Frontman Charlie Starr says founding member Brit Turner, who died in 2024, didn't want to stop touring in a new interview on Nashville Now
Blackberry Smoke are celebrating 25 years as a band with a summer tour that will take them from New York to Nashville and on to Canada. Many of those dates feature a very special opener: Jason Newsted, the former Metallica bassist who now fronts his own Chophouse Band.
In a new episode of Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast, Blackberry Smoke frontman Charlie Starr and Newsted talk about how they met, why they make sense together on the road, and the struggles they’ve faced in their respective bands. For Blackberry Smoke, it was the devastating loss of founding drummer Brit Turner in 2024 after a battle with cancer of the brain. Despite the tragedy, Starr says Turner was adamant about the group carrying on, and they brought in Kent Aberle to play when Turner couldn’t.
“Brit was like, ‘We’re not stopping, OK?’ I was like, ‘All right.’ We brought in Kent Aberle then, who was shadowing Brit and he was working and teching, and warming up with him. He knew I will play when he can’t, and Brit knew that too,” Starr says.
For Starr, the most brutal part was seeing his friend and bandmate unable to play.
