Happiness ahead for Black Crowes fans as US rock band hit road to promote new album

They’re not coming to Scotland but their four English shows include one less than an hour and a half’s drive south of the border, at Newcastle City Hall on Friday, May 17.

That’ll be their third show at the Northumberland Road venue, following previous visits in 1991 and 1992, and only their fourth stop-off in Newcastle in their on-and-off 40-year history, their other having been at the old Riverside in 1990.

The Crowes’ last Scottish show was back in 2013, at Glasgow’s O2 Academy, that being their first this side of the border since a visit to the city’s Barrowland Ballroom in 2001.

Tickets for next month’s Newcastle show, with the Jim Jones All Stars supporting, cost from £61.20. For details, go to https://theblackcrowes.com/

The band – formed by brothers Chris and Rich Robinson in Atlanta in Georgia in 1984 and together from then until 2002, from 2005 to 2015 and since 2019 – are on the road to promote Happiness Bastards, their tenth album and first set of new material since 2009’s Before the Frost … Until the Freeze.

Released last month, it was a No 31 hit, their highest chart placing since Three Snakes and One Charm made it to No 17 in 1996, giving them their third top-20 hit on the trot, following The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion reaching No 2 in 1992 and Amorica peaking at No 8 two years later.

The Crowes’ other English tour dates are in Manchester, London and Wolverhampton.