“Dave Cobb had just done the last Slash record with walls of Marshall stacks, which got ungodly loud – I don’t think we used anything bigger than an 8” speaker!” Blackberry Smoke’s Charlie Starr on why downsizing his backline made for bigger tones

Charlie Starr.

It was all set up to be a great year for Blackberry Smoke, with the release of a fine new album, Be Right Here. But just a few days after guitarist and vocalist Charlie Starr spoke to Total Guitar about the making of the album, it was announced that the band’s drummer and co-founder Brit Turner had died on March 3 at the age of 57.

In this interview, Charlie explained how they had set out to make an intimate-sounding record. Producer Dave Cobb came into the project having just worked on the Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators album 4 – live-recorded with loud Marshall stacks.