CR 2004 Harp Magazine article "Words of Wisdom"
Transcribed by your's truly, so please excuse any errors. Love the comment about 
Jann Wegner!

By Jaan Uhelski

Chris Robinson propitiously dubbed his second solo outing with the New Earth 
Mud, "This Magnificent Distane (Victor), forcing one to natutally believe that 
the singer is attempting to measure the acreage he's put between himself and the 
Black Crowes., the swaggering southern blues-rock titans that he fronted for a 
dozen years. But that's just not so. This disc conjures up the same rebel-
hearted romanticism, tales of ruined innocence, and the quest for personal 
liberation that put the Crowes on the map of the cusp of the nineties-but with 
an important difference. "Distance"displays a much more canny intelligence and 
vulnerability that Robinson even revealed during his tenure with the Crowes.

CR:

-"There are some people who look at Rolling Stone like it's a music magazine. 
You know what, if I never, ever got to a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame thing and if 
the Black Crowes or myself never get in, I'm totally fine. Because they inducted 
Jann Wegner, I don't give a fuck how many magazines he sold. Put a guitar on him 
and let him entertain someone for twelve seconds."

-"I saw John Rinbron and Jackie McSheen in LA a couple months ago at McCabes, 
and it was the finest hour and a half of music I've ever seen in my life. In a 
fucking city like LA, where everyone's a goddamn expert, I didn't see one other 
musician there. I just saw people who love music."

-"I'm going to play Bonaroo this year, and it's the biggest concert event in the 
United States, and no band there is being played on the radio."

-"We all openly communicate to this thing-to play music, and to see where it 
takes us. And you know what, it's taken me to the lowest of lows in terms of 
losing my friends and relationships. But it's also brought me to my family."

-"I don't consider myself religious, but love is one of the things I consider 
holy. In fact I find that people who call themselves religious have very little 
spiritual background or very little ties to the metaphysical world."

-"Mel Gibson makes a movie called "Passion of the Christ," and goes on TV and 
talks about what a struggle it was to work for his art. How about a twelve-hour 
movie on the teachings of Jesus. That's struggling for your art."

-People have really forgotten that this concert's for you. People let these 
artists turn it around and so it's about them, and it's about the security 
guards, and it's about the parking. You know what? This is about all of us being 
in the same room and trying to get into the same head space and the same soul 
space, and have a fucking session."

-"I was probably more conscious of how I looked when I was younger, just in 
terms of-here we are in a rock and roll band. I can look any way I want. If I 
wanted to wear blue lipstick and Moroccan earrings and a gigantic top hat with 
peacock feathers , and then like hey, let's go to a restaurant. It was okay. But 
again, I never dressed up for a persona. I dressed up because that's how I felt. 
I think it's all about the emotional experssion. As an artist, that's the way I 
see the world. "

-"At the end of the day, in a weird way, I feel my persona is best suited as a 
folk singer. In fact, when anyone asks me what I do, I say I'm a folk singer. 
Because I sing songs for folks."

-"I think my greatest strength is my ability to change and capacity for love. My 
wife always says it's not true, if for some reason I ever felt like it really 
wasn't worth it, I could pull a Joni Mitchell and just write songs for my 
children."

-"Sometimes I'm really hard on myself. But that's made my experience with people 
and myself much easier."

"Even in our youth and our anger and our drugs and stuff, we (the Black Crowes) 
had an endless amount of love for music. On the other side, it made it look like 
we were arrogant-and we were, but the bottom line was, we weren't validated by 
our success. We were validated by our work."

-"All of the stuff between the lines of my new album, the most abstract imagery 
to the most personal, it's all about putting things out into the world and into 
the heart."

-"The difference between the Black Crowes and my solo career is I'm never as 
dark as the Crowes could get. I could never write a song that didn't have a 
light at the end of the tunnel. I believe in the balance. Without darkness there 
is no light, and vice versa."