Kentucky rockers Black Stone Cherry are in Australia for their first ever headline tour in April 2017. We caught up with the bands drummer John Fred Young ahead of the tour to talk about their latest album Kentucky and what it was like supporting Steel Panther in Australia.

SCENEzine
How’s 2017 been treating you?

John Fred Young
2017 is really awesome. We’ve been doing a tour in the States and it’s going great. We’ve been doing a lot of 4 in a row which we are no used to. Man we’ve been kicking butt on this tour.

SCENEzine
Congrats on your latest album Kentucky. One year after it’s release you must be stoked with how it all turned out?

John Fred Young
Thanks man yeah that record has been truly incredible because we made it ourselves. We totally produced the thing. We were with roadrunner for years and years and have a lot of great memories with those cats but we had plateaued. In 2014 after we did a big UK headline tour we came home and parted ways then started writing. We got a clarity about us that we hadn’t had for years. If you’ve ever seen Jerry Maguire when he’s talking about being free that was kind of like that moment where we were like we can breathe. We started writing some really heavy stuff because before when we were on the last label they wanted us to be a radio band. In America it’s very radio driven in the rock scene. We don’t have an extreme amount of paper publications for rock n roll. So a lot of labels want you to sound like what’s on the radio. They tried to make us sound like that back in 2010. We did a lot of song writing with people and made a lot of great friends. Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea came out great. We worked with Howard Benson a huge producer out in LA and we weren’t used to doing stuff like that. We were used to the home grown thing but we took a positive experience away from it.

Man but this last record we went home and had a chance to get in our element. We worked with our long time friend David Barrick who actually did our first record. We’ve been doing this for a decade and been a band 16 years so we looked at each other and said we know what our fans want to hear and how we want to sound. So instead of getting a producer and having to pay them a butt load of money we just put on our producer hats and said we’ve gotta make this bad ass. It was a challenge but a good challenge. We signed with Macot records out of Holland they are some of the greatest cats to work with. They’ve got some great artists like Joe Bonamassa and Beth Hart.
We just released our newest video for “Cheaper to drink alone” it’s a different bag of tricks for us (laughs). We all dressed up as chicks and we filmed it in a local bar back home it’s funny man. We dressed up as the most hideous women and we are dating ourselves on this speed dating round it was good fun. We had our buddies Lzzy and Joe from Halestorm come up to be in it. That’s a memory we will cherish for years.

We’ve been writing new stuff now as well and will probably start working on the new album in September. Again we are not putting the boundaries up for what we write and how it should sound. It’s so nice to be your own band and producer not having to take orders from the A & R god in the sky. We are making Black Stone Cherry music for our fans. On our last Australian tour with Steel Panther it was so awesome really a dream come true and now getting to go back and play our own headline shows is cool we are really excited.

 

SCENEzine
Did anything wild happen while on tour with Steel Panther in Australia?

John Fred Young
Actually to be honest I was pretty mortified at how boring it was I was really disappointed. I actually called my mum and my wife and said this is the most boring display (laughs). No it was fun man all jokes aside those guys are some of the best players, killer musicians. They’re acting and not everybody is a great actor. They are so talented at what they do. I hope we can do more tours with those guys. We initially had our own headline tour booked and they reached out to us and we were like dude absolutely. It was a great way to kick off our first time ever playing in Australia. This time we will be playing close to two hour sets a night just hammering it. It’s always great to see a band on a headline set cause that’s where you either sink or swim.

SCENEzine
Being that you guys are from Kentucky which is known for it’s bluegrass what made you gravitate towards playing hard rock?

John Fred Young
Man Kentucky is really about horses, bourbon and hell raising rock n roll. Then there’s bluegrass (laughs). Where we are from it’s a town of about 3000 people. Our county went wet last year and I don’t know if you know what the means but it means you can actually buy alcohol at a store. Before we were a dry county you couldn’t buy alcohol we had to drive 45 minutes rom the next county to get beer it was nuts. When you cut the supply down on things the demand gets high so really we grew up in a wild ass area. Bootleggers, people who were moon shining. It was a pretty wild place to grow up but a great place. Chris the singer and I went to Kindergarten with each other. My dad plays guitar and my uncle plays drums for the Kentucky Headhunters and Chris’s dad plays guitar too. We were the only two kids growing up that had parents who played music so we bonded early on. I remember doing an 8th grade talent contest playing the drums and Chris came up to me and said that was cool I’m getting a guitar for my birthday we should get together. Then we started practising on my dads farm.

When we started putting the band together in 2001 we would be on the farm practising until midnight on school nights. All we wanted to do is play music. We had no sound restrictions we could be as loud as we wanted to and had parties there all the time it was cool. We are very proud to be from Kentucky.

SCENEzine
One of our favourite Black Stone Cherry songs is “Me and Mary Jane” can you tell us a bit about that song and was the video fun to make?

John Fred Young
Man that song is about marijuana. We were at the practice house and hanging out getting creative and that hook came. The video was fun to make we shot that video in a very beautiful old antebellum house in Tennessee. We had a bunch of good looking girls and cool motorcycle looking dudes. It was fun we had a good time. It was funny because when we started playing I noticed all this dust covering my drums. Man we were playing so loud we were knocking the crown moulding off the ceiling of that place. I felt so bad because I’m an antique nut when it comes to furniture and old houses. I was like oh my god we are destroying the house.

 

SCENEzine
After you play Australia you’ve got tour dates with band like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Def Leppard and Soundgarden. Is it cool to play alongside bands you grew up listening to?

John Fred Young
Absolutely it’s an honour. The Skynyrd guys have become family to us. Rickey Medlocke said one time in an interview that we are one of the top five bands to keep southern rock alive. Man that was a big deal for us. We are getting known as a southern rock band but we are influenced by a lot of different stuff. Old blues music like Leadbelly, Sun House and Howlin’ Wolf that stuff was huge to us when we first started. To really know us you have to check out my dad and uncle’s band Kentucky Headhunters the reason we sound like we do is because of those guys. They turned us on to so much cool music. We love everything and we are huge metal freaks for Lamb of God, Killswitch Engage, Metallica, King Diamond and we love pop we’ll have Justin Timberlake playing up here bumping then all of a sudden go to Black Sabbath.

SCENEzine
Can you leave us a last message for all your Aussie fans excited for the tour?

John Fred Young
Thank you to all of the Australian fans for being so awesome. We are so excited to come down and see all you guys. Hope everybody can come out and see us.

(Interview by Christian Ross)