More Bees With Honey
Soars High
Between 1985 (when he moved from Arkansas to Florida at the age of 16) and 2005, John Paul Soars played in bands that included names such as Raped Ape, Paingod, Burner, Wynjara, Malevolent Creation and Divine Empire.
Fast-forward three years to 2008: JP Soars and the Red Hots make the finals in the International Blues Challenge in Memphis. The following year, they not only win the IBC, but Soars also receives the Albert King award for best guitarist.
How did a seemingly heavy metal kid morph into a blues force to be reckoned with in four years? During those two mostly headbanging decades (in ’97 he played in blues bands while also playing in metal bands), Soars listened to lots of blues and Gypsy jazz. In 2005, he hung up his combat boots to explore those two genres.
Obviously, he took the blues route: Two major awards and two albums later, Soars is soaring to new heights. “Bees” is one kick-ass album, miles apart from 2008’s “Back of My Mind.” He’s letting his roots show, but without overtly acknowledging his south Florida death metal beginnings.
“The harder sound is both a conscious effort as well as evolution,” he tells Good New Music. “It’s more of my own personal tastes and styles coming out. The first album was playing it safe and trying to appease the purists. People would buy the CD and ask why there wasn’t more ripping guitar solos and stuff. So I figured I’ll just go for it on this album, trying to showcase more of my history.”
The horn-driven, Memphis R&B-style title track kicks things off, featuring call-and-response vocals with the late Robin Rogers, who responds soulfully to Soars’ Howlin’ Wolf-inspired calls. It’s not until the halfway mark that the phrase “More Bees With Honey” is uttered, as Guillermo “Willy” Lojo joins in on background vocals and the three chant it in unison until the song fades out.
“K.Y.N.O.M.B.” (an acronym for “Keep your nose out of my business”) is a slow but powerful shuffle based on a simple riff, laid on top of a harmonica bed courtesy guest Jason Ricci, who’s more or less been on hiatus lately. The song cruises along, seemingly incapable of getting any better, but toward the end the guitar and drums go note-for-note a few times to keep listeners on their toes.
Jump blues is explored on “Hot Little Woman,” with a twist: When Soars sings about his dream woman’s attributes, the music is fast; when he sings about the kind of woman he doesn’t want, it’s slow. And so the song’s tempo goes, alternating every five seconds, except for the upbeat instrumental intro and first instrumental break. Later, a second instrumental break restates the fast-slow theme.
“The Hustle (Is On),” another jump blues number, is a cover of the Eddy Owens song that was a T-Bone Walker hit in the early ’50s. It features Todd Edmunds (of Ricci’s old band New Blood) on upright bass and is true to the original stride-piano arrangement, performed by Roomful of Blues keyboardist Travis Colby.
The second of the album’s cover songs is “Sweet Blood Call” by Louisiana Red. The lyrics — written by Kent Cooper, who signed Red to his Blue Labor label in the early ’70s — deal with a man who has a hard time missing his woman with his “pistol” in her mouth. “This cute, little old couple that comes to see me play at the Backroom Blues Bar in Boca Raton turned me on to that song,” Soars tells GNM. “Love it.”
Soars’ talents include slide, and he shows off his ability on a trio of cigar-box songs (there’s one pictured on the album cover) that closes out the disc. The first of the three, “They’ll Do It Every Time,” is the best example of the guitarist’s harder-edged sound, again featuring Ricci on harmonica. The last is also the third of the album’s three cover songs: Soars’ arrangement of the raunchy “Where’d You Stay Last Night” (aka “Red Headed Woman”) by “Baby Face” Leroy Foster, a song he tells GNM he first heard on a Hollywood Fats record and has heard several different versions of since.
Tracks
1. More Bees With Honey
2. K.Y.N.O.M.B
3. So Many Times
4. Hot Little Woman
5. Doggin’
6. Back Of My Mind
7. The Hustle (Is On)
8. Lost It All
9. Twitchin’
10. Sweet Blood Call
11. They’ll Do It Every Time
12. Chasing Whiskey With Whiskey
13. Where’d You Stay Last Night
Total time: 58:26
External links
artist’s website
amazon.com
iTunes Store
