Overview
Black Stone Cherry is a band in the truest sense of the term. Almost twenty years on from their incendiary self-titled debut, plus eight albums - including six UK Top 20 hits as well as four top 25 US radio singles over the past two albums - and scores of devoted fans worldwide, the Kentucky foursome retain the fire and camaraderie of their teenage selves. They are a truly collaborative force in a way that few other bands at this level are. Hard rockers of enormous heart. Four accomplished songwriters with rock, metal, roots, blues, soul, and hip hop in their blood. Old friends with an instinctive, compassionate sense for what the other is feeling.
On Celebrate – produced by the band and recorded at High Street Studios in Bowling Green, Kentucky – they embody all this at the height of their powers. There’s happiness and heartache. Muscular hooks and raw soul. The life experiences of four men approaching forty (two of them parents), in one emotive, unpolished diamond of a record. Six commanding, stage-ready original tracks and an inspired cover of Simple Minds’ Don’t You (Forget About Me) featuring Tyler Connolly (Theory Of A Deadman).
Celebrate’s roots stem from the road, where (in true Black Stone style) riffs and lyrics cropped up in soundchecks and tour-bus journeys across the world. In early 2025, they began meeting at guitarist Ben Wells’ home studio, two days a week, to write together in earnest. It was a rewarding experience. Surrounded by band posters, Star Wars figures, and Elvis memorabilia – and with Wells’ three beagles as their first critics – they fleshed out ideas, often swapping instruments to nail the best ones.
The titular opening track Celebrate epitomises that dynamic mindset. Built on a heavyweight intro riff, it went through several verses and choruses, with drummer John Fred Young coming up with a melody that took it somewhere new. The final result is an ode to rejoicing in small, everyday milestones – a thoughtful response to the mental health challenges faced by so many of us. It’s the sort of thing Black Stone Cherry are masters of: taking a somber subject and flipping it on its head, creating a punchy, empowering rock song.
“Any piece of art is a snapshot of that artist's life,” singer/guitarist Chris Robertson reasons. “So I look at these songs as a culmination of everything we've lived since Screamin’ At The Sky. And we've been writing songs together for so long, we've lived through each other's experiences, so somebody will come up with a line, and then it's just like… you set the typewriter down, and it starts typing itself.”
“None of us are precious about that kind of stuff, because we're all fighting on the same team,” Ben says. “So John Fred might have a guitar riff, or me or Chris might have a drum beat. And Steve is our bass player, but he played slide on the last album, and there are parts on the new stuff where he plays guitar. It was cool to think you could start the day without a song, and five hours later walk out with a demo.”
Celebrate is an EP of contrasts. Neon Eyes was a soundcheck riff that exploded into a thumping, hard rock party-starter. I’m Fine is a dreamily woozy, Nirvana-laced grunge singalong. But it was the searing, mid-tempo heartache of Deep that struck a really pertinent chord – with Ben in particular. Following long struggles with fertility issues, he and his wife suffered a miscarriage midway through the writing process. Two days later, he was channelling the experience into Deep.
Upcoming Events at The Vogue
