Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
July 12 @ 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Doors open an hour before showtime.
- ADVANCE PURCHASE: Total ticket price at checkout is $25
- AT THE DOOR: $30
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Black Joe Lewis is the realest motherfucker there is. When Covid sidelined his touring this past year, he started laying concrete to help support his baby mama and his kid. That’s fuckin’ real.
When Joe and his band, the Honeybears, popped onto the national stage over a decade ago, many critics embraced him—but there were still some who said they hadn’t paid their dues. Joe’s still here. Still going. Still cashing checks and snapping necks. The dues of hard work; the delirious heights of the industry, along with the disappointments and low-hanging fruit—through it all, Joe’s only honed his mastery over gut bucket blues guitar and his true voice.
It’s a vital, distinctly American voice that never anticipated the attention it received, never went looking for it either. It just started happening. The garage, the blues, the propulsive, synergistic live performances that live somewhere between James Brown, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and MC5—those things were there from the beginning, and they only really make sense in a live room, not a press release.
Sharon Jones, Charles Bradley, Cedric Burnside, Lightnin Malcolm, The Dirtbombs, Detroit Cobras, The Strange Boys—a roll call of some of the most influential soul and garage acts of the last 25 years, and bands Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears have shared countless bills with. Has that whole soul-blues-garage explosion been commodified or folded into pop rock? Sure. But the ground floor was a vital space for people who like guitars and grease, and at this point, Black Joe Lewis is one of the last still standing from it. Last of a dying breed. Or maybe a missing link. Does that make him a throwback? A throwback to a throwback? It’d be easy to say so—but nah. Joe’s just doing his thing, same as he always has, regardless of what’s coming down the pipe. A stone-cold original, and a veteran at that.
If you like whistling in your music and floppy-hat, shaky-kneed crooning, you might not get it—but that’s fine. There are plenty of intrepid, degenerate weirdos who do. Those are the people Joe cares about. Not the glad-handing set. Not the fair-weather crowd chasing whatever’s hot.
Like the title of his last album says, “the difference between me and you” is Joe drawing a line between the wannabes and the ones who actually have the blues—whatever the hell that is. Joe’s concrete-pouring boss is gonna miss him.
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