well, to be fair I never believed the "too much baggage" thing in the first place. They fired Marc Ford in 1997 and then he was writing songs with Chris Robinson less than five years later. Chris jettisoned the band's $1m V2 record deal in favor of his solo career and Rich, supposedly, told Jimmy Page "no thanks" to his songwriting ideas and yet they got almost the entire original band back together in 2005. Marc Ford quit the band two days before the 2nd leg of the 2006 tour via fax, but was in the Magpie Salute with Rich. Clearly grudges aren't always held as long as we think they might be.
I think they didn't want to go into a person-by-person rundown last year when the SYMM tour was announced, but it was simple. Most of the people who have been in the Black Crowes didn't matter anyway-- your Greg Rzabs, Adam McDougalls, etc. Of the ones who did matter (Marc Ford, maybe Sven Pipien initially), there were probably some hard feelings about the way Rich torpedoed The Magpie Salute, but they weren't going to admit THAT. And obviously bridges were permanently burned with Jeff Cease and Johnny Colt and especially Gorman, so they were sort of artificially lumped into the first category of "former employees". And old weird Ed died, so he's out.
So they said "too much baggage" but what they meant was "who the hell cares about anybody but the two of us being in the band?" I was just laughing at how transparent they're being at this point. It doesn't mean the tour won't kick ass. I just draw amusement from what they say publicly and then what they do.
At this point, I'm just hanging out waiting for their next record. I'm very interested to see what they come up with and what impact working with George Drakoulious has on it.