If decades in the music business have taught Rich Robinson anything, it's to stay close to the people with whom you do good work, and even closer the good people.
After releasing his most recent solo album, Flux, in 2016, Robinson wanted the camaraderie and the shared creative responsibilities of being in a band. So he reached out to a network of musicians who've worked with him in the past, including Hookah Brown singer Jon Hogg and former Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford and bassist Sven Pipien.
Being in a band—especially one as successful as The Black Crowes—is a unique experience, he and Ford explain to Q104.3 New York's "Out of the Box" with Jonathan Clarke, and the bonds you form in that environment are hard to break, even after years apart.
"It's almost like going into war as a group or climbing Mt. Everest," Robinson says. "You do this thing together. And things are going to happen, but you'll never be able to take that away—of what was accomplished and what that group of people went through."
Ford adds, "And the only [people] you can find to talk about it, are the people who were there with you."
The Magpie Salute's self-titled debut album was recorded live in Upstate New York in front of an intimate audience. The track list includes cover songs, some of Robinson's solo material, a Black Crowes song and "Omission," a song written years ago by Robinson and Hogg.
The band has been writing furiously over the past year with plans to enter the studio in February to record a double album of new material.
Robinson says the chemistry between himself and his bandmates was easy to find.
"You never lose that element and that's why it's there," Robinson says of why the group makes sense. "There's an ethereal quality that you can't really put your finger on...You just have that really deep connection."
Watch the full interview and performance of the song "Omission" above.
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Check out the official video for "Omission" here: