Chris Robinson was booed by fans in Tampa on Sunday night after he mocked a “USA” chant that broke out during the Black Crowes’ show, turning a stop on the band’s Southern Hospitality Tour into an onstage confrontation. Some audience members left the venue after the boos started.
The exchange came moments before the band was due to play “She Talks to Angels,” one of the songs that helped make the Black Crowes a major rock act after brothers Chris and Rich Robinson formed the group in 1984. On the screen behind the stage, the band’s black crow mascot appeared dressed as Uncle Sam, and that image set off a pro-America chant from the crowd.
Robinson pushed back quickly. “Thanks for the geography lesson,” he said, then added, “I don’t know what you have to be so proud of right now.” The crowd answered with boos, and in a clip obtained by TMZ he went further, saying, “Some of us have real faith,” before telling the booing fans, “For those of you f–king booing us, some of us are not afraid. And we most assuredly are not f–king ignorant.”
The friction lands hard because Robinson had said in a March interview with Mojo, “I’m not interested in politics. I’m more interested in poetry and art and people and experience.” Yet the Tampa exchange sounded political to the people in the room, and the response was immediate. One fan posted on X that Robinson mocked the USA chanters and that he and his wife walked out disappointed. Another wrote that the singer “basically just told Patriots to kiss his ass!”
The Black Crowes split in 2015 and reunited in 2019, and the band is now touring behind its 10th studio album, “A Pound of Feathers.” For Robinson, 59, the Tampa backlash now becomes part of the tour’s story, and the unanswered question is whether he or the band will try to smooth it over after a night that ended with boos instead of applause.
