Heartfelt Harmony: Honeysuckle at Blue Moon Coffeehouse (Rockland, MA) Show Review
A woman tapped me on my shoulder and said “Hey, do you want to sit up there?” and she looked towards my camera and pointed into a rafter/windowed ledge overhang above the neatly diamond shaped tables in the Blue Moon Coffeehouse’s main room. I took her advice and am happy I did.
The Blue Moon Coffeehouse is a quaint and unpretentious listening room in Rockland, MA. This was our first adventure to the venue and I was unsure what to expect. The keyword here is on coffeeHOUSE and not coffee shop. Two very different things, sure there is typically coffee, tea and cake at coffeehouse shows, but they are rarely in boutique or hipster shops serving high octane espresso with a client base happy to pay $6 for a latte. A coffeehouse, more often than not, is house in the back room, basement, or multi-purpose room of a church…as was the case with this such an instance.
We took our seats in our little birds nest perch among disgarded, mismatched chairs and some old desks and tables. About as private as we could be overlooking the stage and the people below. Honeysuckle took the stage right on time around 7:30 and played a beautiful 50 minute opening set.
What I hadn’t realized in the past about the band is how much both Chris and Ben bring to the overall sound. When you listen to the band’s last recording it is Holly McGarry’s voice that is the shining star. It is almost difficult to vision a voice of such strength, warmth and power coming forth from her small frame, but the power and balanced grace she pours forth onto the stage is really something of beauty. Smokey with its jazziness, but still maintaining the fire crackle and rootsy goodness that keeps a foot in the genre. The intricacies of the parts that Ben and Chris play on their respective instruments is inspiring. Even through the verses of songs, if you really pay attention the runs that Chris is playing on the mandolin are incredible and the interplay of the banjo and mandolin running lead lines in parallel create these textures within their song that are beautiful and poignant.
Perhaps the biggest, most pleasant surprise of the evening came to me in the vessel of Benjamin Burns’ voice. There was one song they played that I believe was called Dog Song where he was bordering the line between grunge and folk music in a brilliant way. I heard inflections of Kurt Cobain deep down in the belly of the song and the way it was all rounded out with percussion and traditional instruments, it just worked so incredibly well.
(video of Honeysuckle at the Blue Moon Coffeehouse performing Gillian Welch’s “Elvis Presley Blues”
Honeysuckle is a band for everyone. To not be touched by the beauty of their vocal harmonies and passionate performances is a sin. The band blends so much into their sound with just 3 voices and instruments it is astounding. The three part harmonies are absolutely sublime. The instrumentation is deeply thought and arranged, bordering on the genius of The Punch Brothers, but anchoring it with sepia tinged songwriting that is reminiscent of Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings. More often than not the percussive elements are incredibly well placed, impactful and drive the songs in a way that otherwise may not have been as powerful. This is good, wholesome music with an intelligent knack for smart layering of instrument parts and characterized by breathtaking harmonies.
