Whilst in the UK The Midlands Rocks spoke to Black Stone Cherry drummer John Fred Young about visiting John Bonham’s grave, headlining the second stage at Download Festival & their eagerly awaited new album ‘Magic Mountain’. You can pre-order ‘Magic Mountain’ on iTunes & Amazon right now.

When asked about the album which is due for release on May 5th John Fred had this to say “Making this record we had an open mind, we’re gonna make the best songs we can. We’re not gonna get in the studio and have a producer try to make us, you know, cut, paste, glue. The last record, I love it dude, there’s nothing wrong with it, I love it to death. But our label guy at the time wanted us to make a record that was accessible for radio listeners in America, radio is the big deal over there.

You see, we built over here off of our live shows and then radio started to come along. We could never get radio to respond to us like we wanted to. So when the third record came around, we wrote for a year, like 58 songs, that’s a lot. We made friends with other songwriters in Nashville and other parts of the country. With this record there’s been a shift in the label and we were allowed to be left alone to create Black Stone Cherry.

Our producer Joe Barresi, he was great, so instrumental in allowing us to be ourselves. He came down to our farm with us, he got it man. All these vintage guitar pedals, stuff you can’t even find anymore. The songs, they’re wild, free spirited, American rock and roll lyrics. I think our fans will appreciate it too. We didn’t want to make a record that will get us ‘5 minute fans’. We have our fans, they love us, we love them. We’re gonna make sure that they’re happy.

Read the full interview right here.