BOSTON — The Georgia band Blackberry Smoke never set out to be the standard-bearers for classic-model Southern rock. It just wound up happening that way.
“That music was all required listening where we came from,” frontman Charlie Starr said this week. “When I was a teenager and I started playing in bars around the Southeast, people eat, sleep and breathe that music — If you don’t play the (Allman) Brothers, Marshall Tucker and Lynyrd Skynyrd, then you (stink). It’s just sacred to people. People forget that those bands were so different from each other, but they love ‘em all because it was quality, the songs were so damn good. So that all comes into our music– It wasn’t a specific goal, but it comes out when we get together.”
Like those bands, Blackberry Smoke bring something of their own into the mix– in their case, a healthy dose of outlaw country, gospel and Southern soul. When they hit Boston's House of Blues on Wednesday, they’ll be playing the entirety of their third album “The Whippoorwill,” for its 10th anniversary. It was their breakthrough album, the first where they flexed their stylistic muscles.
