Add to Black Stone Cherry’s pan-stylistic savvy their rock star looks, a knack for catchy melodies, confident technique, and their most irresistible asset—youth, and you will understand why this powerhouse of a band, with all its members in their early ‘20s, is sweeping the world over in an instant conquest of practically every country they go through.

Currently on a world tour, Black Stone Cherry played one of their biggest shows of this summer at Graspop festival in the Belgian town of Dessel, which ranks among the biggest, most prestigious European heavy music annual events. After bringing a 20,000-strong crowd to the verge of pure elation just a few hours before, guitarist Ben Wells, as self-assured and amiable in person as he appears on stage, his long blond hair swept back by the wind, and a big happy smile now and then taking over his face, is telling me radiantly about how this was one of the best shows of the tour.

“The crowd was crazy,” he says. “Today’s show was awesome. We got to play in front of thousands of people, and we got a great response. There’s been a great crowd for us today, even though it’s our first time doing this festival. We played Belgium once before back in October, and everybody told us that night that you guys have to come back and do this Graspop festival, which we had no idea about. And it’s pretty awesome. This was one of our top shows of the tour.”

I see what he means, having witnessed myself, just hours ago, how Europeans of all ages were yelling and jumping in a riotous reaction to Black Stone Cherry’s blistering set, vast numbers responding to the band with as much gusto as they would to the headliners of the day, Judas Priest, a few hours later. The band’s stage presence, strong, assured technique, range, and pure feeling they put into their live performances, all make for unforgettable shows where earthbound strong grooves are roared over by Ben’s powerhouse guitar, and are given an extra dimension by singer Chris Robertson’s rootsy, blues-tingled voice.

Giving in to the live energy of this band is a blast – the way they magnify their catchy tunes with ferocious rock drive, connect with the audience, and bring out the essence of each musical style they touch upon, all make their grand melting pot of Southern rock, blues, pop and heavy metal sound totally convincing and captivating. And if you can’t help thinking that the genius idea of combining all these sure-fire styles in one act verges on a mastermind marketing ploy, any cynicism will be dispelled by the ease and conviction with which the band moves within its range of genres. Black Stone Cherry’s choice, understanding, and interpretation of styles they tap into, is completely natural and organic.

Ben seconds my observations: “We love all kinds of music,” he tells me. “When we started seven years ago, we didn’t sit down and say, ‘Oh, this is how we are going to sound.’ We just love music—heavy metal, blues, R’n’B, country, gospel, we just started playing, you know? And whatever it is, it is. There is a song on the new album called “The Sunrise” that goes from hard rock to reggae, so it’s just a freedom of having fun with music. And I think people dig it because it’s something they haven’t heard before.”

Talking about the band’s new album, Folklore and Superstition, which is due to come out in August, I ask Ben about the lyrical themes it explores, given that the band is already well-known and admired for great story-telling lyrics. The new record’s title sounding positively intriguing, I ask him if the new lyrics will touch upon the history of the American South. “Yeah, a lot of history like that,” says Ben. “There is a song on the album called “The Ghost of Floyd Collins” which is about a guy from our home town who was a cave explorer in the 1920s and who died. And so it’s kind of cool that we’re keeping the local tradition on our album. But you know, lyrically, a lot is going on on this album, because since our fist album we’ve been on the road for two years, and we’ve been overseas three or four times, so we have a lot more to talk about now. We can now expand a lot.”

Being asked how the new album will sound musically, Ben says that there won’t be any dramatic differences from the first record. “I think the only difference is that it sounds sonically bigger and different because we are growing tighter as a band and musically we just learned to express ourselves in music, so that’s the biggest difference. But we’re still the same old band.”

Their first album having been produced by drummer John Fred Young’s father, who plays in the Grammy Award-winning country rock outfit The Kentucky Headhunters, this time the band decided to draft in some outside help and found it in producer Bob Marlette, whose clients in the past have included Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath, Slayer, and Tracy Chapman, to name a few. “He’s a great producer and he’s done a lot of great stuff,” says Ben. “We didn’t want to do a clean, sleek album, because it’s not the kind of band we are, but he was good, he was more than an extra set of ears. He really brought out a lot of great stuff in us.”

I ask Ben how songwriting works in the band, and he tells me that it is always a joint effort. “We get in a room together and write music and lyrics together. Somebody may have an idea and we start jamming on it and turn it into a song. But everything is done with all four of us. Our songwriting process is pretty free-flowing. It’s kind of exciting because we don’t know what we’re gonna do next. I look forward to seeing what we’re going to do on the third album. There’s a lot of stuff on the new album that we have explored that we have never done before. It’s just a freedom of saying, let’s try it, and if it works, it works.”

I ask him if the band has any worries about the proverbial sophomore slump, but Ben more or less brushes those fears off. “With the first album you are excited but nervous at the same time because you want to make the best thing possible. And with the second album, you get so much hype from the first album that you have to top the first album. But it’s all fun. We don’t take it too seriously. We just get in there and have fun and it shows in the music. It’s just us playing music and having fun.”

Given that Black Stone Cherry’s MySpace page is one of the most popular on the site with the number of hits nearing one and a half million, I wonder how the band feels about the changes happening in the music industry right now—the new ways bands relate to their fans, social networking sites and free downloads. “No matter what anyone’s opinion is,” says Ben, “there is really nothing you can do about it. You just have to learn how to work with it. You can’t really work against it. And stuff like MySpace is great. We totally embrace MySpace. We’re on there all the time. Our fans are the most important thing; it’s the reason we are here. We always do meet-and-greets. We always try and get close to the fans, really get to know them. But, you know, with downloading and stuff like that, you might as well learn how to use it, because I don’t see it going away any time soon.” And the way he says it makes me think that unlike some older musicians who willy-nilly have to accept the changes, Black Stone Cherry embrace what now goes on in the music business in a way that is characteristic of the young generation—instead of resigning to the inevitable, they are having fun with it.

Fans have certainly always backed Black Stone Cherry in their dash for fame, but Ben tells me that a lot of support also came from their families during the initial stages of the band’s career. “I come from a theatre family. A lot of people in my family are into acting and stuff like that, live entertainment. My family and everyone’s family in this band are really supportive of what we do and everything. And that’s just inspiring in itself, you know.”

Talking about inspirations, Ben tells me that he listens to all genres of music. He calls the Beatles the greatest pop band in the world, but also names Aerosmith and Elvis Presley as his influences, Elvis being his number one hero. “The main thing that got me into music and my biggest hero would have to be Elvis,” he says.

I finally ask Ben how it feels to have made it at such a young age in this toughest of games called the music business. He laughs and says he doesn’t really feel like a star. “I think we’re still on an uphill climb,” he says. “It’s very, very exciting. We are very fortunate to be where we are right now. We are very lucky. I’m 22, the rest of the guys are 23, 24, and 25, and we are probably the luckiest guys in the world right now. And we keep on climbing. We probably will never feel like we’ve actually made it. Because there are always new territories you can get into.”

And do they have a plan for the conquest of those unchartered territories? Apparently, the idea is simple: “We want to go everywhere. We just love to go to different places. We’ve seen a lot of places that we thought we’d never see. The doors are open. Anywhere anybody wants to see us, we’d go!”

After we say goodbye and Ben shoots off into the dressing room backstage, I find myself wishing that one day they start feeling like they have finally really made it—achieved true recognition and made a mark, having created even bigger things than what they have put out so far. After all, being able to cohere such a diversity of traditions, practices and world-views into one seamless whole at such a young age is no mean feat by the standards of any musical era. And having done this with such great taste and confidence as these musicians, at such an early stage in their career, is something that tells me there will be greater, more daring and spectacular things to come from this band in the years to come. The way they have managed to erase symbolic distinctions between genres and styles while still retaining their own voice, is impressive, but they also clearly show that they do have it in them to go further in challenging the stereotypes with their open, direct, free vision. And something tells me that rejecting dogmas, resisting empty demonstrations, and remaining true to who they are will get them where they want to be sooner than they themselves know it. This business works in mysterious ways and paths of true creativity are often unpredictable, but Black Stone Cherry seem to have found the key to remaining afloat no matter what lies ahead.