They're gonna rock this joint tonight

"JUST because you can play big arenas, doesn't mean you should." Thus Rich Robinson, guitarist with Atlanta band The Black Crowes, states the touring philosophy which has kept his group rolling along rock's highway for nine years without ever stalling in the middle of the road.

"We just decided it's much cooler to go into a city for three or four nights at a 3,000-seater instead of playing a 20,000 seat arena, just for us and our fans. I think a lot of bands sort of rush into things and jump into these arenas, and they're stuck there. There's nowhere you can go."

For The Black Crowes, there's always somewhere to go; at the time of this interview, it's Lyons in France, where the band is playing the latest date on its current European tour. In the past few months, they've already done the "natural amphitheatres" in the States, plus the regular rock `n' roll venues, and after they've finished tonight's show in Dublin's Olympia Theatre The Black Crowes will be heading back across the Atlantic for more American dates. Somewhere in the schedule, the band may find time to start work on its fifth album, the follow-up to last year's Three Snakes And One Charm.

Rich Robinson is on the phone from his hotel, where he's booked in under the name Sal Minella (har! har!), and we're discussing the Black Crowes' maverick style of Southern rock, where soul meets psychedelia in a cloud of dust and dope smoke.

Since their first hit record, a cover of Otis Redding's Hard To Handle, The Crowes have continuously gone against the grain, wandering deeper into rock's wilderness, and exploring musical places far off the beaten track of mainstream pop. For their record company, which is still waiting for the band to match the success of 1992's Southern Harmony And Musical Companion, the Black Crowes must be a bit of a commercial thorn in the side.

"Yes, sort of" I guess. I mean, our mentality is, a record company has 50 bands that they can f... around with. This is our only band. And so what we feel is relevant with our band is what goes, and I think everyone knows that. I mean, what would The Beatles do if they stuck with Please Please Ale, or I Wanna Hold Your Hand or whatever? They didn't - they went and changed it, and I just think that music and anything creative needs to go forward and change - for everyone. What if you went and saw the same football game over and over? You wouldn't go.

Rich believes it's The Black Crowes ever-changing roadshow which keeps the fans coming, and he tells me that some of their more fervent fans have followed the band around the world, a flashback to the days when The Grateful Dead commanded a similar level of loyalty. Indeed, The Black Crowes themselves are a bit of a throwback to those halcyon days before Grange possessed the souls of young Americans, and their music harks back to a purer, more optimistic time before the nihilism of Nirvana, Soundgarden and Stone Temple Pilots negated rock's future.

"The Grange movement stopped progressing the minute it got started. It was sort of a trick, it was a gimmick. Nirvana I think were different, they started it, but when their second major-label record came out, no-one gave a shit, it didn't sell well, and people started slagging them off. Then he killed himself and they started selling records again. And then you had all these other bands that came out that were just - you know when advertisements tell you that something is `new and improved' Well, it's not really, it's the same shit."

The Grunge movement was notorious for the prevalence of heroin use among its bands, but The Black Crowes are known to prefer something softer and more recreational, and many a concert and recording session has been spiced up by the aromatic fragrance of multi-spliff inhalation. Yes, the Crowes love their ganja, but Rich is quick to stress that the band doesn't depend on the dreaded weed to get their creative juices flowing.

"I don't necessarily think it's for creative purposes - I think maybe some people do it to have fun."

So reports of The Black Crowes being high all the time may be somewhat inflated, but their commitment to the decriminalisation of cannabis remains undiminished.

"We played a legalisation rally in Atlanta, and it was the biggest rally ever, it was like 80,000 people or something. And we did a free show, we just showed up to play, we thought it would be like, hey, let's go play a show, and these friends of ours said yeh, it's cool. It's sort of bullshit that the United States says it's so free, but what they're doing to people through drugs is insane.

"It's completely anti-human rights, you know, they're really just going all-out. And so we just decided to do it, and the year before they said there were 2,000 people out there, but the word got out that we were playing and I think 65 or 70,000 people showed up, and they had to have all these cops brought out, you know, it was a big thing. And so from then on, people sort of took our message.

"I don't think people should really be persecuted, and that's what's happening to them for smoking marijuana. I mean using it to seize property. People who worked their whole lives to buy a house and a car or whatever, the government will just steal it, just take it if they catch you with drugs. And then they sell it and use it and throw you in jail for five years, and I just think that's horseshit. I have a baby, and I don't want my kid to get involved in things, but I also know that my kid's human, and that someday he might get involved in it, and you know what? I don't want him to go to jail for it. I don't think that that should ruin someone's life. It's not the pot that would rain his life, it would be going to jail that would.