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, ‘Alright.’ 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.
“Brit knew he was losing his motor skills. It was so crazy to talk to somebody that knows this is happening to them,” he says. “He was like, ‘I can’t hold onto my drumsticks anymore…’ And there were certain songs he was like, ‘Can we please not play this?’ I didn’t even know I knew what to say to him, but it was, ‘We’ll do whatever the fuck you want to do. I’m so glad you’re here.’”
Starr and Newsted talk at length about how cancer has affected them or people they love. Newsted was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2025, which he talks at length about on Nashville Now. Watch the full episode below.
According to Starr, Turner was all but unstoppable throughout his illness. “Even to the very end,” he says.
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone’s weekly country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by Deputy Editor, Head of Country Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Vince Gill, Lainey Wilson, Shaboozey, Hardy, the War and Treaty, Charley Crockett, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Kings of Leon, Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, the Black Crowes, Carly Pearce, Amy Grant, Luke Grimes, Brandon Lake, Breland, Bryan Andrews, Noeline Hofmann, Adam Mac, Devon Gilfillian, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Shooter Jennings, Margo Price, Michaela Anne, Ink, Ne-Yo, Rival Sons’ Jay Buchanan, Halestorm, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, Clever, Love on the Spectrum‘s Tyler White, Willie Nelson scholar John Spong, and authors Marissa R. Moss, Josh Crutchmer, Mark Gray, and Jonathan Bernstein.
