Black Stone Cherry can play venues the size of the SSE Hydro – yet a small rock club in Glasgow will always be their favourite.

The group play a special show at the Cathouse this Friday to raise money for the Nordoff Robbins charity, who use music as a way of helping people.

And bassist Jon Lawhon can’t wait.

“The Cathouse was the first place we ever played in Glasgow,” he recalls.

“We’re always excited to just get back and hang out because there’s a vibe there when a concert is going on that’s really cool and you don’t get elsewhere. We’ve done stuff with Nordoff Robbins before, just signing stuff for them and things like that.

“Then we were working on this headline run, and we were originally talking about it during the Carnival tour (at the start of 2016). We thought let’s start in your neck of the woods (Glasgow) and do a warm up event too to help those guys out at the same time, because it’s great work.”

Friday’s tiny show isn’t the only appearance in the city the band have coming up. The Kentucky foursome are back at the Royal Concert Hall a week later, Friday November 25.

The Concert Hall might seem a strange choice for a band best known for blasting out Southern rock, but this jaunt is different for the group, as they’ll be playing an acoustic half of the show, followed by an electric half.

“We always breakdown into an acoustic song or two at our gigs but this will be really stripped back, and we’ll be doing songs that make sense acoustically and then some that don’t make sense,” says the bassist.

“That’s one of my favourite things – we did a version of In Our Dreams where we worked up a new version of it and the song had evolved into a whole new thing. We don’t get to do that much and it’s exciting because doing an entire set like this is something we’ve never had the opportunity to do.

“There are a lot of songs from the course of our career that get requested but we have very rarely done, and we’ll be doing almost all of them on this tour. It’s a hat tip to everyone in the UK to being so supportive of us.”

The UK has become a second home for the quartet, who have enjoyed far more success here than in the USA. Jon believes one reason for that is the group managing to get more radio airplay in the UK than at home, and it’s unsurprising that he is delighted at the recent news that Rock Radio is to return to Glasgow airwaves.

The band had previously sent messages of support to the Rock Radio group.

“It’s important to me as a musician in a rock band, obviously, but it’s important to people with everyday lives too,” he says.

“Think about what your life would have been like if there wasn’t an outlet to let you hear Led Zeppelin. So many of those different styles of music give you different emotions, different feelings and it’s important.

“Music is important to all of our lives, whether we realise it or not. I’ve got two girls and I want them growing up being enriched by music, and not just hard rock, but pop, jazz and blues – I want them to understand all the genres out there, not just what’s available in redneck Kentucky, and a variety (of radio stations) is important to that.”

Perhaps some of the songs from the group’s fifth effort, Kentucky, will be heard on the station. A self-produced album, it’s had a hugely positive response, but Jon admits there were a few nerves after taking the reins themselves.

“It’s our blood and guts on a disc,” he adds.

“There was no big time producer with his eyebrows pushed together telling us what we should and shouldn’t do, it was just us. Because of that, we were incredibly nervous about what people would think of it, and then they dug it.

“We’ve just made it through the preliminary round of nominations for the Grammys – I doubt we’ll win because it’ll be someone like Black Veil Brides who win because genres just get thrown at a wall over here, but it’s still nice, and it’s incredible how people have attached themselves to the record.”

Black Stone Cherry, Cathouse, Friday, sold out and Royal Concert Hall, November 25, £28, 6.30pm