Blackberry Smoke has Georgia on its intellect

ATLANTA — Over a swampy, stinging guitar line, Charlie Starr belts the first line of "You Hear Georgia," the title music of Blackberry Smoke's seventh studio album:

"You hear Georgia after I open my mouth/ Don't make no difference what I'm talkin' about/ I permit you to in and then you throw me out/ that you would be able to't see nothing previous this shadow of a doubt."

As a local Southerner, Starr has persisted his personal prejudices, as has Blackberry Smoke.

"To an extent, I believe when individuals suppose of a — quote, unquote — 'Southern rock band,' they likely feel we're a bunch of ignorant goofballs," Starr said recently from his Brookhaven, Ga., domestic.

however the music changed into really impressed when, during ultimate year's coronavirus lockdown, Starr watched a person on the news being interviewed for a story with critical undertones.

"He had this thick Southern accent and his accent made me smile. He didn't say the rest wrong or stupid, however i believed, i ponder if americans around the globe are hearing what he says or how he says it?" Starr observed. "Ever because i used to be a younger boy, I watched films that paint Southerners to be unhealthy people or filled with hate, and that i've met respectable and bad americans everywhere the realm. And that's not the South I grew up in. I didn't develop up with hateful or ignorant americans. So, maybe this is a love letter to the way I grew up."

The song is amongst 10 new choices from the Atlanta-based band, which also includes Brit Turner on drums, Paul Jackson on guitar, Richard Turner on bass and Brandon nonetheless on keyboards. besides visitors Jamey Johnson (on the country twanger "Lonesome for a Livin' "), Gov't Mule/Allman Brothers Band maestro Warren Haynes (on the blistering "All upward thrust once again") and background vocals from The Black Bettys, Blackberry Smoke recruited Dave Cobb, a fellow Georgian as well as Grammy-successful ace producer, to guide the list.

Cobb changed into adamant about not tinkering with the band's signature Southern rock-blues jam sound, but, he observed, "I just desired to make the most beneficial listing we might make."

on the conclusion of 2019, Cobb invited the band to his Nashville, Tenn., studio on March 20.

"We planned to move up to Canada for a tour and are available again and go correct lower back into the studio, which is the foremost time to listing as a result of every person is equipped," Starr referred to. "but then we comprehend what came about. And we all came home."

final may also, Cobb invited Blackberry Smoke to go to Nashville and record at the ancient RCA Studio A, which Cobb has commandeered since 2016.

With COVID-19 protocols instituted — though Starr jokes that sometimes whereas paying attention to playbacks, band contributors would overlook their masks had been putting around their necks — Cobb and Blackberry Smoke knocked the songs out in 10 days.

The Georgia connection between Cobb and the band presented an extra layer of comfort between producer and band, and also a shared language.

"It's all the time good to brag on your domestic state, and that i'm tremendous pleased with it," referred to Cobb, a Savannah native who grew up in Roswell. "I consider of it somewhat regularly, how a lot outstanding track traditionally has come from Georgia. you've got the Capricorn information story and Ray Charles and Little Richard and Otis Redding and The Black Crowes. All of this fantastic track that is not only Southern rock, however nation and gospel and soul. Blackberry Smoke has some of all of that in a single band."