Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears at the Garage
The Garage, 13 November 2009
Anyone fed up with how smooth and sampled soul music has become will find Black Joe Lewis and his awesome band The Honeybears a welcome change. Harking back to the raw passion of the very best Stax bands, they're probably best described as James Brown meets garage rock, and it's impossible not to want to dance and to be totally rocked at the same time.The album, Tell 'Em What Your Name Is!, is as funky as hell but live it's even better. Playing the tiny room upstairs at The Garage, which probably only holds about 200 people, it was a nicely intimate gig and the seven-piece band, which included a three-man horn section, barely fit on the tiny stage. Black Joe Lewis was much younger than I expected given his deep, soulful, growling vocals and was grinning the entire time, while his band looked straight out of the 60s, all wearing white shirts and skinny black ties.
The majority of the set was made up of songs from the album (not unexpected since they only have one), mainly upbeat blues or (lyrically) hip hop-like tales of making lurve, nagging girlfriends or tributes to their derrieres (the amusingly titled Big Booty Woman - Lewis even has a couple of stickers dedicated to "big booties" on his guitar), yet because it's done with such fun and humour it doesn't feel mean or misogynist. Given their obvious garage rock influence it's no surprise that they pull off an energy-filled cover of The Stooges' I Got A Right beautifully and later there's a cool version of an old Hound Dog Taylor blues tune.
The concert ended on a kind of call and response with the crowd for the aforementioned song Big Booty Woman, with Lewis yelping "It's alright!" and the crowd singing the lyrics back to him amid lots of boogieing and hands thrown in the air. It was like a little party going on that felt like you were transported back in time to a club in the 60s. Lewis and his band also gave an incredible performance on Later With Jools Holland this week so I doubt we'll get to see him in such a small place again. A treat indeed.
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