You can usually tell how much a band loves a festival by how they talk about it, and Those Damn Crows talk about Download like home. We caught drummer Ronnie Huxford backstage, on his birthday no less, ahead of another set at a festival the Welsh rockers have now played five or six times across multiple stages. “When we were younger it was always the bucket list to play Download,” he says. “The fact we’ve done it this many times, it’s a real honour.” This is where they grew up, watching the likes of Aerosmith, Motörhead and Offspring. Playing it themselves still doesn’t quite stop feeling surreal.
Talk turns quickly to the people who got them here, the fanbase they call the Crow Family. The name is deliberate. “It’s grown organically since 2014, and that’s what’s really helped us,” Ronnie says. “We’ve been very truthful with them. If something’s not going right, Shane will address it. If we have a bad time, we let them know, and they share our highs as much as our lows.” Through Covid the band invited fans into their homes, and the bond stuck. “That’s what family is. The amount of comfort there, if someone’s lost somebody or going through personal stuff, it’s an incredible fanbase.”
That family did something remarkable. They powered the band to a number one record. “It was outstanding, especially as kids who grew up watching artists get in the charts,” Ronnie says. The Crow Family got loud about it. “They’ve been shouting to the industry, this is our band. And now the industry’s going, right, Those Damn Crows, we’d better look at them.” A grassroots rise that forced the gatekeepers to pay attention.
On stage, his favourites shift. On the last tour he loved settling into the slower groove of ‘Night Train’, “getting in the pocket with Shane, feeling the mood,” a change from the heavier stuff like ‘No Surrender’. The set’s highlight on the day, though, was ‘Sin on Skin’, an oldie from Point of No Return, with the crowd bouncing throughout.
Ask him to picture the album God Shaped Hole as a room and it gets characterful. “It would be a very dark room. I find peace in the dark, I’ve actually painted our bedroom black.” Better sleep, he swears, even if finding the bed in the dark is a challenge. The soundtrack would not be music at all but a podcast, a wrestling one or a bit of Joe Rogan, because he is around music so much he likes hearing people talk. And the smell? “Tequila. Something rock and roll.”
Asked to sum the band up as weather, an object and an emoji, the Welshness shows. The weather is a storm cloud with loads of rain, “because it’s like Wales.” The object, solid as a rock. The emoji, the woozy face you pull after one too many. Fitting enough.
The one thing he’d have people stop is living on their phones. “It’s a contradiction, because in a band you get so focused on social media you become ignorant to what’s around you. You have to learn when to switch off.” He’s applied it this year, to real benefit. “It’s been valuable spending time with family. It’s for your mental health, whether you go for a run or just don’t post everything. Find certain pockets that are just for you.”
And the one thing to start? Enjoying everything. “We forget we were locked up for ages, couldn’t see friends or loved ones, and now we take it for granted.” Time with the band, jamming and gigging and seeing the Crow Family, time with friends and family, holidays, all of it. “Make the most of life. Live everything to the maximum.” You only live once, as we put it. He couldn’t agree more.
As for what’s coming, he could finally let something slip. “We’ve been the quietest we’ve ever been, but we can officially say new music is coming soon. We’ve been busy in the background, loads of demos sounding incredible.” No release date yet, the powers that be have seen to that, but it is on the way. Before that comes a run supporting Shinedown in October and November, which should be immense. The Crow Family, you suspect, will be there in force.
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