You can call Blackberry Smoke’s music southern rock and you wouldn’t be wrong. Or you could call it country and you wouldn’t be wrong, either. But you would be selling both the band and its legion of fans short. With influences that run the gamut from country to bluegrass to metal to gospel and yes, southern rock, Blackberry Smoke is more than the sum of its diverse parts.

“None of us have ever said, ‘Let’s be a southern rock band or a bluegrass band or a country band’,” Blackberry Smoke frontman Charlie Starr explains. “We all love the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Stones and the Faces and Hank Williams and Bill Monroe. It’s not about what kind of music it is, as long as it’s good and it’s honest. When we get together it just sounds the way it does.”

The group, which is made up of Starr, sibling rhythm section Richard and Brit Turner (bass and drums, respectively) and guitarist Paul Jackson, formed in 2000 and quickly made an impact. Thanks to individual and shared reputations for entertaining, the foursome hit the road hard. “We had gigs right away,” says Richard, who with Brit had been in a popular Atlanta band that opened for national touring acts.

If you would like to win a copy of this new CD just answer this easy question: The quartet, which has built an international following thanks to the Internet and a universal love for good music, self-released its debut in 2004. But, what was it titled and who was their Producer?!

Send us your answers and if you're correct you'll be in the running to win one of these new CDs! Just send us an e:mail here before October 1st with your answer and the subject title CONTEST: BLACKBERRY SMOKE CDs to: exclusivemagazine@flash.net

CD Purchase Link

"Good One Comin' On" Streaming Audio