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RICH ROBINSON (BLACK CROWES) AND CROOKED SUN |
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Familiar to millions of fans as guitarist/songwriter/co-founder of The Black Crowes, the quintessential Stonesesque greasy blues and Southern rock template that debuted in 1990 with Shake Your Money Maker. Their quadruple-platinum mixture of defiance and joy was personified with "Jealous Again" and their version of Otis Redding's "Hard to Handle - Rich’s solo work is no less a potent musical statement. Sharing a birthday with Bob Dylan, the guitarist’s guitarist names Nick Drake, Neil Young, Alex Chilton as major influences as well as top flight bluesmen Lightnin' Hopkins and Furry Lewis.
Socrates said a life unexamined wasn’t worth living, but sometimes life is going so well that you could be forgiven for going with the flow. But life will catch up with you in time, as it did for Rich Robinson. Before he was 25, he had fame, fortune, a beautiful wife and home, everything. But in the blink of an eye, much of it was gone.
“I was living this life that was askew. My relationships with the people that were supposed to be my closest seemed damaged. My marriage was not a good fit we weren’t facing up to that” he says, “And though I love my brother, my working environment was challenged. Nothing was working like it should have been, but by many people’s standards, it was a dream come true.”
But through his solo works, his musical gifts have propelled a major career fully intact, but joined this time by a more sentient, holistic outlook: that of a father, a son, a husband, a spiritual being, a musician, fully integrated and more comfortable than ever in his body, mind and soul.
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