Josh Christina and Charlie Berry III Gear UP To Release A New Song Together “Rock Revival”

Arriving Aug. 14, the piano-driven single celebrates Chuck Berry’s centennial by turning his musical legacy into something loud, lively and built for a new generation.

A revival does not begin quietly. It arrives with a pounding piano, a guitar that refuses to behave and enough electricity to make sitting still feel nearly impossible.

That is the spirit behind Josh Christina’sforthcoming single “Rock Revival,” featuring Charlie Berry III, grandson of rock ’n’ roll pioneer Chuck Berry. Set for release Aug. 14, the track finds two musicians connected to the genre from different directions, one through lifelong inspiration and the other through family history, joining forces during the year that would have marked Berry’s 100th birthday.

For Christina, the song is not simply a tribute. It is a reminder that rock ’n’ roll was never meant to sit politely behind glass.

“I wrote it as a combination of all three,” Christina says of the song’s purpose: honoring Berry, commenting on music today and reaffirming his own identity as an artist. “I wanted something that was pulling me back to my roots of the music I fell in love with as a child, a song that paid tribute to the true father of rock ’n’ roll.”

The Baltimore County singer, songwriter and pianist built “Rock Revival” as a musical scavenger hunt for Berry fans. References to familiar songs, characters and stories are tucked throughout the lyrics, rewarding listeners who know the catalog without requiring a history lesson before pressing play.

“I used titles or references from my favorite Chuck Berry songs that inspired me to be a writer,” Christina explains. “People who know his music will connect to the lyrics, but new fans may find it as just a rock ’n’ roll song.”

That balance is the record’s most interesting trick. “Rock Revival” looks backward without moving in reverse. Its source material may come from jukeboxes, dance halls and the early days of electric-guitar rebellion, but Christina’s goal is not to imitate a recording from the 1950s. He wants to bring its pulse into 2026.

Chuck Berry’s songs were compact worlds filled with fast cars, school bells, crowded dances, restless teenagers and dreams of escape. His storytelling helped establish a vocabulary that generations of rock musicians would later borrow, bend and build upon. Christina was one of the young listeners who found more than entertainment in those records, he found a blueprint for writing.

“Chuck is the main influence in my writing and what got me to write music,” he says. “It only felt right that, in his 100th birthday year, I paid some tribute to him.”

The tribute gained another dimension when Charlie Berry III joined the recording. The two initially connected through social media, an appropriately modern beginning for a collaboration devoted to one of popular music’s foundational figures. After Berry traveled to Baltimore to perform with Christina, conversations began about creating something for his grandfather’s centennial.

Christina wrote the song, and Berry supplied the guitar.

“There is no one I’ve heard that can make a guitar sound like his grandfather’s like he can,” Christina says. “He has the feel and  the timing, it’s truly inherited. Charlie brought true rock ’n’ roll feel to it.”

His presence gives “Rock Revival” something that could not be manufactured through clever references alone. There is family lineage in the recording, but there is also the sound of two working musicians meeting in the present. Charlie Berry III is not treated as a ceremonial guest, and Christina is not playing the role of a tribute act. The collaboration works because both performers approach the music as something still capable of movement.

That distinction matters to Christina. His career has been shaped by legendary influences, but his focus remains on discovering what he can add to the tradition.

He describes artistic growth in three stages: “inspiration, emulation and innovation.”

“All artists have influences, but the ones that shine through have a way to make it their own,” he says. “At some point, you start to make it your own with your writing or your playing. There will always be parts of what inspires you, but it will have your own taste on it.”

Christina points to Berry himself as proof. Before becoming an influence on countless guitarists and songwriters, Berry absorbed lessons from performers including Nat King Cole and blues guitarist T-Bone Walker.

“If you listen to his playing and singing, you can hear that,” Christina says. “But you also hear his originality.”

Christina is applying that same philosophy to piano rock, a tradition he believes still has plenty of unexplored road ahead. His music blends early rock ’n’ roll with blues, country and R&B, while placing the piano in the commanding position usually reserved for an electric guitar.

It is an increasingly uncommon sight, a frontman leading the band from behind the keys, turning the instrument into both the musical engine and the center of the spectacle. For listeners familiar with Jerry Lee Lewis, Billy Joel or Elton John, the setup carries an immediate connection. For younger audiences, Christina has discovered that it can feel surprisingly unfamiliar and therefore fresh.

“Because there’s no real piano frontman like there used to be, the older generation connects to Jerry Lee or Elton while a whole new generation discovers something new,” he says. “I’ve seen it happen playing all over the world.”

Christina has tested that theory across an independent career spanning six projects, international television and performances at sea with his touring production “Piano Rock Through the Ages.” His catalog includes 2024’s UFOs Over Phoenix and the 2026 live album Live, Raw and Rockin’ in Lewes, DE! He has also recorded at Sam Phillips Recording in Memphis and worked with Grammy-winning songwriter Jon Carroll and longtime Dolly Parton producer Kent Wells.

Those brushes with rock history have brought encouragement and a certain amount of pressure. Christina has received praise from musicians and family members closely connected to the artists who shaped him, including Jerry Lee Lewis’ wife, Judith Lewis; Sun Records founder Sam Phillips’ son, Jerry Phillips; and Daryl Davis, who performed as Chuck Berry’s pianist and bandleader.

“There definitely is some pressure, which I think is good,” Christina admits. “But there’s also an odd sense of reassurance when you work with these people and they like what you’re doing.”

That relationship with the past will come into sharper focus on Oct. 17, when Christina and his band host a Chuck Berry centennial celebration at The Collective Encore in Columbia, Md. The event is scheduled to bring together Charlie Berry III, fellow grandson Jahi Eskridge, Davis and additional musicians from the Washington, D.C., area.

Rather than concentrating only on the biggest hits, Christina says the show will dig deeper into Berry’s story, pairing well-known songs with less familiar selections and memories from those connected to his life and career. “Rock Revival” is also expected to receive its first live performance that night.

“It’s more of a tribute to one of my idols,” Christina says. “It’s going to be a night filled with all the hits, some deep cuts, some stories, just raw rock ’n’ roll.”

For Christina, “raw” is the essential word. What he wants to preserve is not a specific hairstyle, costume or production technique, but the sense that a song is being made by people whose personalities can be heard inside every note.

That may be the real meaning of “Rock Revival.” It is not a campaign to restore the past exactly as it was. It is a call to recover rock ’n’ roll’s nerve, the feeling that a sharp lyric, a dangerous left hand on the piano and a guitar with the right swing can still bring a room full of strangers together.

“People like authenticity,” Christina says. “If your passion comes through and you’re true to yourself, whatever you’re doing will shine.”

On Aug. 14, Christina and Charlie Berry III will find out how brightly that old flame can burn again.