If you are a musician from the South and you play loud yet soulful music, pundits tend to want to lump you in with a tradition of Southern rock that includes such bands as Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers Band.
Edmonton, Ky.’s, Black Stone Cherry may share stylistic similarities with those other bands, but the only commonality that counts, according to Black Stone Cherry’s guitarist Ben Wells, is honesty.
“What makes a Southern band a Southern band,” he says, “is real music with real lyrics about everyday problems. Carrying the torch of Southern rock and country music means telling true stories about blue-collar American people.
“To me, Southern rock is more of a way of life than a genre of music,” Wells says. “It is defined by simple things – things that matter to us: family, friends, having a roof over your head.”
Black Stone Cherry performs Thursday at Piere’s Entertainment Center.
In a live music industry where bands of a certain size are often packaged together, heavy metal is the genre with which Black Stone Cherry tends to be most closely identified.
Heavy metal is usually aggressive, often angry, and rarely solicitous. Black Stone Cherry, on the other hand, is all about Southern charm.
Wells is not at all averse to using such phrases as “yes, sir” and “no, sir” where applicable.
“We are the sort of band that would rather make positive things happen than negative things,” he says.
This includes meeting with all fans who desire some face time, Wells says, and even listening to personal problems should anybody feel like airing them.
“We have had several fans come to us to get something off their chests,” Wells says. “It’s very rewarding. We are grateful to have fans like that.”
The commiseration flows both ways.
When Black Stone Cherry’s lead singer Chris Robertson started to suffer from serious depression, his first instinct was to start talking about it from the stage.
“It made him feel better to get up there and say, ‘I just want to level with everybody. If I don’t seem like myself tonight, it’s because I am going through this …,’ ” Wells says.
“We want our fans to respect us and feel comfortable with us,” he says. “I think we broke down barriers for a lot of guys who were too proud to get help for something like that.”
The members of Black Stone Cherry have seen the world since they signed to the Roadrunner label in 2006. But Wells says they will always return to Edmonton.
“We will live there forever,” he says. “Los Angeles is a beautiful city. But we stick out like sore thumbs there.
“I think everybody who grows up in a small town dreams of getting out of there,” Wells says. “But our travels have only deepened our appreciation of small towns.”