See Blackberry Smoke’s Intense ‘Waiting for the Thunder’ on ‘Colbert’
Following a weekend of violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, Blackberry Smoke‘s appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to perform the ominous “Waiting for the Thunder” seemed to match the national mood. The riff-heavy song, which appears on the band’s 2016 album Like an Arrow, is set in chaos – an apocalyptic scene filled with ringing bells, unchecked flames and “two thousand years of fury in the big black sky.”
“That song was not meant to be a political statement of any kind. It’s more of a ‘How scary is our world right now’ statement,” Blackberry Smoke singer, guitarist and songwriter Charlie Starr told Rolling Stone Country in October. “Somebody asked me if it was about Donald Trump. I said, ‘No, absolutely not.’ When I’m speaking of ‘he’ or ‘brother,’ or whoever the character might be, it’s about anybody that would be elected president or in a position of power. It’s saying, ‘Good luck, man, because the world is so fucked up now.’ Who wants that job?”
Back on the road following its appearance in New York, the band stops in suburban Detroit on Thursday to support Lynyrd Skynyrd before rejoining Gov’t Mule for their last few summer tour dates. After a month-long hiatus, Blackberry Smoke launches the co-headlining Sinners and Sanctified Tour in October and November with Aaron Lewis.