By K.D. Norris
While Rich Robinson is in no way forgetting his past roads travelled, or the musical legacy he and brother, Chris, formed with the Black Crowes, he is moving on musically with a new journey and a new band, The Magpie Salute.
Among other proofs is the name of his new band, which will make a stop at 20 Monroe Live in Grand Rapids on Wednesday, Sept. 5.
“I’ve always loved the element of crows, but they have a dark connotation,” Robinson said in information supplied to WKTV. “Magpies are revered by ancient and indigenous cultures around the world, because they walk that bridge between dark and light. A magpie is also a cousin to a crow. This band (is) a cousin to the Crowes.”
Robinson, in an interview with WKTV, dug a little deeper into the relationship between his past with the Crowes and his present with Magpie.
“The music I wrote for the Black Crowes, with my brother, was what it was, you know,” Robinson said. “The way I write music is the way I have always written music. I do not believe in changing the way you write music, or to try to sound like something or to try to not sound like something. I think it should just be natural. That being said … I think there is a little bit of both, but hopefully it comes down the listener, what the listener choses to hear and get out of what you do.”
Pulled together in 2016 by guitarist/songwriter Robinson, Magpie Salute includes Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford and bassist Sven Pipien, vocalist John Hogg, and keyboardist Matt Slocum and drummer Joe Magistro, both of whom have played with Robinson before.
Together they have recorded their full-length debut of original material, High Water I, released this year, with High Water II to come in 2019. The band’s debut recording, in a twist on the usual sequence of recording events, was actually recorded live, The Magpie Salute (Live), last year.
Forming Magpie Salute “was really like a bunch of friends getting together to go on tour and have fun, to celebrate some of the songs and the music we have made in the past, covered, and even ones that we have made individually,” he said. “That is really what it was. It was a very natural process. We just put this band together … there wasn’t a master plan. We did not necessarily know what it would be in the future. What I like about it is that it is pretty unconventional. You don’t overthink anything like that.”
As far as the songs on the new album. Those, too, came naturally.
“Towards the end of the tour, last year, we started writing songs knowing that we wanted to make a record, to become a band, and that is ultimately what happened,” he said. “Toward the end of last year, we just started messing around with some ideas that Marc, John and I had. It was really cool at that time. As the tour came to an end, we knew what we wanted. … and we took some time in January to make that happen.”
For now, Robinson said, doing something new — performing with Magpie Salute and with the guys in the band — is where is he at right now.
“Everything is new and everything is going to go in the way it chooses to go,” he said. “Ultimately, this is what I have done since I was 19 … 30 years later I am still doing this. It is always cool to find different avenues, different contexts to play in, with different people. Those elements are what I am interested in and why I continue to choose to make music.”
Tickets are still available for Magpie Salute at 20 Monroe Live. (Visit here for more information.)
