Editor's note: This story is featured in the Oct. 19 print edition of CityBeat.
Few figures in music history have been as influential, as revered, and as stone wild as James Brown, the Godfather of Soul. That’s why – some sixteen years after his death – it’s compelling to see how his epic legacy has filtered down to new generations.
Check out a distant descendent: Black Joe Lewis, the Austin-based blues-rock-soul musician who blends Brown’s guttural stomp and shout with his own fiery guitar bravado, all slash, burn and blues.
After five records (going back to his exceptional 2009 debut Tell’Em What Your Name Is), Lewis and the Honeybears – his longtime, six-piece band with horns – still sound rooted in the garage and revel in that freedom with a punk fervor.
“I grew up on hip-hop and whatever my dad was listening to—-Springsteen, Curtis Mayfield, Donny Hathaway, and the like—but once I picked up the guitar I started getting into the deep cuts,” he says through publicist Clarion Call Media.
Lewis’s last record, The Difference Between Me and You in 2017, reflects his exposure to the Mississippi hill country blues. His songs here tap into more of a grinding, blues drone with heavy, percussive rhythms. Surprisingly, he even covers Wilco’s “Handshake Drugs,” transforming the pop hook into a rugged, industrial rocker.
From the start, Lewis’s feral intensity has ingrained his music with grit and abandon. These raucous elements still resound today in his torrid live shows, where his guitar crunch, funky vibe, and sweat-soaked sets provide a visceral pulse for the audience as he delivers the goods from all his records.
Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears performs at Ludlow Garage at 8:30 p.m. Nov. 3. Cedric Burnside opens the show. There are no known COVID-19 protocols. Info: ludlowgaragecincinnati.com.
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