Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears
Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is!
Released March 17th on Lost Highway Records
I often think of Austin, Texas as ”the Vegas for Music Lovers” because it really kind of is. The official nickname of the city is “the Live Music Capital of the World” and that would be because there are over two-hundred music venues in downtown and throughout the city. And it’s not just a city that every band wants to play in; they want to live there too. Austin, Texas is home to a number of great bands from Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker and Patty Griffin, to Explosions in the Sky, Spoon and Okkervil River. The latest great band to come from Austin is Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears.
Their debut album couldn’t have come at a better time, being released just in time for the South by Southwest Festival, where they had seven performances. Esquire Magazine called them one of ten bands to break out at SXSW 2009, and that they did, where not even two weeks later that album landed #1 on Austin’s Waterloo Records Top 50 Sellers List.
The album sounds straight out of the ’60s, with a fun, energetic mix of funk, soul and R&B, bringing to mind the great artists of the Stax Record label, or what it may sound like if James Brown had fronted Booker T & the MG’s.
Other Artists I’d Recommend: The Dynamites featuring Charles Walker, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Raphael Saadiq