Black Stone Cherry announce their brand new EP ‘Celebrate’, digitally available March 6 via Mascot Records. Following the recent release of lead single “Neon Eyes”, the Kentucky hard rockers drop the music video for the EP’s title track “Celebrate”. The band shares their vision for the video: “We had so much fun coming up with the concept for the ‘Celebrate’ video. We got on a phone call with director Kyle Loftus, and we all hashed out ideas until we landed on something that got us all excited. We wanted the video to show what it’s like to be stuck in something, whether that be a boring job or maybe stuck in your own head, and how any little opportunity can lead to a small victory.”
The song itself celebrates every little thing in life, even if it’s just making it through the day. The band adds, “The video came out amazing with an amazing actor and musician, Aaron Paulsen, as the lead, and we get chills every time we watch it. The confetti at the end was one of our main requests as we wanted to visually show what it mentally feels like to celebrate inside your mind.” Black Stone Cherry are masters of taking a sombre subject and flipping it on its head, creating punchy, empowering rock songs.
Produced by the band and recorded at High Street Studios in Bowling Green, Kentucky, ‘Celebrate’ embodies happiness and heartache, muscular hooks and raw soul. The life experiences of four men approaching forty, two of them parents, shine through in one emotive, unpolished diamond of a record. Singer and guitarist Chris Robertson shares, “Any piece of art is a snapshot of that artist’s life. So I look at these songs as a culmination of everything we’ve lived since ‘Screamin’ At The Sky’.” Ben Wells adds, “None of us is precious, because we’re all fighting on the same team.”
The EP delivers six commanding, stage-ready original tracks and an inspired cover of Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” featuring Tyler Connolly of Theory Of A Deadman. “I’m Fine” offers a dreamily woozy, Nirvana-laced grunge singalong. The searing, mid-tempo heartache of “Deep” struck a particularly pertinent chord with Ben Wells, who channeled personal struggles into the track. The Simple Minds cover, immortalized in John Hughes’ seminal 1985 film The Breakfast Club, turns out to be a surprisingly natural fit for the band’s soulful gravel and sincerity.