Black Crowes announce extended tour, Marc Ford to rejoin band...

Good news, good news. Aside from not getting Steve Gorman, this is almost perfect.

They're playing Houston on April 21st. I may have to make the drive down for that one.

 

Make that a soda or three and you're on.

Re: the question about Marc Ford, he joined the band in late 1991, replacing Jeff Cease who played much of the lead guitar on the group's first album, "Shake Your Moneymaker". I say "most" because the bit that most people are most familiar with-- the solo on "Hard to Handle"-- was recorded by Brendan O'Brien, who helped produce the record.

The fact that the group felt the need to bring in someone else to handle the solo on their most important single should tell you all you need to know about Cease's abilities. The "Behind the Music" special originally alluded to a cocaine habit as the reason for Cease's removal; however, that was pulled from later broadcasts because it wasn't true. The Crowes hit it big and Cease wasn't a good enough guitar player to play lead in a multi-platinum blues-rock band, so they cut him.

Ford was an old friend of Chris Robinson's and was between gigs, so they brought him on and he really took the songs to another level. SYMM is a good album, but it sounds sophomoric compared to the maturity of Southern Harmony and Amorica, and Ford's contributions are a huge part of that. Even more importantly, he just tore up the stage in concert.

Anyway, there is still a lot of controversy regarding Ford's departure from the band. The Robinson brothers insist that by the end of the 1997 Further tour, Ford's drug problem was so bad that he was playing out of key, even playing the wrong songs. Rich Robinson has claimed that it was so bad, they had to turn him off in the mix. Of course, the Further shows were recorded off of soundboard and no tape of Marc playing horribly or being turned off in the mix exists. The more cynical among us think that it was some combination of Marc wanting songwriting credits (all songs on Crowes records are credited to Rich and Chris) or more money, or, more likely, pressure from the record label to make some changes because of the band's plummeting album sales and increasingly eclectic themes.

I mean, you've heard "The Band"-- does it remind you of "Three Snakes" or what? Three Snakes is brilliant but it sold barely 300,000 copies and the last thing the record label wanted was another album of extremely limited appeal. The Crowes have always released track #2 as their first single, meaning "Smile" would have been the first single off of The Band, circa 1997. Was that going to climb the charts against Sugar Ray or bull**** like that? Doubtful. Usually, track #3 is the 2nd single. That means "Paint an 8" would have been the follow-up. If you didn't absolutely love the Crowes, would you have any interest in teh album at that point?

So no one really knows why Marc got fired but it seems clear that it had something to do with declining sales and increasingly esoteric songs. What we do know is that the Crowes' two post-Ford albums, "By Your Side" and "Lions", were poorly executed, poorly engineered, and generally lifeless and the band is fortunate to be getting a second chance given the way they dive-bombed their careers from 1998 on.

Personally I am encouraged. I didn't think much of anything Chris and Rich did the final three years of the band showed any inspiration (with a few exceptions), but I did think that Chris' second solo album was outstanding. Hopefully, fingers crossed, this tour goes well and the band heads back into the studio to make a new album.

 

No, Rich was the 2nd guitarist (don't call him a rhythm guitarist or he'll punch you-- "I play specific parts, not this three-cord strum bull****," he said in an interview in 1996 or thereabouts). He played lead in the studio on most of the tracks from "By Your Side" and "Lions", while he and Audley Freed split the lead work on stage the last three years of the band.

Rich is not a good lead player. His solos are seemingly random agglomerations of notes, played with a predictable rate shift to and from the fastest time signature (not sure that's the right terminology or not) he can play. They only rarely "tell a story" (his solo on "Peace Anyway", a b-side from "By Your Side", was brilliant). Mostly he just meanders around the same pentatonic scale, trying to slop things together like Jimmy Page.

Marc Ford, on the other hand-- I just don't think it's possible to play the guitar better than he does. His solos are contextually perfect, he varies his tone to fit the song (think about the distorted wailing on "Sometimes Salvation" vs. the clean, wah-driven solo on "Better When You're Not Alone" vs. the smoky echo on "Feathers"), and they drive the song to an emotional peak (which in my opinion is the purpose of a guitar solo, if you're inclined to have one). His solo on "Black Moon Creeping" is a textbook example of tasteful, purposeful soloing.

The Black Crowes are an unremarkable band without Ford. Bringing him back gives them a chance to become remarkable again.

 

Why thank you, same to you.

Exactly 100% right. And it makes me laugh in a way because I remember a quote from a Guitar World profile of the band in early 1996: "I have the feeling that the Black Crowes will never be as good a story as the Stones, because they will never sacrifice any band members (notwithstanding Jeff Cease)".

Right.

Chris Trujillo
Johnny Colt
Marc Ford
Sven Pipien
Greg Rzab
Audley Freed
Steve Gorman

Other than that....

On the plus side, I have heard that the band's chemistry and performance was astounding for both the run of shows at the Hammerstein and the warm-up gigs. They seem to be getting along great and the sound engineers (ahem, at Rich's behest) are not fiddling with the mix. He's not turned up too loud, Chris isn't just screaming the lyrics, they've got background vocalists (a critical element), and Marc Ford is playing better than the has his whole life. The shows I've downloaded have been awesome.

I'd say they're back at least for 1 album. I sure hope we get something good. I loved "This Magnificent Distance", Chris' last solo record, and I thought Rich's solo album had some good ideas that were mangled by the lack of a competent vocalist.