This Crowe is nesting from Canada's Globe and Mail Recently married to starlet Kate Hudson and with his band's future in doubt, Chris Robinson is no longer the poster boy for the elegantly wasted. But, as BRAD WHEELER finds, the change has done him good By BRAD WHEELER Tuesday, August 27, 2002 – Print Edition, Page R3 TORONTO -- As he makes his way through the lobby of the discreet Windsor Arms hotel, Chris Robinson is every inch a rock star -- archetypical, really, with an enviable air of unconcern that allows a man to walk barefoot through such a venerable establishment without care for propriety or decorum. But something is different; his state is altered well beyond the haircut and beard. He is, in so many ways, a changed man walking. "I feel different," he says, taking a seat in the dark wood and leather of the hotel's cigar lounge, "and I know I give off a different vibe." The 35-year-old singer-songwriter is no longer the frontman for the Black Crowes, a band he and his brother Rich founded some 15 years ago. Officially, the group is on hiatus; unofficially, the Crowes have broken up. But the change goes deeper than that. Even his friends don't recognize him any more. For the past month and a half he's been in Toronto putting the finishing touches on his first solo album, while his wife of 20 months, Kate Hudson, works on How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,a film being shot here. During their stay, Robinson, Hudson and a newly acquired dog have set up residence at the hotel. While visiting his wife on the set, Robinson was approached by record producer Don Was, who asked him if he knew where Hudson's trailer was located. Was, who only a year ago worked on a daily basis with Robinson for more than three months as the producer on the Crowes' album Lion, didn't recognize the new man standing two feet in front of him. Perhaps Was can be excused. For the angry young man who once gave Keith Richards a run for the dubious honour of rock's poster boy for the elegantly wasted, now presents the picture of health and serenity in contrast: tanned (courtesy likely of visits to the Muskoka retreat of in-laws Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell), sturdy (but still quite thin), contented, relaxed, and above all, seemingly happy. Marital bliss would seem to play a role here, but it is also his solo debut CD New Earth Mud (due out Oct. 22) and a string of acoustic shows in Europe and North America that have Robinson in a state of extended euphoria. "I don't like being away from my wife, but I had more fun than anyone just getting in a van, driving around and doing those quiet little acoustic shows," the Atlanta native says in a drawl that has lessened over the years. "Whether they're sold out or not, I don't care. It's just fun." Robinson toured with Paul Stacey, the Brit session-guitarist who played on and co-produced the album. Now that the mastering of the album is complete, the pair, who met through a mutual acquaintance, Noel Gallagher of Oasis, will reunite for 10 more North American dates. "We hit it off, and had a great musical dialogue together," Robinson says in recalling the events of two years ago that led to the solo release. "We both liked the same records, we both saw music the same way, and the project just fell together." The album, which falls somewhere between Neil Young and Bobby Womack, according to Robinson, was recorded over the course of 3½ weeks in a dingy Paris studio, with the help of Stacey's twin brother Jeremy on drums, Matt Jones on keyboards and a French engineer who understood little English. Although there were no such language barriers between the album's players, Robinson found that working with British rather than American musicians had a deep impact on the album's musical face. "These guys brought a whole new aesthetic to it, playing basically folk-rock kind of things, but some of the choices that they made musically definitely didn't come from country music or specifically blues music. It's a different take on it." Robinson's own emergence as a guitar player also shaped the songs. "I like the idea of now playing the guitar -- it lends to a different focus. My folkier side comes out. Everything from the Zombies, Tim Buckley, English psychedelic pop music, to more Appalachian kinds of sounds." As Robinson revels in his new identity and career path, the Black Crowes wagon continues to role. A new, live double-CD was recently released, but that could it be it for a while. Robinson makes it clear that the band's hiatus could extend well into the future. "To be honest, I'm not really interested in being in the Black Crowes at all right now. The simplest and most fulfilling thing for me right now is to make music with no pretext of egos and politics." Operating within a group dynamic in such a creative arena inevitably leads to clashes. "With the Black Crowes, it's like the rain forest," Robinson explains. "All these plants trying to get to the sunlight, everyone wants to be heard, everyone's trying to do something to blow your mind all at once. [But] I've always wanted to make music the way I hear it, the way I feel it." And then there's the politics. Media-fuelled speculation has Hudson as a new-millennium Yoko Ono -- a diabolical meddler that broke up the Crowes by pushing Robinson out of the nest for a solo flight. Before Robinson can comment on the mean-hearted appraisal, his wife appears, stopping by the lounge on her way to work to ask her husband to bring pooch to the film set later. Tiny, blonde and mischievous-looking, the actress sports jeans slung so impossibly low that if the elevator she came down on had stopped suddenly, the slacks undoubtedly would have shot straight to her ankles. Indeed. After his wife leaves, Robinson responds to the suggestion that the step he has taken -- one he says was well-considered and fully committed to -- was prompted by someone else. "If somebody in my band said something like that, then I feel bad for them," he says, now a little less relaxed than when the interview began. "It's completely different. When you meet someone and you're both there for each other and I'm unhappy and I want to do something else, she's going to be there for me. And she knows me better than anyone else." Not everything has changed, it seems. A decade ago, Chris Robinson sang on Sting Me,"I've got nothing up my sleeve, except this heart and a chip on my shoulder." He still does -- and you can see that coming a mile away. Chris Robinson plays Toronto's The Phoenix tomorrow.