When Chris Robinson, frontman of The Black Crowes, told his family he was quitting school to be in a band, his father was less than thrilled.
“My dad said, ‘You’re a [expletive] loser. You can’t do that,’” Robinson, 59, recalled via phone, taking a break during a trip to Aspen, Colo. “‘What is wrong with you? This is the worst mistake of your life. You can’t do this.’”
That was roughly 40 years ago, when the band was forming in Georgia and had yet to release their multi-platinum debut album, 1990’s “Shake Your Money Maker.” Since then, somehow everything and nothing has changed for The Black Crowes, who head to the Xfinity Center June 19 to support their March album “A Pound of Feathers.”
The new: The Black Crowes have started to receive the acclaim they were often denied during the “rock wars of the ’90s,” as Robinson recalled. Their 2024 album “Happiness Bastards” earned the group their second-ever Grammy nomination, placing them in the best rock album category alongside acts like Jack White, Pearl Jam, and The Rolling Stones (who ultimately won). For the last two years, The Black Crowes have also been nominated for inclusion in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, a satisfying development for a band that’s long felt like “rank outsiders,” Robinson said.
The old — or rather, old-fashioned: They don’t use computers onstage, a choice that Robinson said makes them “troglodytes in the world of rock and roll.” They can still crank out an album in just over a week; “A Pound of Feathers” came together in about eight days, the same timeframe as the band’s sophomore record, 1992’s “The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion.”
Robinson and his brother Rich also remain “the fuel to the engine of The Black Crowes,” said Robinson, who explained that “we didn’t have the whole band come in while we were writing and cutting these tracks.”
“A Pound of Feathers” is the band’s second album since regrouping in 2019, when they smoothed over a breakup that stemmed from a disagreement about the distribution of “shares” of The Black Crowes. But the band had pressed pause before — most notably from 2002 to 2005 – and the brothers Robinson patched things up in time for the 30th anniversary of “Shake Your Money Maker.” If there’s any lingering animosity, it didn’t surface during this call.
“His rhythm playing, his riffs, they’re just unique to him,” Chris gushed about Rich. “In a world full of unique, talented, dynamic people in the world of music, my brother’s … right there.”
When assembling “A Pound of Feathers” in Nashville last year, Robinson said he brought in “notebooks full of ideas and lyrics and poems and overheard conversations” that were “fair game” for material. He and Rich worked short shifts in the studio — about about six hours at a time — but kept the momentum going at night.
“I would have the engineer send me what we worked on that day, and I would go straight home and start writing these lyrics, and never broke the spell,” Robinson said. “It was really fulfilling in that way.”
“A Pound of Feathers” fits right in with The Black Crowes’ flock of blues-streaked rock albums, spanning 11 tunes that are humid with the influence of the band’s Georgia roots, yet lithe in their lyrical wit. The LP yielded a rock ‘n’ roll rite of passage for the group — their first accusations of Satanism, caused by the cartoonish music video for lead single “Profane Prophecy,” which is crawling with extras in devil costumes and features a fake decapitation via guillotine.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God, all these years I’ve never been called a Satanist,’” Robinson said. “It feels so good.”
The band wrapped the album in May 2025, right around when they performed at Boston Calling last Memorial Day weekend.
“I’ve never really had that much fun,” Robinson added. “There was never a moment my feet touched the ground making this record.”
The frontman said he thinks the band’s recent spike in recognition is “indicative of what we have accomplished since we put this band back together” in 2019.
“It was always kind of frustrating and disappointing that we were never played on modern rock or alternative music [radio], that we were always considered ‘something else’ early in our career,” he said. “We were supposedly copying everyone.”
Robinson recalled an old magazine cover that asked if the band was a group of “soul rebels … or pothead posers?” It was around the time The Black Crowes dropped “The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion,” which would go on to top the Billboard 200.
“Out of all the [expletive] things in the world, we were not pretending,” he said.
One group that recognized The Black Crowes’ grit was Aerosmith, who took the band on their first-ever arena tour in 1990. In a full-circle moment, The Black Crowes also supported Aerosmith on their farewell tour, which ended early because of Steven Tyler’s vocal cord injuries.
Robinson still found himself on the road with guitarist Joe Perry, who last year tapped Robinson to tackle lead vocals in his solo effort, the Joe Perry Project. Performing alongside Perry at venues like the Boch Center Wang Theatre and Fenway Park turned their “musical friendship” into a “friendship-friendship,” Robinson said. (Perry also took him clothes shopping on Newbury Street, which Robinson called the “coolest thing ever.”)
“Here is a guy who’s done everything you can do in the music business and has been through everything,” he added. “And when the guy gets onstage, talk about feel. He doesn’t give a [expletive].”
If Robinson’s approach to the modern music industry is any indication, neither do The Black Crowes.
“What are we trying to do? Are we trying to make ‘Dark Side of the Moon’?” Robinson said. “Am I going to have a hit single next to, I don’t know, [pop singer] Sombr or whatever? That’s a different world.”
“There’s no formula. There’s no mathematics involved,” he concluded. “It’s all just hopefully where our soul hits the pavement.”
THE BLACK CROWES
With Whiskey Myers and Southall. At the Xfinity Center, 885 S Main St., Mansfield, Friday, June 19, 6:30 p.m. Tickets $34 and up. ticketmaster.com
Victoria Wasylak can be reached at victoria.wasylak@globe.com.