Living in the song (Blackberry Smoke) (LP 661 - 664)

Blackberry Smoke  The Whippoorwill (CD, Earache Records, 2013) ****

Blackberry Smoke  Leave A Scar Live - North Carolina (CD, Earache Records, 2014) ****

Blackberry Smoke  Holding All The Roses (CD, Earache Records, 2015) ****

Blackberry Smoke  Find A Light (CD, Earache Records, 2018) ****

Genre: Southern Rock

Places I remember: HMV (Oxford St., East Croyden)

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: One Horse Town

Gear costume: Holding All The Roses, Pretty Little Lie, I'll Keep Ramblin'

Active compensatory factors: I've decided to hoover up all the remaining* albums on CD by these southern boys (from Atlanta) as they pretty much cover the same ground - good ole southern rock'n'countryroll.

That's possibly the only quibble I've got. Charlie Starr is the band's songwriter/vocalist and if anything, the band needs a different look at times.

That's only a minor quibble though - Charlie is the real deal; he writes brilliant songs and his singing is great.

The highlights are liberally sprinkled through the studio albums (the band's third, fourth, and sixth) and Leave A Scar Live - North Carolina is a live double album and DVD package that sums up the band's early years well.

Where do they all belong? *I've already written about their 2016 album Like An Arrow - another 4 starr effort - the bar is consistently set high, and their latest studio album (number 7) is coming to Goo Goo when I get to the vinyl collection again.

Let it burn (Blackberry Smoke) (LP 262)

Blackberry Smoke Like An Arrow (CD - 3 Legged Records, 2016) ****

Genre: American pop/rock 

Places I remember: HMV East Croydon 

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Waiting For The Thunder  (lead track and first single off the album)




Gear costume: Let It Burn

Active compensatory factors: My first taste of Blackberry Smoke was Later...with Jools Holland and the song Let It Burn. 

Being a sucker for down home southern flavoured rock, I was captivated from the off. 

There are hints of The Allman Brothers, Zac Brown Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd along the way but only that - hints. There are enough distinctive edges to make Blackberry Smoke stand alone (love the name too - very evocative and rootsy).

Bottom line: Charlie Starr has one of rock's great voices and he gets mean support from his bros.

Where do they all belong? This was also my first purchase from HMV, well - this, and three other Blackberry Smoke albums. For some reason none of them are available in NZ, so I splurged!