You can feel the California sunshine; almost smell the organic vegetarian chilli cooking on the stove and the sweet sound of the Grateful Dead blowing in the wind when Chris Robinson starts chatting to you from his backyard in Santa Monica.

Robinson, the lead singer known for his magnificent work with The Black Crowes, is riding the crest of a wave where the joy and effortless dance of his music is giving him a long lasting hit of soulful sunshine.

The Chris Robinson Brotherhood is the new outlet for the lanky hippie from Georgia and he and his Southern Californian compadres are onto something. The grooves and the spirit that make up this band come from a simpler, less commercialised space.

This is music for a certain type of community that may not be finding what they want on the airwaves of popular radio. Robinson told us a bit about how this group of like-minded souls became a Brotherhood as he rambled down the phone line.

“The real impetus came when Adam MacDougall joined the Black Crowes. The Crowes have always been a strange two headed beast. As the end of our last schedule wore down in 2009/2010, it was obvious that we were a band that really did not have a direction, you know. People like this and people like that and I am just one of those fucked up people that I write songs (laughs) That is where I feel comfortable and I feel interested when I am working that way. Music is more important to me than just the commerce of the thing”, Robinson mused.

“I was just sitting on a bunch of tunes and Adam would come to the motel room on days off and we would work together. We talked about a lot of the conceptual stuff. We both wanted to be in a band that was less bombastic and more melody driven. My imagery and the things I want to say have obviously changed with time. We had that time on our hands so Neal Casal (who has played with Ryan Adams in The Cardinals along with a lengthy solo career) came on-board and it took off from there”, continued Robinson.

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2013 did see The Black Crowes on the road but if you visit their website you see quotes from the band about the last year and it states that 2014 will be a year where the members focus on solo projects. It is very hard not to read some of the quotes from the Robinson Brothers and the rest of the group as eulogistic in nature. With 25 years under their belts, maybe it is a good moment for them all to take a breather and revisit the rock and roll behemoth at a later date when there is more life force behind what they are doing. Sometimes the Robinson brothers just need some space from each other!

So what strategy did Robinson have to take this Brotherhood to the world?

“My initial idea as well was that I don’t want to have a record deal, I don’t want to do any interviews nor have our pictures taken. I did not want it linked to or have the Black Crowes name to be mentioned in the same breath with this band because we are not playing those songs and I am not asking people to pay that money because I am not doing that”, stated Robinson.

“So how do you do that and still get some traction and people know who we are and what we are about? The only thing that I could think of was start it as a local band again. Granted, with our names we get to jump a bit ahead on the line, but that is what we did. We booked a residency tour throughout California for nine weeks up and down the state from North to South. By the end of it, 13,500 miles later we had a pretty tight band and a very tight bond. We did not bite off more then we could chew and we got out there to see where our language goes and see where our musical conversation takes us”, Robinson explained.

Although the band has released three studio records since 2012, the truth and beauty of their musical conversation and community comes together during their live performances. Taking a page from their forefathers, The Grateful Dead, this is not simply jam band by the numbers, but it is part of their lives and their friendships with the remaining members of that band that still walk this earth.

“We feel the same way, like give us another four or five years and where will this take us. It is funny to be where we are and we have not made any money and no one really cares. People probably wonder why I don’t want to do anything else, and it’s like dude, this band is just getting started.

We are at our best when we are having a powerful vibration with the people that are there. That is enough to keep us thinking, wow, can we have more of that and how deep can we dig, you know, and how can we do it in a construct that is conscious to who we are as people and what we want out of our scene and how we want to present it and what is important to us. We want to control it and be progressive and conscious”, enthused Robinson.

“It is a big thing and it was a big joke, because someone said it, well, maybe I said it (laughs), we are like the farm to table psychedelic group .We know all our own vegetable producers. We are not getting any genetically modified fucking G chords. These are all organic. That A flat you just heard was organic. Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead were the mother seed to all this and of course they loom very large in our mythology of what we think about music and rock and roll, but they also loom large in our present and real life because we are lucky to have access Phil Lesh and Bobby Weir to play together and to have friendships there that carry on through this day”, said Robinson.

The proof is in the pudding and by visiting The Chris Robinson Brotherhood website you can have a little taste or you can gorge yourself on the live music they have cultivated over the last few years. With most gigs running over three hours, you can see that the jam band sensibility is truly alive and kicking. Betty Cantor Jackson, the former sound engineer for The Grateful Dead, has taken to the board to help record a large number of these shows and the sonic quality is simply stunning.

Listening to these shows should give you some idea what to expect, but talking to Robinson you get the idea that the unexpected is what makes these gigs even more special.

“It’s funny for us because it is hard. You are right because our music is not really there on the popular radar and neither is the presentation. In California people take psylocibin and they dance for four hours, like hey, man that is far out. They get it.”

“We play for three and a half hours and we play the whole time and we hope people come out in Australia and I can tell you that the people that do come and who hear us will say, wow, I wish we had access to gigs and bands like this all the time. It does make you start to think this is a different scene and a different presentation. We are asking something different of the audience then say even the Black Crowes. The Crowes were more of a rock and roll experience with a bit more of a Pentecostal fervour when it went good. The Brotherhood is definitely more clandestine and it is more like being with your best friends in someone’s backyard and you can dance as weird as you want. No one is going to judge you or laugh at you, it is for freaks man, it’s for freaks”, laughed Robinson.

In short, this is music of the psychedelic blend and visitors to the Bluesfest in Byron in 2015 and the sideshows will be able to sip the kool aid. As Robinson said,” Let the CRB set us free and take this as far as our creative energy will take us”. Peace, brother, and let’s dance.

The Chris Robinson Brotherhood will be here for Bluesfest 2015, for more info visit www.bluesfest.com.au

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