When Blackberry Smoke toured Germany in 2019 together with the mega-successful Lynyrd Skynyrd, it was a dream combination for the Southern rock community and at the same time a summit meeting of two bands from two hotspots of the genre - after all, the Skynyrds' home is the Floridian Jacksonville, while Blackberry Smoke were founded in Georgia's capital Atlanta in 2000. Eclipsed spoke to frontman Charlie Starr via Zoom about Southern rock in general, Blackberry Smoke's new album "You Hear Georgia" in particular, and twenty years of the band's history.
There are also positive aspects of the Corona pandemic: While the daily interview routine of a journalist used to consist of face-to-face appointments in hotels or backstage rooms, telephone conversations and tiresome e-mail interviews, the picture phone call has been in the foreground for a good year now. While it existed before, the pandemic made this kind of door-to-door contact commonplace. In the case of Blackberry Smoke singer-guitarist Charlie Starr, that home is outside Atlanta. Various guitars, records and amplifiers can be seen in the background, while the dog is being petted under the table. In contrast, Charlie Starr can only make out an empty six-pack behind me in Dortmund, a good 7000 kilometres away from him, which prompts him to ask: "You'll have to buy beer later, won't you?" Right off the bat, that's followed by a stubborn Markus Lanz memory question to start things off.
eclipsed: Just between you and me, what about legal and illegal addictive substances?
Charlie Starr: Phew, it's probably been twelve years since I last got high. Coffee and nicotine have been the substances that get me through the day since then.
eclipsed: So no more bar fights either?
Starr: You're alluding to the story I tell in the song "Sleeping Dogs" on our third album, The Whippoorwill [2012]. Okay, the brawl took place a good ten years earlier in a little bar in Georgia. But it's true, that was the last time I was involved in a serious brawl. (laughs) And in the lyrics, I was able to pretend that I won - which, of course, I didn't, because I ended up in the hospital. But the stories are true enough, and I stopped doing drugs and drinking. Not because I didn't like it - quite the opposite: I always liked to be baller, but then I just often started to stink. (laughs) That's why I'm only going to start drinking again when no one takes me seriously as an old man
eclipsed: And now you're a good family man?
Starr: Yes, that's right - a necessary interim phase with a great wife and two kids. Before I stopped, I was stoned every day since my youth ...
