DON'T FENCE US IN

Embracing their roots on record for the first time, Don't call us southern” band The Cold Stares’ seventh album is both a love letter to Kentucky and a Call for unity in volatile times.

- Henry Yates

As far back as he can remember, whenever Chris Tapp opened a music magazine or was introduced by a DJ, the ‘S’ word preceded him. “We were always getting tagged as ‘southern’ something,” The Cold Stares frontman says, smiling. “Y’know, ‘southern rock’, ‘southern gothic’… We just thought of ourselves as a blues-rock band.”

Talking to Kentucky-born Tapp today, the Bluegrass State is present in the singer’s twang. Musically, though, things are a little muddier. The Cold Stares formed in 2012, and the trio’s six albums to date are as much in thrall to the British Invasion as to the Allmans/Skynyrd set texts.

That figures, Tapp shrugs: “When I was thirteen and they needed a guitar player at the Moose Lodge, they’d bring me in the side door. I’d sit in with the old guys. And Skynyrd was part of that – I loved their early stuff, and was always sad they got tied into that rebel-flag garbage. But we also played Zeppelin, Bad Company, Robin Trower. I thought Free were from Alabama, because it sounded southern to me. I was never a bluegrass guy. I always had a rock’n’roll bone in me.”