On “Rock Revival,” featuring Chuck Berry’s grandson Charlie Berry III, a Baltimore musician looks to the genre’s past to confront an increasingly automated future.
Josh Christina lives in a house built in 1893. It belonged to his grandparents, and after losing them during the COVID-19 pandemic, he remained there, surrounded by the architecture of his childhood and the memory of the people who shaped him.
That choice says something about the way Christina understands the past. History, to him, is not a distant place to visit. It is something people inhabit, maintain and eventually make their own.
The same philosophy runs through “Rock Revival,” his new single featuring Charlie Berry III, grandson of Chuck Berry. Arriving Aug. 14 during the year of Berry’s centennial, the song asks what remains valuable about rock ’n’ roll’s original promise—and whether a culture captivated by screens, algorithms and artificial intelligence is still capable of receiving it.
The opening instruction is direct: “Put down the phones, turn off the AI.”
It would be easy to hear that line as the complaint of an artist looking backward. Christina, however, is not opposed to technology in every context. His objection is to allowing machines to replace the unpredictable qualities through which people recognize one another in art.
“There is something raw and real about true rock ’n’ roll music,” he says. “It’s not perfect or exact, but it has a feeling and a personality that are honest. I think AI can give a lot to society in medicine and science, but when it comes to an art form, it should stay out.”
For Christina, imperfection is not a defect in the music. It is evidence that someone was there.
This belief has shaped an independent career built around an instrument that has largely surrendered its former place at the center of popular music. Christina is a piano-playing frontman in an era dominated by portable production tools, digital tracks and performances designed to circulate as short clips. He writes nearly all his own material, leads a band from the keys and treats the piano as both an instrument and a stage.
He climbs onto it. He plays beneath it. He turns a piece of furniture associated with formal recitals into a source of physical chaos.
That performance style carries traces of Jerry Lee Lewis, just as Christina’s voice can recall Elvis Presley and his storytelling reflects a lifelong study of Chuck Berry. But influence, Christina argues, is not the same thing as imitation.
He describes the growth of an artist in three stages: inspiration, emulation and innovation. First, a musician discovers someone who makes a new life seem possible. Then comes the attempt to reproduce that person’s sound. Eventually, if the artist persists, those borrowed elements are reorganized into a language of their own.
Christina’s first stage began at age 7, when he heard Presley’s music in “Lilo & Stitch.” The encounter sent him into the world of 1950s rock ’n’ roll. At 15, he watched Levi Kreis portray Lewis in the Broadway musical “Million Dollar Quartet.” When Kreis kicked away the piano bench and jumped onto the instrument, Christina decided he wanted to do the same.
Berry’s records gave him something else: a reason to write.
The power of Berry’s work did not rest only in his guitar playing. His lyrics compressed entire lives into a few minutes—school days, automobiles, young love, dancing, ambition and the possibility of escape. He wrote about the modern world as teenagers were beginning to experience it, converting ordinary details into a new national mythology.
“Chuck is the main influence in my writing,” Christina says. “He’s what got me to write music.”
“Rock Revival” pays tribute to that craft by threading references to Berry’s song titles, characters and stories through an original composition. Listeners who know Berry’s catalog may recognize those signals, while younger audiences can encounter the track without understanding every allusion.
The participation of Charlie Berry III transforms the homage into a conversation between inheritance and influence. The two musicians met through social media before Berry came to Baltimore to perform with Christina. Their discussions about marking his grandfather’s 100th birthday eventually led to the new recording.
“Charlie is such a talented guy in his own right,” Christina says. “He has the feel and the timing. There is no one I’ve heard who can make a guitar sound like his grandfather’s the way he can.”
There is an irony in the fact that social media facilitated a collaboration whose first lyric tells people to put down their phones. It illustrates the distinction Christina is attempting to draw: technology can create a connection, but it cannot substitute for what people choose to do with it.
The human connection Christina wants to recover is not based on the idea that the 1950s were a simpler or more virtuous era. The decade that produced early rock ’n’ roll was also defined by segregation, discrimination and conflict over who could occupy public and cultural spaces. Yet the music became one of the places where racial boundaries were contested.
Berry, a Black artist who combined blues, country and R&B influences, helped establish a sound that young audiences consumed across lines the broader society was determined to enforce. The industry frequently failed to reward Black artists fairly, but their work altered American life nonetheless.
Christina believes this social history is central to the music’s enduring force.
“Rock ’n’ roll brought people together during a time of segregation and craziness in the culture,” he says. “People saw past skin color and cultural differences and bonded over a style of music. That’s why I think it is so powerful.”
The qualities Christina hopes to carry forward are not the inequities of that period, but the emotional candor and collective release found in its music. He hears artists who were not attempting to satisfy a data model or optimize a chorus for a platform. He hears people placing their voices, stories and flaws directly onto records.
That philosophy has kept Christina independent through six projects, an international television debut on Ireland’s “The Late Late Show,” sessions at Sam Phillips Recording in Memphis and performances around the world. His career has brought him into contact with figures linked to the musical history he studies, including Berry’s former pianist Daryl Davis and Jerry Phillips, son of Sun Records founder Sam Phillips.
On Oct. 17, Christina will bring that community together at The Collective Encore in Columbia, Maryland. The concert, staged one day before the centennial of Berry’s birth, will feature Charlie Berry III, fellow Berry grandson Jahi Eskridge, Davis and other musicians backed by the Josh Christina Band.
Christina emphasizes that the evening is not intended primarily as a showcase for himself. It will be a celebration of Berry’s songs, stories and cultural influence, with hits, less familiar recordings and the anticipated live debut of “Rock Revival.”
The song’s title makes a confident claim, but Christina knows no individual performer can revive a genre alone. Revival requires participation. It depends on an audience willing to listen, move and encounter the personality inside a performance.
In that sense, the song is not truly about returning to 1955. It is about deciding what deserves to survive in 2026.
“People like authenticity,” Christina says. “If your passion comes through and you are true to yourself, whatever you are doing will shine.”
The technology will continue to advance. The screens will remain within reach. But somewhere in Maryland, inside an old farmhouse, Christina is still writing songs at the piano and betting that human beings have not lost their appetite for hearing another person play.
