Remedy

Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew has got "Remedy" on the turntable, and if you have been riding with us over at THE ZOO, you already know this one does not ease into the room. The Black Crowes cut it for The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, the 1992 record that walked in and sat at number one on the album chart the week it landed. "Remedy" is the second song on that album, written by the Robinson brothers, Chris on the words and the howl, Rich on the guitar that keeps the floor moving. It hit the street as a single in April 1992, with "Darling of the Underground Press" parked on the flip side, and for a minute there it felt like the whole rock radio dial had decided to live inside that chorus.

Chris Robinson has told the story straight more than once. In an interview he gave to Songfacts, he said "Remedy" is essentially about freedom. The band had gotten tired of the war on drugs, which he called a silly and asinine concept, and he wanted the feeling of that argument put into a rock and roll frame. Not a speech. A groove. The line everybody still sings back is the ask itself: if he had some remedy, he would take enough to please him. That word has old Southern roots, medicine-show talk, stump water and snake oil, something you reach for when the ache will not quit. The Crowes were never shy about the plant either. Around the time of this album they landed on the cover of High Times, played the Atlanta Pot Festival, and hung marijuana leaves on the signs at their shows. They had already been bounced from a ZZ Top tour after Chris cracked wise about a beer sponsor from the stage in Atlanta, and the same mouth got them in Dutch on an Aerosmith opening run when he would not stop talking about legalization. Freedom, in their book, was not a slogan. It was a habit.

The chart run still looks a little unreal. "Remedy" went to number one on Billboard's Album Rock Tracks chart in May 1992 and stayed there for eleven straight weeks. It peaked at number 48 on the Hot 100, which turned out to be the last time the band cracked that chart, and it reached number 24 in the United Kingdom, their best showing over there. It also slipped into the top ten in New Zealand and Norway. Pete Angelus directed the video, which MTV added as an exclusive around the start of May and had in heavy rotation by early June. The record itself was produced by George Drakoulias with the band, engineered in the company of Brendan O'Brien, and cut at Southern Tracks in Atlanta between December 1991 and January 1992. The lineup in the room was the one a lot of Freaks still call the classic: Chris up front, Rich on guitar, Marc Ford on the other guitar, Johnny Colt on bass, Steve Gorman on drums, and Eddie Harsch on keys. Barbara Mitchell and Taj Harmon stacked the backing voices, and Chris Trujillo played congas. That is why the chorus feels like a church that learned to boogie.

Rich Robinson has been plain about how fast the whole album happened. Talking about the later box set of Southern Harmony, he said they made the record in eight days, every song in one or two takes, no more than that. He called it a snapshot of a band that had all of its powers, and said it still resonates with him. Chris put it another way on the band's own site: they always thought the music on Southern Harmony and Musical Companion was made of a certain magic that was in the air in 1992, and the box set was the ingredients of the spell. The album title itself comes from an old post-Civil War southern hymnal, which fits a band that was reaching back for Faces swagger, Stones open-G guitar, and a little Muscle Shoals sweat while the rest of the radio was busy burying hair metal. "Sting Me" and "Thorn in My Pride" joined "Remedy" at the top of the mainstream rock airplay chart, and between them those three songs held the number-one spot for a combined twenty-one weeks. When the band dug the tapes back up for the deluxe set, they included a live "Remedy" from the Sam Houston Coliseum in Houston on February 6, 1993, a show that had been bootlegged for years and finally got a proper mix off the 24-track.

Before any of that, they were just two brothers in Marietta, outside Atlanta, who could not leave the basement alone. Chris was born in December 1966. Their father, Stan Robinson, had sung on a 1959 pop hit called "Boom-a-Dip-Dip," and he told the boys, more than once, that music was not a living. Chris has said his dad told him he could not carry a tune. They started the band anyway in 1984, while they were still at Walton High School, and they called it Mr. Crowe's Garden after a children's book, Johnny Crow's Garden. Early on they were soaking up the local college-radio scene, R.E.M., the Paisley Underground, the Byrds, Dylan, Buffalo Springfield, and the Velvet Underground. A cousin had a drum kit. A kid down the street could play. Chris has laughed about the night he invited school friends over to the parents' basement and Rich came down uninvited, set his amp on the floor, and started playing. The arrow was already pointing at the door.

They cut a demo for A&M in 1987, paid a couple thousand dollars to cover the session up in Carrboro, North Carolina, and kept grinding through bass players and drummers. George Drakoulias came into the picture and turned them on to the Faces and Humble Pie, pushed Rich toward open-G tunings, and had them covering the Stones. They kicked around names like the Heartless Crowes and the Stone Mountain Crowes before they settled on The Black Crowes. In 1989 they signed to Def American, Chris left college, and the lineup settled around Jeff Cease on guitar, Johnny Colt on bass, and Steve Gorman on drums. Shake Your Money Maker arrived in 1990, went multi-platinum, and made them Rolling Stone's best new American band on the strength of "Jealous Again," "She Talks to Angels," and a cover of Otis Redding's "Hard to Handle." Cease was gone by the end of 1991, Marc Ford stepped in, and eighteen months of hard road work later they walked into Southern Tracks ready to cut the record that held "Remedy." The brothers have fought, split, and circled back more than once since then, but the engine has always been the two of them.

If you want the trail straight from the band, the official home is The Black Crowes, where the Southern Harmony box set pages still list "Remedy" right up front and the store has carried an "All I Want Is a Remedy" hat cut from that same chorus. They keep the day-to-day chatter going on Facebook, Instagram, and X. The old fan-club idea came back as the Crowe-Mafia, a community Chris announced for presales, vault audio, and the kind of shows the lifers argue about, and you can find the signup through the band's site. There is also a public fan hangout called The Black Crowes. on Facebook, where people still post about the 1992 tour and which solo still raises the hair on their arms. Spin it again, Freaks. The remedy was never hiding. It was in the groove the whole time.