It seems like you wait, once it’s recorded, you wait forever for it to be heard then all of a sudden it catches up with you. We’re very anxious to get this out there to all of our fans and for people to hear it.
You’ve still got a month to wait, I’m afraid!
Ben: Yeah, a little bit, not too much longer though!
Was it different, in writing or recording, to your previous albums?
Ben: The majority of this album was written while we were on tour, that would be the biggest difference. We self-produced it again, we self-produced our last album, and we did this one so the recording process was excellent. We did it at home, it was just a very relaxed atmosphere, everyone was comfortable and everyone had fun. We had a great time.
Growing up in the South, and having the influences of THE KENTUCKY HEADHUNTERS, blues is obviously going to play a big part in your musical upbringing. Family Tree is a bit more blues oriented than your earlier albums, why is that?
Ben: The blues is a lot of the DNA of BLACK STONE CHERRY, that’s what our biggest influence is and we grew up playing the blues so, for us, I think we just dug deeper into some of our early influences and what made us play music in the first place, y’know? And the blues runs very deep in our band.
You released your Back To Blues EP recently, how come BLACK STONE CHERRY isn’t more of a blues band if it’s so important?
Ben: Well, I think we’re morphing more into that, in a way, we did the blues EP to show people that we’ve always been a band influenced by that genre of music. So we wanted to do that to show everybody that might not be aware that hey, we love blues music. I think doing that really influenced the writing of the new record and made us go further down that path.
What made you choose James Brown of all the musicians to have a dedicated song in Family Tree?
Ben: Another influence of our is funk music, and soul and we wrote James Brown, it was one of the first songs we wrote for this album, and it was just a tip of the hat to some of our influences, again that people might not be familiar with and we thought the song, when we wrote it kinda sounded like a James Brown song, it was what we were listening to at the time. So we just titled it that, and then just kept the title, kinda wrote it around that.
What’s your favourite song off the new album, and why?
Ben: Hmmm, it’s hard at this moment to pick a favourite because they’re all so new. I’m very proud of certain songs, I’m very proud of My Last Breath, I think it’s beautiful. And I’m really proud of a song called Carry Me On Down The Road, it really stands out to me musically as a different path we haven’t taken. Overall, I’m very excited about all of the songs, I don’t know if I have a favourite just yet, they’re all my favourite right now.
Is there one you’re particularly excited to play live?
Ben: Yeah, Carry Me On Down The Road will be fun to do live, and I think New Kinda Feelin’. We’ve been doing Burnin’ and Bad Habit recently and those have been going over great so I can’t wait to do the whole lot of them really.
Warren Haynes guests on Dancin’ In The Rain, how did that come about? What was it like?
Ben: It was great! We’ve known Warren Haynes for a little bit, we had to send him the track because we were on tour at the time, we called him up and asked if he wanted to be a part of the record, he said yes and so we sent him the song and he loved it. So we sent him the sample to his studio, a day later he sent it back to us! We get chills listening to it because he’s one of our favourite artists. It was amazing, and he did a great job.
Do you think you’ll work with him again?
Ben: We hope so, we’re getting ready to go on tour with GOV’T MULE, so hopefully we can do much more with him.
Obviously, family is quite important to BLACK STONE CHERRY, have any family members gone on tour with you?
Ben: Yeah, Jon Fred’s dad used to go on tour with us years ago, we’ve always had our wives and parents come out on short trips, usually we go out for months at a time so it’s hard to take family with you when you’re gone for that long but all of us on the road, we consider each other family, from the band members to the crew members, so it’s a really good atmosphere.
In June, you’re billed as special guests to GUNS ‘N’ ROSES at Download Festival, how do you feel about that?
Ben: Very excited, it’s an honour to play, we love playing Download, it’s a great festival, it’s been a favourite of ours for many years, and it’s a great spot for us. We’re very anxious to get up there and tear it up.
In 2016, you did An Evening With tour which was a bit different being half an acoustic set, how did that come about? Did you enjoy it?
Ben: Yeah it was great! We wouldn’t do the tours if we didn’t enjoy them, but we wanted to do something special that would be different to any other tour that we’ve done, you know? We wanted to scale it back and do something a little more intimate and personal. We walked away from that with that being one of our most favourite tours we’ve done overseas, because it was really neat to go out and play acoustic and then come back and play electric. So, yeah, it was a lot of fun.
Where’s your favourite place in the world to play?
Ben: I don’t know, I don’t know. We love playing anywhere in America, and we love playing overseas, I think anywhere we can be on stage, we’re happy. I don’t know where our exact favourite is just cause there’s so many great places we’ve been fortunate to play, and still some places we haven’t played yet.
Is there anywhere you haven’t been, but really want to?
Ben: We’re trying to get back to Australia, we’ve been twice, which is great, we’ve been to Japan, we really wanna get back to South America and Asia. We really wanna play Hawaii, so there’s just so many more places on our bucket list, for sure.
What essentials do you pack when preparing for a tour?
Ben: My bible that I take with me everywhere I go. Pictures, I have pictures of family and things like that, and enough socks and underwear, and necessities.
This year is seventeen years of BLACK STONE CHERRY, where do you see yourself in seventeen years time?
Ben: Hopefully we’re still putting out music, and touring, and making new fans. That’s the whole goal behind this, keep on doing it as long as we can.
Family Tree is set for release April 20 2018 April 20th via Mascot Records/Mascot Label Group.
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