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Black Crowes prove a point at Boston Calling 2025
“We’re the only f****** rock ’n’ roll band at all these things,” Black Crowes frontman Chris Robinson lamented during Day 2 at Boston Calling 2025.
From the thundering opening strains of “No Speak No Slave” — off The Black Crowes’ second album, “The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion” — Chris Robinson and company seemed to have something to prove during their Saturday Blue Stage set at Boston Calling. Well, especially Chris Robinson.
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“There ARE some rock ’n’ roll people here today!” he declared after that first number, as the crowd finally started to fill in behind the stalwarts in front of the stage. (Everybody else was apparently at Avril Lavigne.) And later he lamented how lonely the band gets when they play a music festival. “We’re the only f—in’ rock ’n’ roll band at all these things.”
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It’s true that, on Saturday anyway, alt-rock and punk-pop were ruling the day at Boston Calling. But Robinson needn’t have been concerned about his band’s ability to carry the blues-based, guitar-driven rock ’n’ roll torch — Robinson, and his brother Rich on guitar, can still rev things up just like they did back in 1990, when they rescued us from the Paula Abdul wasteland of contemporary popular music and provided the perfect springboard for the grunge movement just around the corner.
If you’re among those who’ve followed them since then but have failed to see them live (guilty), Chris Robinson’s stage presence may have not been exactly what you’ve pictured all these years. Turns out he’s a prancer, someone who clearly subscribes to the Mick Jagger and Peter Wolf school of gesticulation. (Or maybe he’s getting ready for his upcoming gig singing and twirling mic stands with The Joe Perry Project, which hits Fenway with The Who in August.)
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Combine that with his relatively short tresses and watermelon-colored jacket (and sunglasses!), and he may not have fit the classic classic-rocker profile. But he had stage presence to beat the band (literally) and his voice — maybe a little shoutier and less textured than it was in the ’90s, but not by much — provided a raucous rock injection that left the fans who spurned Avril to see the Crowes in hard rock heaven.
Not that it was all barn burners — slow burn blues were the order of the day on a riveting “Seeing Things” off their first album, and Erik Deutsch’s keyboards propelled a smoky groove for “Thorn in My Pride.” But it was rollicking, raging blues and rock that Robinson and crew were determined to deliver, and the band more than came through with pounding takes on old favorites like “Sting Me,” “Twice as Hard,” and a wild and wooly run through their first hit, Otis Reading’s “Hard to Handle.” (“We’ve been ridin’ this one a long time,” Robinson noted.)
The Black Crowes are still hard to handle. #bostoncalling
— Pete Chianca (@pchianca.bsky.social) May 25, 2025 at 9:43 AM
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Throw in a few highlights from their excellent latest album, last year’s “Happiness Bastards” — ”Wanting and Waiting” in particular fit right into the classic lineup — and a blazing closer with “Remedy,” and you’ve got a set that left the assembled spent and satisfied. “That’s what rock ’n’ roll sounds like, remember that sh—?” Robinson asked toward the end, and those lucky enough to see them Saturday definitely did.
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Setlist for Black Crowes at Boston Calling on Saturday:
- No Speak No Slave
- Rats and Clowns
- Twice as Hard
- Sting Me
- Seeing Things
- Soul Singing
- Hard to Handle
- Thorn in My Pride
- Wanting and Waiting
- Remedy
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