It may have been a cold night on the streets of New Orleans but inside the legendary Howlin’ Wolf, it was hot with the sounds of the soulful rocking of Devon Allman’s Honeytribe. Traveling approximately twenty-two hours just to rock Louisiana, you couldn’t tell that these guys were actually on the verge of exhaustion. Playing with an uninhibited fire, this is what rock & roll is all about. If this band didn’t cause a jolt of energy in your bones, you weren’t listening.
Starting off with Gabriel Strange’s invigorated knock-out punches on drums and George Potsos’s dirty down bass lines, Devon Allman soared into “Could Get Dangerous” off their new CD Space Age Blues that let all know from the get-go, they were not here to play in a run-down-daze of auto-pilot just because they were tired. That is not how Honeytribe operates. As George Potsos told me a few days after the show, “We play in front of two people, twenty people, as we do in front of twenty thousand people”.
But sometimes life on the road can be, in Devon’s words, “brutal”. Honeytribe is a band on the cusp of superstardom and they play more dates on the road than they spend at home in St Louis. But it doesn’t stop them and they keep playing for every fan in every city that wants them. With their show in New Orleans a sold out success, watch for them to be back again in the near future. “I love that city and I love playing there,” George told me. “It’s definitely in my top ten cities for me to go to. The food, the people, the vibe … I really think now that we’ve made the connection there and that we’ve been accepted by the people there we will be doing more shows there.”
“The tour is going well,” Devon explained to me following their set. “We hit the road really hard. We hit the road as soon as the record came out. We went to Europe, played Paris for the first time, which was amazing.” However, the exhaustion does catch up to them sooner or later. “Morale is really good, just we’re really tired. It’s a lot of work. People think it’s only a couple hours on stage is your work but truly it’s the drive and the prepping and the sound checking and the waiting. I’ve always said that I get paid to fly and drive and wait. I don’t get paid to play, that’s the fun part, the easy part.”
George agreed: “I do it because I love it but [people] think you’re in a band to have fun and its not all fun. It’s ball busting work, sacrifices, and a lot of people don’t get it … but I fucking love it (laughs) … It’s tough, man, sometimes. I got to really think that I’m very lucky to be able to survive playing music.”
Getting into a rhythm early in the set, Devon was absolutely mesmerizing, playing solos that got funky way down in the soul as on “When I Call Home” off the band’s previous CD Torch, and a take your breath away solo on the Les Paul during a surprising cover of Prince’s “Purple Rain” that would erase the Purple One’s version from memory for good. When I asked him about it later, Devon laughed. “We like to throw a curve ball once in awhile.” Calling it a bit “tongue-in-cheek”, Devon does have an appreciation for good music, no matter what genre it comes from. “I happen to be a really big Prince fan. He’s a monster guitar player that doesn’t get enough credit for the right things so I mean, it’s a fun song to play. People always trip out, you know.”
Another cover, popular with all crowds, is Devon’s rendition of one of his father’s most famous songs, “Midnight Rider”. The crowd knew all the words and sang loudly, dancing in front of the stage and snapping photos. But it was truly the originals that contained the passion. From the soul inspiring bass and drums of “Insh’ Allah”, an instrumental from the new CD, to “Why You Wanna Bring Me Down” to the instant bluesy-funk of “I’m Ready”.
“The CD is doing really well,” Devon proudly announced. “It’s been illegally downloaded 62,000 times and I think anymore that’s like a black market barometer for how you’re doing.” SPACE AGE BLUES also “debuted at number seven on the Billboard Blues Chart, which is a great achievement for us.”
And so the road beckons them, yet again. “We can’t [slow down]”, states George. “You can’t these days. You just have to, unless you’re a huge established band that’s making a lot of money, you got to go out there and bust ass so you can eat, you know.” And continue to spread the Honeytribe music to as many people as they can. With festivals coming up all summer, the band will just do what they have always done: Load up the van and ride. “People really, really have no idea how crammed we are and how streamlined. We probably play more shows than any other band out there with the least possible of equipment that you can use,” explained George. “I mean, literally. We have a drum kit, a bass kit, and a guitar rig. And that’s it. I mean, there’s nothing else. It’s pretty amazing. And we just cram ourselves in there and we go.”
With upcoming spring dates at the Wanee Festival and The Beale Street Blues Festival, as well as many dates scheduled for the eastern part of the United States, there is no excuse to miss this band. As George states confidently, “I’ll put my band up to any band out there that’s doing the kind of music that we are, we’ll kick butt.”
SETLIST: Could Get Dangerous, Mercy Mercy, Midnight Rider, When I Call Home, Insh’ Allah, I’m Ready, Why You Wanna Bring Me Down, Purple Rain, Heaven Has No Mercy.
Photos by Leslie Michele Derrough
