MUSIC REVIEW: BLACK JOE LEWIS & THE HONEYBEARS - 'EP'

Four Soul-drenched Tracks To Whet Our Appetite For More...

By: Ramus Dahl

February 21, 2009

There’s a peace in knowing that music like Black Joe Lewis & the Honey Bears is still being made and played in Austin, Texas, or anywhere in the world, for that matter.

Last week, I got a copy of their promo EP in the mail that features four songs –- four songs packed with a near-lethal dose of soul, funk, and rhythm & blues I haven’t dared to ingest since Sweet Sweetback put the shake and swing back on the streets of Los Angeles…and I’ve been trying to figure out how and where to start this piece without prematurely spilling too much too soon for the up-and-comer. “Don’t burn the grits!!!” they say.

The music of Black Joe Lewis & the Honey Bears is pumped straight outta the tangled, twisted, oft-clogged artery that is somehow still keeping a consistent blood-flow into the heart of what makes Austin so great — the “Live Music Capital of the World,” or whatever it hails to be. What Tarantino tried to catch on camera and SXSW has tried to cash a check on is the fact that the people, culture, and grimy residue stuck in the belly hairs of Austin, Texas are a seething, underground empire of the Junkyard Avant-Garde, the Absurd, the Independent, and the Maniacal Merchants of Weird. While the trendy spots on 6^th Street set a price to “Keep Austin Weird,” I (for one) am happy to have music like this being made and played down the street, fighting to KEEP AUSTIN COOL.

“Gunpowder” is a relentless introduction to the dynamite, mojo explosion of Black Joe Lewis & the Honey Bears — an aftershock from the bomb that first hit with James Brown’s Please, Please, Please in ’59. The track opens with a gritty Chucky Berry riff that calls the response of the brass and organ groove, a carnal clarion that gives way to Black Joe’s howling blues vocals. There is music to dance to and then there is dance music. Black Joe Lewis & the Honey Bears allow no time to hesitate for the sober or soaked. When their music moves, the body moves. And this reaction, I suppose, points to the primal vibrations of the band — the raw-ness, a musical turn to a primitive essence, an instinct (if you will) that we all have and share as human beings, man and woman. In layman’s terms, it’s high time somebody put some sex back in their rock and roll.

Which brings me to the second track coincidentally entitled “Bitch, I Love You,” wherein Black Joe muses as to how and why he still loves his woman, despite all she’s done him wrong. It’s a quick 2 minutes and 44 seconds. An honest, soulful number that resonates even more akin to the Godfather of Soul than the previous “Gunpowder,” both in its rhythm and harmony and also in the subtle misogynist chauvinism (a typical turn and a “make what you will” part of an otherwise promising piece) of its lyrics.

The third song on the EP is an acoustic blues track that Black Joe produced himself. “Cousin Randy” is back-porch folklore — a spoken word over a steel slide in which Black Joe recalls his cousin, Randy, a wild man who fishes at 2:00 a.m. and who Black Joe fears may be possessed by the Devil. Black Joe petitions the preacher man on the matter and is given a prescribed dose of mojo that the preacher claims “…will help get the Devil outta him.” The dose is secretly poured in the booze Black Joe shares with Randy upon his return, and the rest of the story is for you to find out for yourself (as I said, I’m trying not to spill too much here).

The last track, “Master Sold My Baby,” is a driving blues track that shows a respectable, notable range for Black Joe Lewis & the Honey Bears. From the Harlem soul and shuffle of the first two tracks, the oratorical acoustic blues, “Cousin Randy,” and the distortions of “Master Sold My Baby,” this EP holds a remarkable amount of promise and potential. I caught the first half of their show last year at SXSW out behind Joe’s Coffee on South Congress, and my recollections of that gig have only been reinvigorated exponentially by the past few days of listening to these four tracks.

You and I both need this kind of music more than we even know enough to admit, I’ve no doubt. It’s certainly good for the soul.

Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears' EP is out now from Lost Highway/Universal Motown Records.

Watch out for their debut album coming soon...