MUSIC REVIEW: BLACK JOE LEWIS & THE HONEYBEARS - 'TELL 'EM WHAT...'

Bend Your Knees A Little, Unbutton That Shirt & Get Ready To Move...

By: Ramus Dahl

May 23, 2009

I apologize, as I’ve been sitting on this Black Joe Lewis and The Honeybears Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is! (released in March from Lost Highway Records) for far too long with no review for any of you people to read. My fault is downright embarrassing, shameful, inexcusable…

But I’m a poor bastard and I’ve been trying to swindle my greedy mittens into some fast cash from anywhere in this city for more than a month since I up and quit my dead-end job — which has offered me little to no time to sit down and actually write anything of substance (if that is, in fact, what I ever do). After all, time is money, right? Am I wrong?

Nonetheless, if you want the perfect soundtrack to creeping around the corners of suburban America, unemployed, looking for some dough or the cheapest longneck in the zip-code, I highly advise that you get your broke ass down to the Best Buy and pick up the freshman effort from Black Joe Lewis and The Honeybears. (Or, if you’ve got no money, steal it and then save some money to buy a concert ticket when they come to your town.)

“I’m Broke,” the third track on this LP, knows what I’m talking about. God knows, “everybody knows/I’m in troubles wit’ da money” and I’ve needed this album on rotation lately like the homeless need the hooch, like a man needs a “Big Booty Woman” to complicate and satiate his life more than he knows he needs, if you know what I’m talking about. (“Say ‘It’s alright…’ Man! She’s so fine!”)

As for the band themselves, they scat outta town (Austin, TX) right after the SXSW tidal wave went out, and now they’re popping up all over North America’s dwindling print press and making their faces seen loud and proud all over the bloggernaut.

Why? People right now in this country need this music. They need to be delivered from the muck and mire of the past year or two, to be washed clean of the ironic self-awareness and image-saturated horseshit music and media that is weakening our immune systems, devolving us into extinction, shrinking our bits to impotence…

We need to bend our knees a little, unbutton that work shirt, pull that dress up, move a little, let that hair down, baby, break a sweat…”Boogie.” That is exactly what Black Joe Lewis and The Honeybears are preaching all across this land, and their Soul Revival is claiming proselytes from every rank and file, every color, every creed, every age, every wage, and you’re next…wait, see, and, when you’re ready or not, you’ll feel the groove. Once you feel the groove, there’s no turning back.

For me, I felt the groove when I first heard the train track ridin’ blues snare line behind “Master Sold My Baby.” When I first picked up the album, I had to sift through a lot of the usual skeptical dross that builds up after you’ve spent a year or so hearing about how such-and-such band is “the best band in town.” Such word-of-mouth acclaim can work like a double-edged sword.

Yet, when I picked up this album from my mailbox and popped it into the turnstile, I had another thing coming:

This is GOOD!!!

REAL GOOD!!!

Too good?

Well, friends, it’s too early to tell if such a band like Black Joe Lewis and The Honeybears will be another one of those outfits that comes out the gate with a perfect smash hit of an album, only to follow it up with half-rate full-lengths of stagnant filth (like a certain band outta England who spends more time on their wardrobe than coming up with good music).

My wager? I highly doubt that Black Joe Lewis is just a flash in the pan, folks. I’m a rabid and shameless fan of the classic soul and underground soul movements that fell with the sweat drops from James Brown’s short and curlies, and I’m here to tell you that this stuff — the Soul — never dies.

Never.

The testament: “Please Pt. Two.” The final track on Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is! echoes from something tangible, something real, something that, once upon a time, way back when, before music lost its sack, used to put love on a woman’s hips and a bend in a man’s knees… The sheer carnal energy of this music is everlasting. As long as human beings still feel and hear the sound with their ears, their minds, their bodies and their loins, the music that Black Joe Lewis and The Honeybears is playing is gonna be good.

Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears 'Tell 'Em What Your Name Is!' album is out now on Lost Highway/Universal Motown Records.