By Your Side by Black Crowes

By Your Side, the Black Crowes' fifth studio album, is the sound of a band regrouping after a rough patch. Guitarist Marc Ford and bassist Johnny Colt had walked out in 1997, the group had swapped American Recordings for Columbia, and a whole album, Band, had been shelved. So Chris and Rich Robinson went into a New York studio with producer Kevin Shirley over a few months in 1998, mixing songs born on the spot with reworked demos and tunes rescued from the abandoned Band. Newcomers Audley Freed and Sven Pipien were on the payroll, but Rich Robinson played every guitar part himself.

What came out is lean, loud, strutting rock and roll. Some critics grumbled that it sounded like Rod Stewart and the Stones; most were just glad to hear the Crowes back in the no-frills mode of Shake Your Money Maker, with Chris's singing and Rich's riffs drawing the loudest cheers. It stayed their only Columbia album.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.