Black Stone Cherry is back with a second run of classic blues covers. The six song EP – Black To Blues, Vol. 2 – brings to life some amazing songs that may or may not be on your radar. Either way, you have the chance to hear the band’s interpretation on songs like, Me and the Devil Blues by Robert Johnson or Big Legged Woman by Freddie King. Two songs that immediately captured my attention when I first saw the track listing were Early One Morning and Death Letter Blues. I was intrigued to see how the band would make these over with their big, full sound. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how these would turn out.
After my first pass at it, I was excited to go back and take another listen. Not only have they done these legendary songs justice, the band has put their own sound on them to create a mix of classic blues songs with their brand of southern inspired rock and roll.
As with every album, I get to preview I spend a great deal of time listening to the production of Black Stone Cherry songs. I didn’t have any studio notes going into my listen and right away I wondered where this was recorded and who was behind the desk. This has the warm sound of some of my favorite albums from the 70’s but has the sonic quality of today’s recording and listening standards. In short – they killed it. I spoke with Guitarist, Ben Wells and asked him about some of the production aspects of the album. I asked him where they recorded this terrific sounding record. Ben Wells tells Sound Vapors, “It was recorded at Jon’s (bassist Jon Lawhon) studio. It’s called Monocle Studios. It’s a great place and we’re very lucky that the band has a place like this that we can go and record” He also gave me some other studio information I was surprised to learn about, such as singer Chris Robertson taking on mixing duties as well. When I asked him about the producer, Wells says, “We self produced it, we did the last album ourselves. We’re more comfortable doing it that way. We’ve had the privilege to work with some really great producers before, but for us we kind of just like.. (pauses) we know what we want to do and we know what we want to create and it’s just easier for us just to get into the studio and be ourselves.” Clearly this is a process that is working great for the band.
We also talked about Ben’s guitar setup as well as the King, Elvis Presley and the surreal feeling of visiting Graceland. You can hear my entire conversation with Ben Wells by going to your favorite podcast destination below.
-Tommy Marz
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