2024 Inductee

Black Stone Cherry’s emergence to global fame is a story of proactive perseverance. From the very start, the band members didn’t sit back waiting for something to happen. They got out on the road performing their repertoire to fans across North America, and territories across the globe.

In their early teens while growing up in Edmonton, Kentucky Chris Robertson and John Fred Young began playing music together. Not long after, Ben Wells and Jon Lawhon joined as the young quartet became a band in 2001. Collectively, they stepped into the same space that served as the epicenter of The Kentucky Headhunters creativity as early as 1968 when John Fred’s father Richard contributed to the Headhunters fine tuning the band’s vision and voice. Black Stone Cherry continued the tradition of becoming a second generation of prolific songwriting emanating from that sacred space. From that practice house, the band began recording, and in 2003 released their first demo titled Rock N’ Roll Tape.

More than two decades later, Chris Robinson (guitars/vocals), Ben Wells (guitars/backing vocals), and John Fred Young (drums/backing vocals) remain together. Steve Jewell (bass/backing vocals) has now been a member for several years rounding out the line-up. Over the course of the band’s career, they’ve released eight studio albums, several long-form concert films (one of which was captured at London’s celebrated Royal Albert Hall), and a couple of EPs. On a cumulative level, seventeen singles have charted at radio in the U.S., while the band’s releases have sold hundreds of thousands of albums, with enormous success in the streaming era with hundreds of millions of plays. On the touring side, the Kentucky Southern rockers have shaken stages from arenas to festivals across Europe, North America and other territories across the globe.

To this day, Black Stone Cherry’s members reside in Kentucky and are proud diplomats for their home state. In April, 2016, the band released an album titled Kentucky which became their second #1 on the Billboard Hard Rock Albums chart.

With each consecutive album, the band’s global footprint has grown larger and larger. They have never been one note, and their creative collaboration continues to reach new heights. Whether exploring their love of the Blues with the Black To Blues series of EPs, pushing the boundaries of rock with the band’s on-going collaboration that’s approaching a quarter century, or reimagined recordings of other’s work like the rendition of Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason” in the recent past.

If the career of John Fred’s father Richard is any indicator, the boys from Kentucky are only getting started with decades of highlights still to come as they point their sights towards the future.