Chris Robinson Band comes to Bend
Published 2:44 pm Thursday, June 4, 2015
- Stuart Levine / Submitted photoChris Robinson Brotherhood
Guitarist Neal Casal has become quite the traveling man on the modern jam-band circuit. A longtime solo artist, the talented axeman was an integral part of Ryan Adams’ jammiest backing band, The Cardinals, and thus some of Adams’ jammiest records. In 2013, he teamed up with jam-friendly folk singer Todd Snider and Widespread Panic’s Dave Schools in the jam-rock supergroup Hard Working Americans.
In between, Casal found a spot in the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, the new project of — you guessed it — Chris Robinson, longtime frontman of on-again, off-again Southern-rock hit-makers The Black Crowes.
The CRB, as we’ll call them (because others call them that), has been nothing if not prolific in its relatively short time together. The band played a bunch of shows together before releasing an album or even leaving California. And once the CRB did put out a recording, it went big, unleashing both “Big Moon Ritual” and “The Magic Door” within four months of each other in 2012.
The albums introduced the CRB as you might expect: As a well-oiled musical machine capable of convincing blues choogle, soulful Southern rock, sprawling psychedelic jams and enough guitar solos to power every Guitar Center on Earth. A third album, Phosphorescent Harvest, followed last year, and featured more co-writes credited to both Robinson and Casal. (Robinson had been the primary writer of the first two albums’ songs.)
Now, the CRB is touring ahead of the June 2 release of “Betty’s Blends, Volume Two: Best From the West,” a collection of live cuts culled from the band’s 2014 West Coast tour, which was recorded and mixed straight from the soundboard by Grateful Dead archivist Betty Cantor Jackson. Tonight’s Bend show is also part of the CRB’s first Oregon shows in more than a year, and its first in the state with new drummer Tony Leone.
Chris Robinson Brotherhood; 9 tonight, doors open 8 p.m.; $25 plus fees in advance (ticket outlets listed at the website below), $28 at the door; Domino Room, 51 NW Greenwood Ave., Bend; www.randompresents.com.
—Ben Salmon, for The Bulletin