photo: Steve Rood

The California Honeydrops played a round of extreme sports music. Trusting their innate ability and collective, improvisational dialect, these musical-thrill-seekers played new songs, new sounds, never before rehearsed songs and impromptu requests…pouring their harmonious cohesiveness into any pot of music they found.  

Ironically, most of their new sounds were old sounds. Revitalized music of a rhythm and blues era of soul and funk filtered through their impressive vocal range and instrumental diversity. A washboard, a bucket, a baby grand piano, keyboard, congas, drumkit, trumpet, trombone, saxophone, djembe, shakers, cow bell, tambourine, bass…sometimes even a guitar. Switching instruments in a musical chairs roundabout, they changed the rules of this melodic adrenaline match often and with gusto. Sometimes alternating within their own cache of sounds, other times grabbing someone else’s.  

Johnny Bones remained on the tenor saxophone throughout the night with a solid skill and potency that outweighed the high stakes juggle and elevated the music. Lorenzo Loera, primarily on the piano, also anchored the set with quality musicality as he bit his lip to pull thick notes out of those keys and laid a foundation for the others to creatively play within, over and through. 

High-energy funk and soul swiveled hips to the floor at the start of the night. It took an early turn when Lech Wierzynski, the band’s front man and vocalist, said, “Look at those people waiting for something tender,” before playing, “Only Home I’ve Ever Known.” The set continued in a mellow sway, dragging that high energy music through a slow-motion float over calm waters. A smooth, drunk waltz possessed the bones of those in the vicinity and proceeded to walk them about the Armory in a choreographed masterpiece of inebriated slapstick. As if sleepwalking unscathed through an airborne construction site, those bones took giant steps over metal beams floating mid-air. Turned about to land perfectly on a swinging wrecking ball carried across the floor. Gracefully fell backwards into a well-timed wheelbarrow, poured down a slide, onto a swinging rope, walked up walls and across the ceiling, rode a bathtub trombone pulled through hallways defying gravity. Never quite falling over, but somehow always landed on a passing lift. The bones slowly became more marrow and less solid.

“Birthday Suit” sobered that sway into a jolt of activity as the band swapped instruments. The drummer, Ben Malament, played the washboard; the pianist, Lorenzo, played the bass; the bassist, Beau Bradbury, played the drums. Lech primarily played the cords of his throat with a voice that drove their music and yelled with a sweetness typically reserved for lullabies…he also played a trumpet, tambourine and guitar throughout the night.   

Singing back-and-forth in a conversation with the trombone, Lech belted notes at the instrument for it to return in kind. It was a long, drawn-out language in which only notes spread smooth over textured toast are fluent. His vocal cords were multilingual and have been known to seduce strings and brass alike. Hold onto your cow bells, he’s coming for them next! 

Lech directed those same notes and simple, “Yeah’s,” and, “Uh-huh’s,” to the audience to return to the stage. More of a shout and repeat than call and response. It is a rare opportunity to feel the full cathartic release of expressing sound at the top of one’s lungs. To feel that unhindered capacity of vibration through every cell in the body gathered up and cleared out through the steam vent of the mouth. I typically go to mountain tops for this reset. The Honeydrops perform this powerful mental health service a bit closer to home. Cathartic song poured into the wilderness of an open amphitheater. Add a little wiggle and dance and we were left with a room full of broad-lipped smiles that remembered a body had once been attached.  

They played “Bye Bye Baby,” admitting at the song’s end to have not rehearsed that one. This was apparent. “We’re going to play one now that we know,” said Lech.  

A cover of “Ripple” had a sweetness that brought the previously drunken sways of the evening to tears. It led into a 5-song encore heavy with more experimentation and random requests before closing out with “Breakdown,“ one of the only standardly popular Honeydrops’ songs of the night.  

They waved, thanked the crowd, checked the stage for lost limbs and the ceiling for pianos, and left as if nothing had happened…for how can you remember something that had no plan, no outlined shaped, and only existed for those unique moments of its own spectacular creation?