“It’s great, man,” says Lawhon. “It’s the first time we ever produced our own project so we were really nervous about it. Here we are nearly a year later, people have had great things to say about it, so it’s definitely a plan we’re going to stick with.
“Mascot is our new home. They’re really passionate people. We really enjoyed our time with Roadrunner, and at a time they were such an incredible force in the music business Warner acquired the label, and they’re a big conglomerate with a lot of investors. They’re on the stock market. It’s not this group of people who care about the music anymore, there are a lot of people who only care about the bottom line. They don’t really have an idea how to do the marketing within a particular genre of music that they don’t get or enjoy. You’re never going to be able to sell something if you don’t get it.
“Mascot sign true, salt-of-the-earth artists. Every band that’s on their roster knows what they’re talking about. That’s the kind of company we want to keep, as we’re sticklers for perfection. Don’t get me wrong, we make mistakes all the time. I can’t remember the last time I walked on stage without making a mistake. But the fact of the matter is that if I make a mistake I’ll own up to it and so will everyone else in the band.”
Kentucky is Black Stone Cherry’s fifth studio album, their first outside the Roadrunner stable, and the first they’ve self-produced. “It was an interesting album for us because besides being the first time we had produced our own stuff, it was also the first time we’d been in Kentucky for a while to record an album, not Nashville or Los Angeles. You get to see the wife and kids at lunch, say hello, hug and kiss, see you later. They all did a great job of coming by and lifting our spirits.”
The band recorded the album with Dave Barrick at his studio in Glasgow, a small city of 14,000. “He had great ideas for the sound,” says Lawhon. “Who knows his equipment better than him, right? We were coming up with ideas and he’d be listening and say ‘Oh, well you need to have this reverb that I have’ or this tap delay that they only made a thousand of in 1971 and stuff like that. The smallest idea can sometimes become the biggest contribution. He’s got a great personality and he’s a great guy to work with.”
During pre-production of the music video for single, The Rambler, the band noticed that the production notes had specified a ‘Billy Ray Cyrus-type character’. “So we pushed it,” says Lawhon. “Can we get Billy Ray? The director said he actually knew his brother pretty well. ‘You never know, I’ll ask.’ We were like ‘Yeah you’ll ask.’ 45 minutes later he emailed us freaking out and said he couldn’t believe it but Billy Ray had agreed to do it for nothing. Turns out he’s a massive fan. Since then we’ve been good friends. When we played Nashville we were playing White Trash Millionaire and he ran out on stage, grabbed the mic and started singing. The minute we were off stage he hugged us all, said he loved us and ran off.”
By Josh Fergeus
