Opera House, New Year’s Eve: Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears

31 Dec Opera House, New Year’s Eve: Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears

Ring in 2017 at Telluride’s Sheridan Opera House. The Sheridan Arts Foundation presents Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears, Saturday, December 31, 2016 10:30 p.m. (9 p.m. doors/SHOW bar opens). $100 GA floor; 250\reserved balcony. (A $4 ticketing fee applies at all sales outlets.) Tickets and additional event information are available at sheridanoperahouse.com or 970.728.6363 x5.

Ring in 2017 in style at Telluride’s premiere music venue with the band that wowed audiences at Telluride Blues & Brews. The party is a black-tie affair (Telluride style), including a champagne toast.

Joe Lewis hails from Austin, Texas, where Southern soul meets Midwestern blues and vagabond punk. Unable to keep away from the infectious music scene Austin is infamous for, Lewis soaked it all in and soon found himself purchasing his first guitar while working in a pawnshop.

The rest is history.

Once compared to “The Godfather of Soul,” we hear Black Joe Lewis letting his punk-flag fly on the group’s third studio album, Electric Slave. Black Joe Lewis perfected his gritty shouting and raw guitar riffs, honing his signature sound on the album.

Electric Slave kicks off with in-your-face opener “Skulldiggin,” which showcases Joe howling in true Joe Lewis fashion, all the while highlighting just how ballsy Lewis can really get.

Of the album title, he says:“Electric Slave is what people are today with their faces buried in their iPhones and the only way to hold a conversation is through text. The next step is to plug it in to your damned head.”

Much like not wanting to be a slave to our cell phones, Black Joe Lewis refuses to be confined to genre-defining boundaries or cater to only one of his many musical influences, but Electric Slave still does features plenty of women-chasing, hard-knocks, and all-around good time tales. Check out tracks like “Young Girls,” “Make Dat Money,” and “Come To My Party.”

And as always, Lewis somehow finds a way to fill tracks with horns and blues riffs that rival the likes of rocker Iggy Pop.

Electric Slave was produced in large part by Grammy Award-winner Stuart Sikes (White Stripes, Cat Power, Modest Mouse) and recorded at Church House Studios in Austin. Three of the new tracks (“Skulldiggin,” “Dar Es Salaam,” “My Blood Ain’t Runnin’ Right”) were recorded and produced by John Congleton (Explosions in the Sky, St. Vincent, Okkervil River) at Elmwood Studios in Dallas.

Hear it all  – as you shake it all – on New Year’s Eve.

The Sheridan Arts Foundation was founded in 1991 as a 501(c) (3) non-profit organization to preserve the historic Sheridan Opera House as an arts and cultural resource for the Telluride community, to bring quality arts and cultural events to Telluride and to provide local and national youth with access and exposure to the arts through education. The Sheridan Arts Foundation is sponsored in part by grants from the Telluride Foundation and CCAASE.