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Review: Black Stone Cherry, Fleece
Here’s something we thought we’d never see: Black Stone Cherry back at the Fleece 16 years on from their Bristol debut here. This hasn’t been brought about through cruel commercial necessity. Last time they were in the UK, back in January, the Kentucky quartet were filling arenas, and this show sold out in just 30 seconds. The idea seems to have been to reward loyal fans with a short run of ‘intimate’ shows to introduce new album Screamin’ at the Sky.
On their first UK tour back in 2007, BSC looked like a bunch of schoolboys bouncing around the Fleece stage. They seemed way too young to be playing the novel blend of grunge, metal and southern rock that infused their debut album. Older and gnarlier, but still in their thirties, they now appear to have grown into their music, but perform it just as energetically. There’s been just one line-up change along the way, with Steve Jewell taking over from departed bassist Jon Lawhon.
With a packed room full of fans who can scarcely believe their good fortune at getting to see BSC at such close quarters, one might have expected them to flog the new album mercilessly. Instead, they don’t deviate much from their arena set in a two-hour show that includes just three new songs. They open with the title track from Screamin’ at the Sky; an album that seems likely to follow its predecessors into the UK top ten. A typically muscular rocker, this boasts all the elements that made the band so appealing in the first place, though few would have predicted they’d become quite so popular. Guitarist Ben Wells is his usual livewire self, headbanging furiously throughout. He will later apologise to the front row for sweating all over them. Then it’s back to those breakthrough Folklore and Superstition and Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea albums for Blind Man and that super-catchy audience favourite White Trash Millionaire.
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They spring a few surprises in this lengthy set. An unexpected rock cover of the Wailers’ Stir It Up mutates into Me and Mary Jane, and Maybe Someday from their debut album is revived for the first time on this tour. Hard-hitting drummer John Fred Young – the only member of the band to retain his 2007 hairstyle – gets a thunderous solo during the splendid Cheaper to Drink Alone, while frontman Chris Robertson pauses to recall revisiting the Fleece back in 2012, after the band had graduated to the Academy, telling us that his son is now eleven years old. While we do the mental arithmetic and hope he’s about to reveal that the lad was conceived on the venue’s famously sticky floor, it turns out that his wife chose this momentous occasion to tell him that he was to be a father.
BSC are part of a noble tradition stretching back to Jimi Hendrix of American acts who become far more popular in the UK than they are back home, which perhaps explains the special bond between band and audience, who bellow along gustily with every note. “We sing about what’s happened to us and what we’ve seen,” Robertson explains of their unwavering blue-collar approach.
The set concludes with old faves Blame It on the Boom Boom and Lonely Train, but nobody’s going to let them leave without an encore. “It’s time to get all sentimental’n’shit,” says Robertson as he returns to the stage with Wells for The Rambler – a rare foray into country rock – before the rest of the band join in on traditional show closer Peace is Free, leaving us all hoarse and exhausted.
Let’s hope they decide to do it all again with album number nine.
Read more: Metal & Prog Picks: October 2023
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