Austin band Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears are proud to announce tour dates in November and December. The band will kick off the tour Friday, November 11 in Santa Fe, New Mexico before making their way up the west coast, including a stop in Los Angeles on November 11. The tour will head to the Midwest to wrap up in Chicago, Illinois for a New Year’s Eve party on December 31. For a complete list of tour dates, please see below.
Growing up in Austin and Round Rock, Joe took it all in-Delta and Chicago blues, Memphis soul, Detroit garage punk-and what came out the other end was, and is, unlike anything else out there. “I don’t know, man-I just kinda dove into it,” Lewis said. “These neighbors of mine were in this country band and they got to go on tour all the time, and I had to go to work in this stupid factory. I was like, ‘Man, I gotta get in on that.’ So I pulled a guitar down off the wall of a pawnshop where I was workin’ at the time and learned stuff as I went along. The people I was playing with wanted to practice all the time, and I was like, ‘No, man, let’s get out there-I wanna try to do this shit.’ I pretty much learned on stage.”
Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears have had an incredible year full of highlights. Just last week the band was featured on the PBS stalwart Austin City Limits with Raphael Saadiq. Earlier in the year, they had one of the year’s most buzzed-about performances on The Late Show with David Letterman. The group also released a hip-hop-infused mixtape, Livin’ in the Jungle, which was named after the Scandalous single. The mixtape was put together by Mad Decent’s DJA and featured choice verses from some of the industry’s hottest Southern rappers.
After years of struggle to get heard, things started moving fast for Lewis after he and bandmate Zach Ernst put together the earliest incarnation of Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears, naming themselves after a crusted container of honey they found on the floor of their “disgusting” rehearsal room. They went out with Spoon after Britt Daniel caught a set, and their subsequent, Eno-produced EP caught the ear of Lost Highway’s Kim Buie, who signed them to a record deal. Eno then helmed their 2009 debut album for the label, Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is!, much of it cut live off the floor. “The album manages to maximize every incendiary second of sonic sexuality the band is putting out,” raved PopMatters‘ Christel Loar. “Make no mistake, Lewis knows his history, but he also knows his moment, too, and it’s now. The Honeybears aren’t afraid to mine the past to make music for the future.”
Lewis writes from direct, often bitter experience with unflinching veracity. The songs of Scandalousare littered with the debris of age-old issues: hard times and one-night stands, lying and cheating, redemption and revenge. Gritty, raunchy and real, his music is not for the squeamish, but experiencing it fully can be genuinely cathartic.
Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears Tour Dates:
11/8 Santa Fe NM @ Sol Sante Fe
11/9 Phoenix, AZ @ The Crescent Ballroom
11/10 Solana Beach, CA @ Belly Up
11/11 Los Angeles, CA @ The Echoplex
11/12 Fesno, CA @ Fulton 55
11/14 San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
11/16 Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom
11/18 Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre
11/20 Bozeman, MT @ The Filling Station
11/22 Boulder, CO @Fox Theatre
12/31 Chicago, IL @ Double Door
