Black Joe Lewis bares his soul

Three weeks ago Joe Lewis got fired from his job shucking oysters at an Austin restaurant. It was curious work for a man who plays guitar.

“I’ve stabbed myself in the hand a couple of times in that place,” says Lewis. “But that’s the goal, to try to not have to do that shit anymore. I guess I’m going in the right direction.”

Lewis’ vocational fortunes have changed because his band, Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears [1], have become the most exciting live band on the road today. They play a gritty, funky style of old soul that sounds authentically soulful following more than two decades of pristine R&B.

Photo by Cambria Harkey: Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears. Note former Houstonian and Drop Trio keyboard player Ian Varley, second from right. We appreciate Ian.

Authenticity is a finicky word to use in describing music. It can be difficult to discern where singing ends and acting begins, especially when the narrator is as humorous as Lewis can be. But there’s something earthy and real about Lewis’ tale. He started as a kid from Round Rock who wasn’t interested in his father’s soul records. His first album was MC Hammer’s Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em, though Lewis says his mother wouldn’t let him get a Hammer haircut. He didn’t really start paying attention to music until after high school. Now, at 27, he’s a Next Big Thing who courts old-soul fans and indie-rock enthusiasts.

Lewis’ stage name is worth noting because he embraces a certain blackness lost in soul music. As the genre was pulled from the South into New York, the snarling sorts of rural singers with one foot in the church and one in the nightclub — Wilson Pickett, James Brown, James Carr, Joe Tex, Otis Redding, Jimmy Hughes, the list goes on — were replaced by homogenous New Jack practitioners virtually indistinguishable from one another.

“It’s not to say the musicians aren’t any good, but to me it’s not as moving as it used to be,” Lewis says. “It’s become a showcase for technical skills.”

He says the word "Autotune" with a dismissive sneer and uses an expletive to dismiss critiques of Aretha Franklin’s inaugural performance as being pitchy “just because she’s not singing through some box. I thought she sounded great.”

Lewis’ howl can be thrilling and chilling, and he plays guitar with a similar rough-edged urgency that comes from being self-taught. Lousy jobs seem to be a recurring theme with Lewis. At 19 he was working in a pawn shop. “You’d get bored in there every now and then, so I’d walk around and start messing with shit.” Guitars being a pawn shop staple, Lewis began to fiddle with one, eventually buying a cheap model to take home. He’d play for friends and try to pick up some licks from people he knew who could play, eventually screwing up the nerve to do some open-mic-night appearances in Austin.

Photo courtesy Lost Highway Records: Black Joe Lewis Lewis formed a band and was booked by Austin musician Zach Ernst to share a bill in town with Little Richard. Guitarist Ernst cobbled together a new set of players around Lewis, which became Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears, who released an album in 2007 and began to draw a buzz with incendiary live shows that complemented Lewis’ high-wire performances with funky bass and flamethrower brass. It might be the best garage rock band working today. They'll play a free set at Cactus Music at 5:30 p.m. Thursday before opening for Lucero at 9 p.m. at Walter's on Washington.

The band signed with a major label and released a short, tight and dirty garage soul record Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is earlier this year. Lewis had wanted to call it “Nat Turner,” after the slave who led (and was executed for) a famous rebellion in 1831, because “I’ve always been a fan of revolutionaries and people like that. … It would’ve been cool to name it after him, but I don’t know, maybe not on the first album.”

Though Lewis has parted ways with his day job he repeatedly makes humble little comments that suggest he’s a little surprised by his break.

He mentions a good reception at a concert largely attended by a college-age crowd. “It was a cell-phone crowd,” he says. “But we got a good response. We didn’t get booed.

“It can be a little tough with eight people on the road,” he says. “But that’s the sound we have right now and we need everybody. People complain about that stuff — gas prices, money stuff — but I’m doing this of my own will. Because I don’t want to go home and work a shitty job.”

Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears. 5:30 p.m. Wednesday (today). Cactus Music [2]. Free. Opening for Lucero [3]. 9 p.m. Thursday. Walter's on Washington [4]. $14.