Pigeonholing Blackberry Smoke has never been easy. Since emerging from Atlanta in the early ’00s, the quintet—vocalist/lead guitarist Charlie Starr, guitarist/vocalist Paul Jackson, bassist/vocalist Richard Turner, drummer Brit Turner, and keyboardist Brandon Still—has become known for a singular sound indebted to classic rock, blues, country and folk.
This fluidity has paid off handsomely, in the form of two Billboard chart-topping country albums, 2015’s Holding All The Roses and 2016’s Like An Arrow.
Blackberry Smoke will continue their “Find A Light” headline tour in 2019 with a stop at Oxford’s Lyric Theater on Thursday, January 24.
This tour celebrates a landmark year for Blackberry Smoke, which saw the release of their sixth-studio album, Find A Light, as well as a new acoustic EP, The Southern Ground Sessions. Find A Light was released last April and debuted as the best-selling Country and Americana/Folk album in the country and entered at #3 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart and #2 on the BillboardAmericana/Folk Albums chart. Of the album, NPR Music praises, “…Find a Light pushes the envelope while providing that famous Blackberry Smoke autonomy, delivered with soulful vocals, haunting harmonies and kick ass songs,” while Relix declares, “Blackberry Smoke have long been heirs to the road-warrior mantle established by their classic-rock and country heroes. And, with their sixth full-length album, Find A Light, the quintet has now firmly established an authentic legacy of their own.”
Following the album’s release, Blackberry Smoke returned to the studio and recorded The Southern Ground Sessions. Created as an accompaniment to Find A Light, the six-song EP was recorded live at Southern Ground Studio in Nashville and features acoustic versions of five album tracks as well as a rendition of Tom Petty’s “You Got Lucky” featuring Amanda Shires. Of the EP, Rolling Stone Country praises, “Blackberry Smoke’s crunchy Southern rock may be made for fuzzed-out electric guitars, but their songs sure do translate well to being played acoustically,” while Guitar World states, “With the new EP, a band that has defied critics to pigeonhole them have further proven that there is no one genre that can contain their versatile sound.”
Since their debut in 2004, the band has independently released six full-length records and has toured relentlessly, building a strong and loyal community of fans. In addition to their work as musicians, Blackberry Smoke remains committed to charitable work and has raised nearly $200,000 benefiting children’s cancer research.
