WHAT IS AND WHAT MIGHT COME TO BE: Black Crowes guitarist Audley Freed talks about the band's recently released collaboration, and possible summer tour stop, with Jimmy Page.
By Karen A. Mann 

http://www.raleighmusic.com/features/bcrowes.html

Live at the Greek, the just-released Internet-only CD collaboration between Jimmy Page and The Black Crowes, is so newsworthy on so many levels that it's difficult to know where to begin. First there's collaboration between the bands: Atlanta boogie-rockers Black Crowes, who have been successful enough on their own, and mystical guitar god Jimmy Page who, with Led Zeppelin, created several of the greatest rock anthems of all time. There's the CD itself: a live recording of mostly Zeppelin including, to the true fan's delight, many non-hits ("Stairway to Heaven," thankfully, wasn't included). And there's the fact that the CD, with any song configuration the listener desires, can only be purchased online from Music Maker.Com. Even without conventional retail support, it has become, not surprisingly, one of the hottest-selling Internet-only releases ever. That just has to stick in the craw of the Columbia executives who recently dropped The Black Crowes. For a little insight into these matters, I contacted Audley Freed, the Raleigh resident and Crowes guitarist who, local music fans will remember, made his name in both Cry of Love and Sidewinder. Live at the Greek is his recording with the band. 

How did the CD come about, and why is it available only on the web?
Well basically what happened last summer ... the band and Jimmy have a mutual friend, a guy named Ross Halfin, and I think Ross was probably instrumental in hooking them up. The guys actually knew Jimmy before, he'd been out and played with them before I was even in the band. But Jimmy's wife is involved in a charity of some sort, and to be quite honest with you I'm not really sure what it is, and so he was doing a show last year and he needed a band to back him up. And so, he called us and said, 'hey, you guys want to do about 45 minutes worth of stuff at this club gig?' It was in London at this charity thing. And so that went so well, we actually rehearsed on Friday and played the gig on Sunday, and it went really well, and so the guys in the band said, 'hey, what if we approached Jimmy about doing a few dates next year?' And luckily enough for us he was up for it. We did six shows in October, three in New York, one in Worchester, Massachusetts and at The Greek, and that's where the CD is from, two nights in out in L.A. Basically, Jimmy at first I think was kind of averse to the idea of doing a live record because we had talked about it even before we began rehearsing, but I think he was so pleasantly surprised by how it sounded that he was full steam ahead when he heard the tapes. The inner workings, the business workings, as far as all of that stuff goes, I can't really enlighten you too much, to be quite honest with you because I'm kind of out of the loop on that. But I know that there was some talk of it being released to retail, but I think there's some kind of licensing or contractual thing that precluded that. 

Because they were Led Zeppelin songs?
Yeah, I don't really know the ins and outs of that. I don't mean to keep you in the dark about it, but I'm in the dark about it, and to be honest with you I couldn't be bothered. 

Do you know how sales are going over the Web?
From what I understand, the first day it went on sale, they shut down the Web site, because it was really overloaded, and from what I understand, I don't know the history of Musicmaker.com, but it's the best selling thing that they've done, and I'm not so sure that it's not the best-selling Internet-only record that's been put out. Now, once again, I can't substantiate that, but I've heard some talk of it, and you know how these things get bandied about and expanded upon. 

I know you can pick and choose which songs you want.
Yeah, you know, I haven't even been to the Web site. 

Really?
Yeah, you know. We rehearsed to play the shows. I've had a copy of it for quite some time. You know, I've been up to my ears in it, so the last thing I want to do on my down time is go snoop around on the Musicmaker Web site. But, yeah, that's what I understand, that you can either custom make it, or you can just order the whole thing. And I was really happy to see that the price point for the thing was, low, like, $18.

I was really impressed with some of the songs that were on there. I wasn't expecting to see "Out on the Tiles" or "Nobody's Fault But Mine."
Yeah, you know, "Your Time Is Gonna Come" is a song that Led Zeppelin never played live, so that was pretty cool. Some of them came together ... in fact, the whole thing actually came together pretty quickly. We rehearsed for three days just us, then Jimmy came in and we rehearsed two more days, then it was off to the races and we played the next night. Yeah, "Out on the Tiles" was a really fun one. "Nobody's Fault But Mine" was probably the hardest one to get together in terms of the arrangement. 

I thought that would be a difficult one to do, but for me, I thought that that one came off a little better than some of the bigger hits. It really seemed like you guys just nailed that one.
It was fun. It was really fun, you know? And I think Jimmy was really having a good time with it too, because some of these songs we actually had the instrumentation to be able to play them with more ... I guess we could recreate what's on the record. That's impossible to do when you've got five guitar parts and you've only got one guitar. We were able to do that with some tunes like "Ten Years Gone" and things like that, and I think he was really into that. 

So how did you guys work out who was playing what? I imagine he played lead.
Yeah, he did. Like on some of the blues songs he did, and we actually did a few Black Crowes songs, too, you just have to keep your ears open and your eyes open as soon as Chris points at you. That kind of a thing is just a jam situation. What I did was I learned all the songs here and went back and re-learned some that I have played forever but never really bothered to learn them exactly right, and kind of wrote, made notes and kind of tabbed some things out. So when I got there I knew what all the guitar parts on all of the songs were. So Rich and I sat down and said, "Well, Jimmy's probably going to want to play this, so why don't you and I do this?" So when Jimmy came in, for the most part it was pretty spot-on. There was a couple things like "Celebration Day" where we really didn't know, so I just said, "Look, let's just wait till he gets here. There's three parts here and here's what they are. He's going to define our role by what he plays." So that's how we did that. 

Were there any surprises where he was insisting things were different than what you thought they were?
No, it was kind of weird. He was really very gracious and very, I guess, trusting as far as what we had learned. There was a chord, as far as specifically things I can remember, there was a chord in "Ten Years Gone" that I guess we had wrong. I'm not sure if it's the chord that's on the record, but it's obviously the one that he played live for years. There's another one in "Nobody's Fault But Mine" that's not on the record but that's in their live arrangements. Other than that, he seemed to be really, really pleased with it. And it was really very surprising. I think that he was really, if not shocked, at least really surprised by the amount of work that we had done before. 

Why do you think he agreed to do this with you guys rather than getting Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham?
I really can't answer that, but from what I understand, from what Jimmy said, Jimmy wanted to do something with Robert, and Plant just wouldn't commit to doing it. So Jimmy said, "Well, I just want to get out and play and have fun, so lets go and do it."

Well, I think the CD sounds great.
 Thanks! I was really pleasantly surprised with the mixes to be honest with you. A lot of times when they tape something with the mobile truck like that, it's really, just doesn't ... You know, a lot of the old, "live in concerts" that you hear on the radio and it's all crowd noise and drums. I think that Kevin did a really good job of separating the instruments as far as having to deal with three guitars and an organ, vocals and a rhythm section and all that. So I was happy with that, and it's a really, pretty much a document of a couple of nights in that we just got up there and did it, there was no big ... because we didn't think we were going to release it. We thought it was just going to be a radio special. So there was no, not a lot of pressure on the band, but at the same time it didn't end up being like the Thin Lizzy "Live and Dangerous" where the whole thing was recut in the studio, know what I'm saying? So yeah, I was pleasantly surprised. 

Who was Kevin, you mentioned?
Kevin Shirley. He's the guy who did the last Crowes record, and he's the guy that basically produced and mixed this thing. 

So what's happening now with The Black Crowes?
We're actually going to go out, and we're going to do a show in Charleston this weekend [weekend of April 1], just a one-off thing, and then we are going to start rehearsing the first of June and then we're going to go out and play probably close to 30 shows with Jimmy this summer. 

Are you coming to Raleigh?
I think so. I think there's a Raleigh date on there. I'm 99 percent sure. I haven't seen the schedule, but that's what everybody's saying. 

What's going on with your record label?
I don't really know. I'm kind of out of the loop on that one. I think that the fellas have been having some meetings with some people, and I think they've got it narrowed down. But as far as any specifics, I don't really know. Most of the time when I talk to the guys, you know we just have a laugh and talk as friends. It's not really business stuff. Because they kind of take care of that end of it. 

When you play this summer, will it be a mix of Led Zeppelin and Black Crowes music?
Yeah, I would imagine it'll be a mix leaning way heavily toward the Zeppelin stuff. Cause people do want to hear the Crowes tunes, but they also ... I mean, it's Jimmy Page, you know what I'm saying? They want to hear him do his thing. I imagine we're going to expand the song list quite a bit, depending on what Jimmy wants to do. But I know there's been some talk of some different tunes, which would be really good so we can mix it up and play different things every night. 

What's Jimmy like in person?
Totally gracious. Really open and it just seemed like he just enjoyed hanging out with the guys. You could sit down on the couch with him and just talk about whatever. He was really forthcoming as far as that goes. He really kept the intimidation factor to a minimum, and good for him with all he's accomplished and been through. 

He's got a real reputation for being mystical, and that sort of precedes him. 
I would imagine that there's a side of him that is predisposed to being that way. When he was with us, I think he was just having so much fun and feeding off the energy that I didn't see a whole lot of that going on to be honest with you. He ate at catering just like everybody else. It was just really low key.