The Black Crowes on the Hometown Band That Inspired Them to Develop Their Own Sound
· Vice
The Black Crowes are Atlanta rock royalty. Undeniably. There are, notably, some specific ways in which the city helped shape the band.
In a March 2026 interview with Premier Guitar, Black Crowes guitarist Rich Robinson opened up about the band’s past. At one point, he namedropped another big Georgia band, who had a huge influence on him and his brother, Chris Robinson.
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“When we were kids, we would go see R.E.M. every year,” Rich shared. “They would go on tour, and they’d come back and play the Fox (Theatre).” Going on to talk about “growing up in Atlanta,” Rich noted that the local “music scene” back then “was a punk rock scene and an alternative scene. That’s kind of where we fit in.”
The Black Crowes owe a lot of their musical exploration to hometown heroes R.E.M.
“On the outskirts of Atlanta, they had like Southern rock or whatever that was,” he continued. “But that wasn’t our thing. It was like once everyone heard R.E.M.—like the first song I heard was ‘Radio Free Europe’…and it just floored me.”
For Rich, R.E.M. represented something very different “sonically” about the Atlanta music scene. “It was a picture of the South that was different,” he said, “It was artistic, and it was beautiful. It was sensitive, and it kind of represented something about the South… I think it just drew in a lot of people.”
Having been profoundly inspired by R.E.M.’s music in the 80s, this gave the Robinson brothers a jumping-off point. It also gave them a stronger sense of how, regardless of genre, music is very universal.
The Black Crowes released their debut album, ‘Shake Your Money Maker’, in 1990
“That’s kind of where we started,” Rich said. “We would go see them all the time. They would do covers, and every time we’d go see them, they’d play different covers,” Rich shared. “They would play like a Velvet Underground song and then a Big Star song and then they’d bust out like an Aerosmith song; they would do ‘Toys in the Attic’. And it made sense.
“It wasn’t there wasn’t a thing,” Rich added. “It was just like, ‘Yeah. That’s music.’ And the Velvet Underground fits with Big Star, which fits with Aerosmith. So that’s kind of where we came from.
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