Black Stone Cherry… talk about a band that is taking over stages worldwide! I have met many bands and very few are as kind to their fans as Black Stone Cherry. In fact, they just dropped their album “Kentucky” and did a free show at a Walmart to promote the album and treat their fans. Black Stone Cherry has a legion of supporters, many of which came to see them at Carolina Rebellion. Rockwell UnScene and Tattoo.com had a chance to catch up with them there. Continue reading to find out more about the band, their tattoos, and what they’re up to this year.
Mel: Good Morning this is Mischievous Mel here at Carolina Rebellion and I am here with Black Stone Cherry! I heard you guys finally played at the Whisky in Hollywood.
Jon: We’ve heard so many stories about the Whisky. It’s not very big and the sound was kind of difficult, but our sound guy did a pretty good job. LA, it’s kind of a tough town because they get to see everything. Their local bands are Metallica, so it was kind of a tough market, but the crowd response was amazing. We were just really grateful that everyone came out.
Mel: I heard you guys played at a Walmart for your fans after dropping your new album.
Jon: We did. We did an acoustic performance, four or five songs. We kind of took the garden center over. Walmart was complaining because right next to the stage were the automatic doors. We had people packed in there and the doors couldn’t close so all of their A/C was just rolling out the doors.
Mel: That just shows how much you love your fans.
Jon: We do. I think the bands that we’ve been fans of our whole lives that we’ve met have been kind of great. It’s odd that you run into someone that’s grumpy.
Mel: We talked earlier about your new album. Can you tell everyone a little bit about that?
Jon: It’s called ‘Kentucky’. We decided to call it that because we wrote 90% of the songs there, and we all live there. All of the extra musicians that we brought in were from Kentucky. It was kind of like a return home for us because we hadn’t written or recorded in Kentucky since our first record. Kind of a getting back to our roots because we left Roadrunner Records at the beginning of last year. We knew we were going to end up with a new label, so we kind of wanted to have a new page turned. We needed to come back to where it all started and get ourselves rooted before we start this new thing.
Mel: I heard rumors that you have some ink. Can you show us?
Jon: I have the Egyptian eye over here. This chick right here, the secret about her is that she has my initials hidden in her; J.L. The funny thing is we’ve always had this thing about the number 13, and we noticed with this tattoo it has a 1 and a 3 hidden in it. It just kind of showed up in it because all of the shading was free-hand.
Mel: Who is your artist of choice?
Jon: This one was done by a dude in LA, right across the street from the Rainbow. And then the other ones were done by a guy who used to live back home, but I’m not even sure where he’s living now. Chris, our singer, is sleeved and he’s gotten tattoos in various different spots. This guy is named Zach Birchum, he’s from Moscow. His tattoo is actually in walking distance from the studio where we recorded the record, and he came to hang out. He use to be in a band called Trip that we used to go watch play as teenagers. He’s a killer musician. When I get more tattoos I’m definitely going to him. He should have his own TV show because he’s better than most of the guys on TV nowadays.
Mel: Where can people see you next?
Jon: We are on tour with Buckcherry as of yesterday, and we’re doing that all this month. We’re kind of scattering all over the world. We’re going to Australia in June, then we do the Carnival of Madness in July, and then we do the states. We talked about doing South America in September, and then we go back to mainland Europe for the first part of next year. So, everywhere.
Mel: Black Stone Cherry is taking over the world!
Check out Black Stone Cherry’s new album ‘Kentucky’ on iTunes and follow the band on social media
