Black Joe Lewis doesn't need samples to summon the spirit of James Brown
by Jewly Hight
In 2009, if somebody is churning out a raw strain of blues or R&B with live instruments—and they have a thing for sounds that pre-date disco—they're probably either: young, white and British; 65-plus, African-American and a musical veteran; or the progeny of R.L. Burnside. Unless, of course, they're Black Joe Lewis.
Still in his 20s, Lewis plays electric guitar and happens to lead an eight-piece, interracial, Austin-based outfit called the Honeybears that channels James Brown's punchy, horn-filled proto-funk and Lightnin' Hopkins' lean boogie with the messy, distorted attack of garage rock.
"I think we're garage because we have to be, because nobody [in the band] knows how to do that stuff," says Lewis. "Everybody just kind of came up playing in rock bands."
Lewis presumably slapped the descriptor on the front of his name to broadcast exactly who's playing this energized, retro-minded music (a young, black man), a notion echoed by the bold title of his full-length Lost Highway debut, Tell 'Em What Your Name Is! "I figure if you throw that on there it will kind of give people an idea, just make a statement or whatever," he says.
Lewis started out in step with the musical tastes of his generation (i.e. he grew up listening to some rap), but veered in another direction when he simultaneously picked up a guitar—instead of, say, a more hip-hop-friendly drum machine—in the pawn shop where he worked and really listened to the blues for the first time. A James Brown documentary provided the inspiration for his agitated, shouting vocal style: "For a while I was just screaming, then I kind of figured out how to scream notes and stuff."
Like Brown and the J.B.'s, Lewis hollers and grunts in a heated exchange with the Honeybears' syncopated grooves, but he doesn't even try to emulate the notoriously heavy-handed way Brown handled his bands. "I've got to be nicer than that, because I don't pay my band as much as he did," he says.
Lost Highway snatched Lewis up last year—beating out other smaller labels, including one that specializes in rock and blues acts with decidedly smaller lineups than the Honeybears—and released a four-song teaser in January. "[That competing label] wanted me to slim down the band," says Lewis, "but Lost Highway was like, 'We'll take the whole thing.' "
For Tell 'Em—produced by Spoon drummer Jim Eno—Lewis wrote a batch of down-and-dirty dance songs, come-ons and generally big-talking numbers (boasting about everything from being turned on by a woman to having no money) fit for those more accustomed to hip-hop's brasher, expletive-filled language than blues' and soul's comparatively subtler, innuendo-laced lyrics. "This is how I talk, a little bit," he says. "If I grew up back in the day, I'd probably have lyrics like that, too. It's all relative because of the era, I guess. It's kind of like the slang."
For example, Lewis' repertoire has long included a simmering soul song titled "Bitch, I Love You." (It's a joke and he didn't write it.) "I just try to keep it real, man, use the most expressive words that I can come up with," Lewis says. "I don't want it to sound like some fairy-tale song."
Email music@nashvillescene.com.
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