Brand new studio album from Atlanta, Georgia southern rock kings Blackberry Smoke.And with album cuts like “Too High,” for which the band filmed a spooky meth-lab video, and “Lay It All on Me” (co-written with Nashville songwriter Travis Meadows) incorporating fiddle and pedal steel into the mix, it sounds like a natural union. The Number One debut of Holding All the Roses certainly backs up the idea that country is the new home of Southern rock. Today, the Cadillac Three premiered their new single “White Lightning'” on Sirius/XM, while A Thousand Horses’ “Smoke” enters the Top 10 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart. With Blackberry Smoke leading the charge, country music is in the midst of a Southern rock resurgence, as likeminded groups such as the Cadillac Three and A Thousand Horses ready new albums. “I remember hearing them the first time and thinking, ‘This is the real deal.’ It felt as real to me as the Allmans or Skynyrd.” But of every artist I can think of in recent memory that has been called ‘Southern rock,’ the most authentic one I heard is Blackberry Smoke,” Keifer tells Rolling Stone Country. “A lot of country now is leaning more toward rock and a Southern rock feel. Keifer’s cameo is another nod to Blackberry Smoke’s rock roots. At one point, the group welcomes Cinderella’s Tom Keifer, a longtime Nashville resident, onstage to perform the Eighties hard-rock heavyweights’ “Heartbreak Station” and a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar.” One of Starr’s earlier concert memories was of attending Cinderella’s Long Cold Winter Tour in Columbus, Georgia, as a teenager.
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The performance is undeniably a Southern rock revival, full of swampy guitar licks and Starr’s yelping vocals. Later that evening, Blackberry Smoke certainly look like winners, roaring through a loud and raucous set at the Ryman. “It also plays into that theme of when you win, what do you really win?” adds Turner. “And now the whole thing comes full circle because then debuts at Number One on the country charts.
If those dudes were to do something fantastic and win something, it’d be, ‘How the hell did you do that?'” says Starr. (The front cover depicts a mule decorated via Photoshop in top hat and roses that Turner photographed in a hotel parking lot in New Orleans.) To personify that notion, the band enlisted two local Georgia eccentrics - Digger and Tim - to appear on the album’s back cover art. “We were walking through Berlin, Germany, to get ice cream - we’re so rock & roll,” says Starr, “and those lyrics started to come out, so I jotted them down on my phone. While Starr says the song wasn’t written about the band, it has since come to mirror their journey. It’s that dark horse spirit that permeates Holding All the Roses, produced by Brendan O’Brien (Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC), and especially its title track. To come from nothing, we can really look at what we’ve accomplished and say, ‘We did that.'” “It really feels like we earned it, having a Number One album. Now on Rounder Records, Blackberry Smoke is back on solid ground. Steve Gorman said, ‘Hell, the Beatles couldn’t even make a label work.'” “I mean, he’s a busy guy, he can’t micromanage a record label. “God bless Zac, he’s our friend, but things fells apart,” Starr says. Released on Zac Brown’s Southern Ground Artists, the album broke the Top 10 on the Country Albums chart but suffered from a label staff stretched too thin.
Though the band came dangerously close to doing just that with its last album, 2012’s underrated The Whippoorwill. I don’t feel like we’re sliding back,” says Turner. It’s a sign that the old-fashioned system of tireless touring behind an honest product still works. With next to no radio support, Blackberry Smoke have been building a loyal base on the road, so when Holding All the Roses hit stores, fans were ready to snatch it up. Whatever the reason for their country crossover, the Atlanta-based group is grateful for the success.
It was Eighties rock production and it was an easy fit, so that may have had something to do with it.”
A lot of people have said that rock & roll radio disappeared and became pop and rap, and the only thing similar to it was country music. “I have another one that says ‘Country,'” he quips backstage, where he and Starr are decompressing after soundcheck.
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