Black Stone Cherry has finished recording its next EP. The Kentucky band now waits on the mix, guitarist Ben Wells said in a recent interview with Germany’s Rock Antenne. The EP comes after Celebrate, which hit shelves in March through Mascot Records.
The band has not confirmed a title, track list, or release date. Wells and singer and guitarist Chris Robertson talked about plans for the band during the interview.
“The second EP is already done, and it’s just gotta be mixed. Chris and our engineer Jordan [Westfall] will mix it pretty soon, I guess – soon-ish. That’s already done, but we’re already coming up with new riffs at soundcheck and putting them on phones. And it just kind of never… There are times you hit a lull and you’re, like, ‘Okay,’ you’re hitting a dry spell, so to speak. But then sometimes you just keep churning them out, and ideas and songtitles and riffs and drum patterns,” Wells said in the interview.
Wells also spoke about how the new music sounds. “I don’t think we’ve ever tried to reinvent ourselves. We’ve always tried to stay at the core of what we do. And we might branch off and have some different things, but we always just try to make it genuinely us, whether it’s something totally different or not. If we believe in it, then it’s gonna come out sounding like it’s supposed to,” he said.
Why two EPs and not one full album? Robertson pointed to how fast the music business moves and how long an album cycle can drag on.
“The initial thought was just – the world’s fast as … now, man. You put out an album, and two months after the album comes out, people are asking, ‘When’s your new music coming?’ And you’re, like, ‘The … album came out two months ago, man.’ But the reality of it is after you go in the studio and you decide to do an EP of your own music, you take six songs or seven songs, and it’s just a little different. I don’t know. I feel like it’s all more concise. It’s all more to the point. There’s no questions on which song should be where. It’s kind of like cutting the fat and then putting it out in two pieces almost,” Robertson said.
A band that lives on the road gains from smaller releases, he added. “And for a band like us that has made our career being an on-the-road band, it just makes way more sense, in our opinion, to break our releases up into smaller sections that come together,” Robertson said.
Celebrate holds seven tracks. Six are originals. The seventh is a cover of Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” with Tyler Connolly of Theory of a Deadman. Black Stone Cherry produced the EP and recorded it at High Street Studios in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
The band’s latest full-length album was Screamin’ At The Sky in 2023. It was the eighth.
Next up are the Bonfire Nights: An Acoustic Evening shows, which start Nov. 12 in Flint, Michigan. The run goes on through Dec. 13 in Battle Creek, Michigan. Along the way, the band plays Loew’s Jersey Theatre in Jersey City, New Jersey, on Dec. 9, and Chesapeake Employers Insurance Arena in Baltimore on Dec. 11.
After that, the band heads to the United Kingdom and Ireland. The tour starts Jan. 14, 2027, at O2 Academy Bournemouth. It stops for two nights at O2 Forum Kentish Town in London on Jan. 22 and 23, then wraps up Feb. 13, 2027, at Cyprus Avenue in Cork, Ireland. For information, head to their website.
