In the spirit of creativity and controversy, The Black Crowes follow a long line of rock 'n' roll debauchery and grandeur, which is seemingly spearheaded by a dynamic duo of musicians throwing punches in the gutter and gracious handshakes in the face of success.

Within the eye of this melodic storm, Chris and Rich Robinson have garnered an array of material meticulously interwoven into the fertile American musical landscape. Their creations not only provoke reflection, for good or ill, they inspire pure pursuits of genuine purpose as we all mosey down the road a little further.

But, behind every cherished lead singer and guitarist resides an equally beloved drummer. For the Crowes, Steve Gorman is a perpetual force of reason, onstage and off.

At a recent performance in Vermont, Gorman is the backbone of an aged, yet "wiser for the time," musical body, one that is currently immersed in their artistic pinnacle, thus far. The sextet provokes goosebumps with such ease, you feel intoxicated by the aroma of psychedelic-rock soaked with an embracing sound paying ode to the likes of the Grateful Dead, The Band, and Led Zeppelin.

Checking in from Nashville, he spoke of the road to redemption the band has taken over the last decade, why the group is going on hiatus in 2011, and how Ringo Starr never seems to get the credit he deserves.

It's not a breakup, it's just "let's stop with no guarantee we'll start up again." This is us being 20 years into this, six straight years on the road. Three of the guys have new babies. We just want to focus on other things for a while. The Black Crowes are an all-consuming band for the people in it. We've just have learned, hopefully from our past mistakes, about grinding ourselves in dust. So, we want to pull the plug before that happens again.

Definitely. We went from the early 1990s until 2001 without even taking at least a mental break. There are a couple times, looking back, we all agree that at different times during the 90s we really should have just shut it down and said "see you in a year." And I think we would have made a lot of things easier on ourselves and probably consistently easier to follow. We haven't made things really easy for our fans sometimes. A lot of those things come from being so close you can't see it. So, we really want to make sure nothing like that happens again. It's funny because it's prompted by the fact that we're really happy with what we're doing right now. I mean, if we were sort of floundering and it didn't feel like we were really on a roll, I don't know if we even be having this thought of "let's just shut it down", it would probably be more of like "maybe we are done". Instead, it's "this is really great and we need to protect this and do what best for it long-term". If there is going to be another Black Crowes, there needs be a Black Crowes that's been away for one or two years.

No, they're fine. They each had babies. When you start bringing babies around, all your stupid childhood fights sort of fade into the background.

They are hardly the only band, but that's a good example. I don't know a single band, that's been around more than a decade, that doesn't look back and see "this is when we needed that break." In 1995, early on and throughout that whole tour, we all had a conversation that, "when this tour ends, we should all go away for a while, take a year off, we really got to get away from this." We had a rough tour. There was a lot of fighting, not just the brothers, everybody was at each other's throats. There was a tough vibe for the whole tour. At the very end, the last couple months of the tour, we spent the summer in Europe with The Rolling Stones and then came home and headlined the H.O.R.D.E tour with Ziggy Marley, Blues Traveler, and Wilco, all these great bands. It got really fun all of a sudden. We went into the studio right when that tour ended because we were having fun again. The truth is, we should have stuck with our original thought. We got in, made a record, and by the time the next tour started it was like we never had a break. We hit the road dead tired. By the end of that tour, two members of the band had quit.

I appreciate that. We are very proud of that record. We're old enough now to realize that it's going to be around. That record isn't going anywhere. If anything, I think the way people see that record will only improve over time. You give it a few years, it will sit in people minds as a benchmark. The truth is we need a break. As much as we're all happy with the band, there is another side of us that knows if we go our separate ways and get focused on other things, it's going to be hard to get it back together. But, we just got to see what happens.

Chris went to one of his Midnight Rambles. We had an idea already to make a live record. We were thinking we'd be in a conventional studio, with 20 people in there, piled up in the corner, just to see what would happen, if it would change the energy of the room. After Chris went to one of the Rambles, he was sitting in the barn and realized it was a recording facility where you could fit 200 people in there. Levon said, "Come up, my home is your home, do what you want to do." He wasn't part of the project, other than he owned the facility. He wasn't involved in the making of the record. We would have loved it if he'd have hungout more. Every four or five days, he'd poke his head in and sit down for an hour when we were taking a break. We'd all talk about how it was going, tell stories, and have a good hang. Then, on our very last night, he came in and we did a couple tunes, that weren't on the record.

Oh, huge. There isn't a member in my band who wouldn't count him as an influence. The Band themselves and Levon, quite specifically, is such a musician, such a gentleman, such an encyclopedia of taste, and all these things I think any real rock 'n' roll musicians would want to aspire to.

I have two. Ringo Starr and John Bonham. The thing that they share is that both bands (The Beatles / Led Zeppelin) are unimaginable with someone else. They serve the songs. Ringo has one of the best feels of any drummer. By people that aren't musicians, he is so misunderstood.

Only because they are the biggest band of all-time. Bonham could have tried all he wanted, but you're never going to take The Beatles off the top of the mountain. They came in and did something so inconceivable that anybody could put in that amount of work. In seven years in the studio, they have like 138 songs everyone in the world knows. Nothing computed. I mean, my kids love The Beatles. Then, when Zeppelin came in, not as a pop band, there was this wave all about the musicianship and the playing and this sort of fifth member. When the four of them played (Led Zeppelin), they created this aura and this magic to that band. There were two different approaches. I mean, you can't say anyone is a great drummer unless they're in a great band. You don't give the MVP award to someone on a .500 team. The band has to be great to even start to discuss if the drummer is great. A great drummer in a bad band is about as useless as anything could be.

Absolutely. It's funny, drummers can pick apart John Bonham all day long about the technical things. Drummer might do that, but musicians wouldn't. And there are a lot of drummers who are musicians first, then get into it. Then, there are a lot of drummers who go to the basement, put on headphones, and play along to The Who or Rush records and think they're great drummers, too. Ringo and John Bonham are musicians who play the drums, they're not just drummers. Rock 'n' roll music is all about feel. John Densmore of The Doors is probably the most overlooked great drummer of all-time. No one talks about that guy. When you hear The Doors, you think of Jim Morrison, and he would have been useless in front of any other musicians.