Trigger Hippy - Trigger Hippy

Black Crowes' Steve Gorman and soul singer Joan Osborne head up a mix of country, rock, soul and blues

Includes free MP3 album download

Debut album from the up-and-coming Americana supergroup, Trigger Hippy. The band features: Black Crowes drummer Steve Gorman, session guitarist Tom Bukovac, singer Joan Osborne, singer/songwriter and Black Crowes guitarist Jackie Greene and bassist Nick Govrik.

When Trigger Hippy made its AmericanaFest debut, it was difficult to think of a festival act that better embodied the idea of Americana. Led by Gorman, the members of the cleverly monikered collective - singers Joan Osborne and Jackie Greene, bassist Nick Govrik and guitarist Tom Bukovac - represent the hallmarks of the catch-all genre: rock, soul, blues and country.

"It's all Southern music. Blues and country and soul and jazz, all those things emanated from one general area of the country," says Gorman, who after coming off the road with the Black Crowes in 2013 turned his attention full-time to Trigger Hippy, which he officially founded with Govrik a year earlier. "It started with Nick and I jamming together a lot, 10 years ago, at a club in Nashville. And the first time we played together, we played like we were already a rhythm section. We said, 'We have to do something for real.'"

The rhythm section in search of a singer (along with original guitarist Audley Freed, who left to focus on other projects) eventually recruited Osborne, best known for her stint with the post-Jerry Garcia version of the Dead and for her 1995 Lilith Fair-ready single "One of Us."

"We threw out the name of every dude we ever liked. For whatever reason, it was always like, no, no, no. Then I heard a Joan song on the radio, 'St. Theresa,' when I was driving and I was like, 'oh my god. It never even occurred to me to think about a female singer. What's wrong with me?' I called her the next day, and said, 'Look, I got this band, we got a good name, some cool little riffs and we want to bring someone in and write some songs.' She was way into it."

Greene, who played with Gorman in the Black Crowes, and Bukovac, one of contemporary country music's most sought-after session guitarists, soon followed.

"Even just those four guys together would be an incredible band," says Osborne. "I feel like I have to bring my best game to just hang with these guys. There's no phoning it in."