Photo credit: Scott Wills
Steve Gorman and Trigger Hippy
Steve Gorman and Trigger Hippy
Former Black Crowes drummer and cofounder Steve Gorman is enjoying a creative second wind, thanks to his latest band, Trigger Hippy. Despite recently looking back at the highs and lows of his longtime band in his new memoir, Hard to Handle: The Life and Death of the Black Crowes (written with the help of Wisconsin native Steven Hyden), Gorman has largely had an eye toward the future with his latest venture.
Formed in 2004 with songwriter and bass player Nick Govrik, Trigger Hippy has provided Gorman with an exciting and invigorating creative outlet. That’s especially evident on the band’s recently released sophomore album, Full Circle and Then Some, which finds the duo fully realizing the vision they had set out with 15 years prior.
Trigger Hippy—a name Gorman likes for its duality and how “hippy” conjures up the band’s hope to get people’s hips moving to the sound—initially was a banner for whoever the duo worked with. Trigger Hippy’s lineup has changed frequently over the years. But the recent additions of guitarist Ed Jurdi and singer Amber Woodhouse have provided a lineup Gorman thinks is “built to last.”
The new album showcases a potent concoction of the band’s collective influences, weaving between country, Delta blues, R&B, gospel, Southern rock and funk.
“Nick and I have been playing together since 2004 and always with a mind to getting to where we are right now,” says Gorman. “And it took a long time to develop and find itself. If there’s anything that I’m most proud of, it’s that we didn’t do too bad a job at not forcing it. You can put a square peg in a round hole only so many times.”
There were some false starts, “but we recognized it right away, and we would back away from it,” he continues. “Getting older and wiser somehow brings about more patience, which I would’ve thought would be counterintuitive. But I’m thrilled with the album, and I love the band right now and who we have and what we’re doing. So, it was well worth the wait.”
Gorman explains that the album came together quickly.
“The 12 songs on this album are 12 examples of it falling into place very, very... not effortlessly, but painlessly. With a little bit of work and a whole lot of inspiration,” he says.
One example is “Born to Be Blue,” written when Jurdi joined the band. “He brought in just the lyric, ‘born, born to be blue,’ that part, and then the little guitar riff, and that’s all he had,” Gorman says. “And we immediately heard it as a long, sort of meditative groove, if you will. And then when all you had was ‘born to be blue,’ we were immediately looking for a lyric that sort of talked about not just depression, not such a literal translation of ‘born to be blue,’ but of the things that connect people, the human spirit and resilience as much as depression. And it just had that vibe right off the bat.
“And the first version we did, an acoustic demo version where I’m just playing on a set of bongos into an iPhone—that first version was 15 minutes long, and it was basically the same exact arrangement that you hear on the album, just very differently, much more stark,” Gorman continues. “But we always knew where that song was going to go. And it was a real indicator to us that we’d found… ‘OK, Ed’s the guy. This worked. This was great.’ And it was a springboard for the rest of the recordings.”
Releasing the album on Thirty Tigers was special for Gorman as it gave him the chance to reunite with label founder/owner David Macias, who played an important role in getting The Black Crowes’ first recording contract 30 years ago. Gorman feels his career has come full circle and cherishes every opportunity he has to be creative. “Nick and I have kind of come around the bend a couple times, but this one seems to be the right one,” he says.
Extended Q&A
Why was it time to write a book on The Black Crowes?
It had been long enough since the end of the band. And I had it in the back of my head for a while that I’d like to tell the story of the band the way I saw it. And by 2016, after our piano player Ed Harsch died, a few months after that, it felt like enough time had passed where it all made sense to me. After 27 years in a band that was as tumultuous as the Black Crowes, it took a few years for all of that to settle in and kind of make sense, where I could look back with some clarity and remove a lot of the emotion, especially around the ending of the band. And once kind of the anger dissipated, I was left with a feeling of a real appreciation and gratitude, and at the same time sadness for how we were always our own worst enemy. So, I just wanted to write that story.
Why did you pick Steven Hyden to assist you with writing the book?
We’re friends. I’d met him over the years and I’m a fan of his writing. So, when it was time to write the book, when I thought about doing it, he’s the first guy I called. I said, “Hey, do you want to help me out?” And he said, “Well, what you need me to do?” And I said, “I don’t know. I’ve never written a book. So just be on hand.” And then he ended up playing a large role in it with the shaping of the narrative and then with the editing. We worked very well together. I can write a book, but I don’t know what to do other than just write it. So, it’s like he produced the album and I wrote the songs. And as I’ve been saying, I could have done it without him, but it would have taken about 10 years and it probably would have sucked, so it was a really great partnership.
What’s your favorite Milwaukee memory?
We played the Summerfest with Jimmy Page in 2000 in Milwaukee, and that was a great, great night. Just was such a huge turnout, and Summerfest is such a big deal up there. We had a lot of great shows. I remember playing there in ’91 and ’92 at the Riverside Theater, and both of those shows were great. Milwaukee’s a great rock town, and I don’t think we’ve ever had a bad night there, but the one with Jimmy Page in 2000 was really special.
Trigger Hippy perform at Shank Hall on Thursday, Nov. 14, at 8 p.m.
