We spoke with beloved Kentucky rockers Black Stone Cherry before their headlining set at Maid Of Stone 2025 to discuss their longevity, the reciprocated love when touring in the UK and the merits of going viral on social media.
The band started in 2001, and you are going to turn 25 next year, so what keeps driving you, what keeps you getting out of bed in the morning after so long?
Steve: Coffee and Vitamin C.
Ben: Coffee! Coffee and the fact that you can have beans with breakfast over here. No, honestly, we just love playing music. I think I read this the other day – Chris gave an interview – even though it feels like we are going to be 25, the band next year, it still feels like we’re just doing new things, and I know that’s cliché to say, “Oh, it feels like we’re just getting started”, but really it does. I think anytime you write new music, or go on tour, or get ready to do something new, it feels like the slate is clean again, even though you might have a history of a bunch of albums.
It’s like a refresh button, and now you can come out, and there are always opportunities to gain new fans. I think that’s what drives us, when people get online and say, “I just discovered your band”. To some people, that might be like, “Dang man, we’ve been doing this forever. Why, you’re just now getting into…?” But that’s inspiring to us. There’s still a lot of unturned stones.
Steve: See familiar faces, you know, familiar places too.
That must be nice and encouraging. So, when you started out back in 2001, could you imagine being a band for quite so long and being places like here?
Ben: We knew we always wanted to. We always use the word “when” we do this. “If” was never a thing with us. I couldn’t have imagined we’ve done some of the stuff we’ve done thus far. And I hope five years from now I’ll be able to sit here and think in the next five years we’re going to be doing something that I didn’t think at this moment we would be, you know?
It all goes back to just the love of playing music, love being together, playing music together, that feeling on stage. We’ve been so blessed to play Wembley Arena and Royal Albert Hall and headlining these festivals and then even the small clubs we get to go to – it is still an opportunity for us to prove to ourselves and prove to the people that are there, whether it’s five or five thousand, it doesn’t matter. We just love playing, and we owe it to ourselves as musicians and brothers in a band. And we owe it to the people that are there, no matter how many you know.
Steve: You know, any opportunity you get to go play, and especially come over here and play. It’s always a special time. We always look forward to it.
So, what would you say is different about back when you started out to now, thinking in terms of like the state of the world, state of music, and you yourselves as well?
Ben: Well, see, when we started, there was no Facebook, there was no Spotify, there was no streaming. We just had MySpace. You remember MySpace? And I remember when the band first got a MySpace, it was like, “Oh, we’re getting online now!” We thought it was the coolest thing, and honestly, I think it’s a blessing – not a blessing and a curse – but it can be a challenge for bands now to get started, because the good thing about social media is you can be a star on TikTok now.
You can do it on your own as long as your content is good and original. Whereas back in the day, we were printing up flyers and going to a copy machine and putting them on people’s cars, advertising a show – that’s how we had to advertise. There wasn’t an online ad you could do to advertise a show.
Steve: We still encourage that. It’s still cool to do even though you’ve got Facebook and social media – still print out some flyers. Put them on people’s cars.
Ben: That way of doing it will never die, and it will surprise me if it comes. There’s something to be said for that. Bands now coming up, it is so… It’s like a funnel. There’s so much out there. So, it is harder to poke your head out of the crowd. And go “I’m here, too!”
But a lot of bands want to get mad at streaming and stuff like that about the payouts and whatever. And I’m like, “Man, look, it does suck…”, but at the end of the day, streaming is great because I know there’s been a lot of people that have discovered our band from somebody else’s playlist or some kind of playlist on Apple Music or Spotify or whatever it may be. So, you just kind of roll with it – it’s not going away.
You mentioned the DIY approach that you used to do back in the day, because that is what you had to do, as there was no streaming. So, how do you guys as a band start to embrace the newer forms of getting your stuff out there? Things like streaming and TikTok – so many acts these days suddenly just pop out of nowhere because they’ve earned a degree of virality on that platform. What do you guys do in that regard? Or do you do anything at all with it?
Steve: You definitely utilise social media because you have to in this day and age, and as overwhelming as it can be at times, like Ben was saying, I can only imagine what it’s like being a new artist trying to figure out how to utilise all this. At the same time, it kind of forces you to get creative, differently than before. So, it’s kind of cool in a way because it helps you sharpen new creative skills and forces you to kind of think out of the box a little bit. All of this stuff is adaptable to whatever artists and whatever their brand is and whatever they’re doing. But it’s kind of a cool, different creative guide to it now that you gotta approach things with it.
What sort of creative things have you come up with? Or what’s the zaniest idea that you’ve thought of that hasn’t perhaps made it?
Ben: We’ve got some ideas! We just can’t… We won’t post them because our ideas are probably not suitable – they have to be on, like, the dark web or something. Some of the stuff we joke about posting to get views, which we know would go viral overnight. But we can’t do it because our parents would not like that. We have morals!
Steve: I tell you one of my favourites that I’m seeing right now amongst musicians is: the camera will start, and it’s their wife on the camera saying, “Listen to my husband talk about his new guitar, his new pedal, boy, now, you better like it!” Sometimes, different trends like that on social media could kind of be cool to play with.
Ben: Before ‘Screamin’ At The Sky’ came out, we had a girl come up that has a company – this was back home – she does a social media business. She had us do some cool ideas that we never really thought about. Some funny stuff that we would probably never do, and then she was like, “No, you should do this”. And then people loved it, so sometimes it’s good to get another head involved, because we might think we want to be cool and this.
Somebody else will go, “I’m telling you guys, if you just do this, it’s going to be funny. People are going to love it”, and you do it, and then it catches on. But, like Steve said, you just gotta keep up. That’s the thing.
So, I wanted to come back to Maid of Stone – this is your only UK show. You’ve come over specifically to headline this.
Steve: Only international show of the year.
So what exactly was it that tempted you over? Brought you over to play just this one show internationally?
Ben: I mean, obviously, we love touring here. We love touring. We love coming over here, and when we were back, before we left, friends and stuff would say, “When’s your next show?” and I was like, “Oh, we’re flying to England tomorrow”. “Oh, how long are you over there for?”, “I’ll be back on Sunday”. They’re like, “What? You just go out like…?” “Yeah, just one show”, and they’re like, “That’s unbelievable!”
But it’s crazy because we love it, and if the opportunity presents itself, we’re going to be here, and we don’t want to stay away too long, but we also don’t want to come over and wear out our welcome either. So, this is a good opportunity. We just did a big tour at the end of last year. So, this is a good thing to come back in the summer, have a little bit of a presence to say, “Hey, we love you!” and then just go away. But it’s cool, and it’s a festival, so it just worked out that we were able to make it happen.
Sometimes it’s fun to come over, just pop in and out, play the show and then go away until it’s time to come back.
So, it actually worked out with what you’re currently doing schedule-wise at the moment.
We love having you guys over, and you are always well-received here. What do you think it is about Black Stone Cherry’s music that we in the UK identify so much with?
Steve: Just family with different accents. Essentially, it just feels like a big family affair to me, I think. I don’t know – they just really latch on to some Black Stone Cherry over here and we’re extremely grateful for it.
Ben: People have asked what it is. You know, “Why here?” And I don’t know either. We’ve asked fans that before, and they can’t really answer. They love what we do, and they love us as people. We try to be as hospitable as possible, and we don’t have any kind of pretence.
When we first came over to tour here in 2007, we were an opening act, and promoters didn’t know we were supposed to be here. They didn’t have any money for us, so we didn’t come over trying to look or sound or be like anything. We were just happy to be here, and I think maybe people caught on to that, too.
That they were like, “Oh, these guys are genuine dudes. They wear their heart on their sleeve”, and people know that when they see us, they can be very energetic, but also, we’ve had emotional moments on stage over here. So, I think fans respect that, that we’re not trying to put up any kind of wall between us and the audience, we’re all, like Steve said, we are all together. I think, I don’t know!
It sounds like a good reason: that your authenticity as a band and the fact that you wear your heart on your sleeve, and that you’re not putting up any shows or pretences or anything like that, is what people respond to. They’ve got the notion of the rockstar identity, but you guys are just like, “We love playing here and we love making music for you guys, so let’s just enjoy ourselves all together”.
You were last over here back in November with Skillet and Ayron Jones. So how did you find that tour?
Ben: That was a fun tour. Ayron was out with us. We had done Europe before that, so he’d been out with us for four weeks ahead of that. So, we’ve done a lot of stuff with all those cats. Cowboy Bob plays bass for them – he’s just a character, and every single day, it was a joy to see that man because he was just loud and happy and funny.
Steve: We did the Cult cover that featured John from Skillet and Ayron. They got up every night with us, and we all did it together.
Ben: We’ve never done that before either: had a song featuring two other vocalists and then do it live. So, it was really cool to do that. Skillet was a great band, too. So that was just fun, that was a cool package. It was very entertaining, and everybody had different brands of rock, too. It wasn’t just all the same. So, I thought it was great.
Well, you kind of touched on my next question, which was if there were any tour highlights. So, were there any, beyond having the extra vocalists up to do The Cult cover?
Steve: Wembley is always a great time. Manchester. And it’s like picking your favourite child… What’s your favourite?
Ben: Glasgow was great. All the shows were fantastic. That was a fun time of year too, because it was around the end of November and you guys do Christmas markets up right, man. So everywhere was just dressed up nice with the lights. And it is a fun time.
Steve: I’m always infatuated with the fans because anytime that we play these arenas over here, it could be pouring rain, like it is right now, and people are outside at 9am standing in line just to get in front of the stage for eight hours. Unbelievable. It’s very humbling.
It goes back to what we were saying earlier that you are very, very well-loved over here and that people will come out at 9am in the morning in the pouring rain to get to that front.
You’re over here, and it’s a brief respite from starting to work on the follow-up to ‘Screamin’ At The Sky’. How is the writing process going for the new album?
Ben: Well, we have some stuff done, and I have a feeling you guys will hear something before year’s end! Stay-tuned.
Returning to the point regarding the band at the start versus now, how have you found your writing process has changed, if at all?
Ben: The biggest thing is that nothing has changed as far as the way that we write for the most part, because we all collaborate. I mean, unless somebody has something like a song that they’ve just written 100% on their own, that would come in. It’s still shown to the band, and then everybody can either say there’s nothing to change about it, or we’ll be like, “Let’s try this there, try this there”. Everybody has a say in what we’re doing. The biggest thing that’s changed is when we first started, we weren’t on tour, and we didn’t have any other kind of life responsibilities, so we were at the practice house, which was a little farm shack in the middle of nowhere in Kentucky. And that’s where we rehearsed all the time; now you don’t get to do that. First off, our practice house needs some TLC – it needs a little help. I think it’s infested with brown recluse spiders right now!
But now if we are on tour, we’ll write a lot on the road at the back of the tour bus. For this stuff, we were home, we started writing in January, and we got together at my house, and we would just write, come up with riffs, and then melodies, and ideas, and we would just create on the go, which is really cool.
You can walk in with nothing and then somebody goes, “I have this”, and then by the end of the day you’ve got a song – it’s done, and that’s a cool thing. It’s a cool feeling to know that at 9am we had nothing and at 4pm, “Here’s a song!” That’s how we did this first batch of stuff. We would just write like that, and John Fred with Chris would put some drums on it, like on the keyboard.
So, we could hear it, and then Chris, Steve and I just played the guitars to it. So, it was a really cool process. And what’s cool is some of the stuff that’s going to come out, that’s going to be on the new record, some of the stuff from the demos we kept because we were in such a headspace or vibe. So, we kept some of the bass tracks and guitar tracks that were demo tracks, because we don’t play them as demo tracks. We want them – everything had to be in tune. We played them as if it was going to be an album. And then we’re like, “Well, let’s not redo all of it if it doesn’t have to be redone”. We’ve never done that. So that’s kind of cool.
Not quite going to a riff graveyard- they are still going to be there for the future.
So some of the material from the new album may be available for ears towards the end of this year. What can fans expect from the new album? Are there going to be any surprises, or is it Black Stone Cherry?
Ben: It’s definitely Black Stone Cherry. There’s a song on there that people wouldn’t see coming that features somebody else, too, which is cool. We always like doing that. Just kind of really started doing.
Steve: It’s got some heaviness.
Ben: It is straight-ahead. This first batch of music is pretty riff heavy. It doesn’t really let up, which is good. So, it is Black Stone Cherry – it’s evolved. I think we are always going to evolve lyrically and melodically.
But people who want riff-heavy Black Stone Cherry will not be disappointed.
What may have inspired it to be perhaps a bit more riff-heavy, or is it pure coincidence?
Steve: It’s kind of a natural thing – we’ve been playing a lot at soundcheck, and stuff we’ve been coming up with on the back of the bus. It just naturally kind of led that way. So, if it’s leading you that way, you just kind of ride that wave and hang on to a riff. Have fun with it.
Ben: Yeah, a lot of the riffs on this new stuff were soundcheck riffs. We would reference our phones, because Junior or I’d record it at soundcheck. Then we would go back and say, “That was cool, too”, to know that some of these ideas weren’t just lost in space, you know?
We were like, “Well, that’s a good one. That’s a good one”. We made a life out of them.
So, a new album, or at least some of the material coming out towards the end of the year, presumably a release for next year and then will UK fans be able to look forward to a tour next year?
Ben: I’m sure so, yeah. Like I said, we can’t stay away too long. It might be a little bit of a wait… But you know, again, I think it’ll be exciting when we come back.
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Interview & Photos By Lee Carter