After supporting Alter Bridge on their UK arena tour late last year, American rockers Black Stone Cherry returned to play a sold-out tour. Tonight’s date was one of the first to sell out and the feeling was shown via their twitter ‘Manchester tonight!! Gonna be rockin!!’
Even though they’ve managed to sell out an entire tour, Black Stone Cherry are still unknowns in this country. Unless you are aware of the scene, if you mentioned them to someone on the street, they would have no idea who you were talking about. Most American bands gain there fans through their music rather than through being well known and Black Stone Cherry definitely show their fans that tonight.
The crowd tonight is different to what I’m used to. I say this as usually you’ll catch me at a gig, watching a band that a bunch of 14 year old girls are in love with. But this crowd makes the gig better, there’s hardly any screaming at random moments and when the band comes on the stage, the audience sounds adult. (Believe me, I was stunned that an audience can sound like that)
Most of the songs tonight were in support of the album ‘ Between The Devil & The Deep Blue Sea’ which was released early last year but when the older songs made an appearance it was difficult to hear the band over the crowd. During the acoustic part of the set, the lead singer pointed out, ‘I haven’t had to sing an entire word of this song the whole tour’ and the crowd were prompted to sing ‘Things My Father Said’ completely alone. They did, with no effort what so ever.
It’s always amazing to see how a band reacts when an entire room, filled with 2,400 people, is singing their song back at them. The reaction is always priceless.
Tonight Black Stone Cherry proved that, even if they are slightly ‘unknown’, they can sell out a large venue AND spend an entire song not singing an entire word just because of their fans. Their fans are the reason that they played so well tonight.
You can see the setlist from tonight here
Lancashire Sound 