Archive Review: Frank Black’s Honeycomb (2005)

When Nashville indie record store owner Mike “Grimey” Grimes told me about sitting in on a Frank Black recording session a year or so ago, the time and setting seemed unlikely. After all, Black was about to launch a full-fledged Pixies reunion tour, giving fans that missed the band the first time around a taste of what all the brouhaha was about in the first place. However, Grimey waxed ecstatic about Black playing with a veritable “who’s who” of legendary Southern musicians in the Music City studio, promising an eye-opening CD as the result of the four-day working weekend.

Frank Black’s Honeycomb

Black’s Honeycomb is the result of those recording sessions, an uncharacteristic collection of traditional songs that incorporate elements of Southern soul, alt-country and roots rock. Fifteen, sixteen years ago, when the Pixies ruled the indie-rock roost with a barrage of amplifier squall, fractured vocals, and discordant six-string work, Honeycomb would have been a radical departure for the American idol known as Black Francis. After nearly a decade and a half of a scattershot solo career that has seen the one-time poster child for alt-rock defiance careen off varying musical styles and styles of vocal delivery, Honeycomb instead serves as another indicator of Black’s seemingly bottomless well of talent.

As stated above, for his Nashville side trip, Black recruited some of the true giants of Southern music to back him in the studio. Among the players on Honeycomb are Steve Cropper, better known for his role in the two Blues Brothers movies than for his groundbreaking guitarwork and songwriting at Stax studios in Memphis; pianist Spooner Oldham, a Muscle Shoals veteran and accomplished Memphis songwriter; and bassist David Hood, an integral piece of the famed Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. Throw in well-traveled drummer Anton Fig and guests like Reggie Young, Buddy Miller, and Ellis Hooks and you have better than two centuries of combined musical talent. The whole affair was brought together by noted producer, musician, and songwriter Jon Tiven and captured on tape by legendary songwriter/producer Dan Penn.

The results of Black’s dream project are evident in the songs on Honeycomb. Perhaps Black’s most personal and reflective collection to date, the singer sounds downright wistful at times, many songs alternately both joyful and melancholy. With these topnotch studio professionals behind him, Black delves deep into the realities of romance and relationships, life and death with material that, at times, veers dangerously close to foppish singer/songwriter territory. Black’s collaborators prevent their morose frontman from plunging headfirst into the abyss of self-pity, though, with a loose funky groove, the subdued soundtrack propping up Black’s often somber vocals.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Black also pays homage to both the players he’s sharing the moment with and to his deep-rooted musical inspirations, covering songs by both Dan Penn and Doug Sahm. On the Penn/Chips Moman classic “Dark End of the Street,” Black plays it straight with soulful vocals and a dark, subtle arrangement that redefine the song in a way that makes it sound like you’re hearing it for the first time. Black has a little more fun with Sahm’s “Sunday Sunny Mill Valley Groove Day,” capturing a laid-back feel with a bit of a Tex-Mex vibe. Combining a strong set of songs with spectacular musical performances, Honeycomb is an unlikely but welcome direction for Frank Black’s solo work and, like Grimey proclaimed those many months ago, a hell of a lot of fun. (Back Porch Records, 2005)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™ zine

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CD Review: Steve Cropper's Fire It Up (2021)

If he did absolutely nothing else to close out a lengthy career that has now spanned some seven decades, singer, songwriter, and guitarist Steve Cropper’s musical legacy would be carved in stone for his tenure with Booker T & the M.G.’s and contributions to monster 1960s-era instrumental rock ‘n’ roll hits like “Green Onions,” “Hip Hug-Her,” “Groovin’,” and “Soul Limbo.” As the Stax Records house band, Booker T & the M.G.’s also backed legendary R&B artists like Otis Redding, Carla Thomas, Sam & Dave, and Eddie Floyd. Cropper’s guitar talents have featured prominently on albums by artists as diverse as Roy Orbison, Wilson Pickett, John Lennon, Leon Russell, and Rod Stewart and his songs have been recorded by folks like Redding, the Rascals, Cher, Glen Campbell, Eric Clapton, and Mitch Ryder, among many others.

As a producer, Cropper has helmed albums by Redding (most notably the posthumous classic The Dock of the Bay), Buddy Miles, Poco, Tower of Power, Ramsey Lewis, and John Prine. Cropper’s languid Southern drawl and on-screen charisma stood out even when playing against larger-than-life figures like John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in The Blues Brothers movies, and the guitarist would tour the globe with one version or another of the Blues Brothers Band for decades. In spite of his enduring influence on rock star guitarists like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Keith Richards, Cropper never enjoyed the sort of solo career that he deserved as a talented musician, songwriter, and producer. He’s recorded sporadically, enjoying a string of critically-acclaimed and influential albums dating from 1969’s With A Little Help From My Friends and 1981’s Playin’ My Thang to 2011’s Dedicated (A Salute To the 5 Royales).

Steve Cropper’s Fire It Up

The aforementioned name-dropping aside, Cropper has never been an artist content to sit on his laurels, nor to ride on the coattails of other talents. For Fire It Up, Cropper’s first solo effort in a decade, the guitarist enlisted a tight-as-a-fist band comprised of singer Roger C. Reale, drummer Nioshi Jackson, and multi-instrumentalist Jon Tiven, who handles bass, keyboards, and horns. None of these guys are exactly household names, although Tiven was an acclaimed music journalist before becoming a full-time musician, songwriter, and producer. All are talented cats, though, and they provide the perfect instrumental foundation for Cropper’s stunning six-string skills. Case in point: the album-opening “Bush Hog, Part 1,” a short but funky strut of an instrumental that displays some of Cropper’s finest chicken-pickin’ riding high atop a strong rhythmic backdrop.

The album’s title track is a gritty, Southern-fried rocker that perfectly frames Reale’s growling, gruff vocals against a soundtrack that mixes rock ‘n’ roll bravado with a Stax soul heartbeat; Cropper’s fretwork stands out from the grooves, as does Tiven’s nuanced but essential harp-play. The blue-eyed soul gem “One Good Turn” was co-written by the Rascals’ Felix Cavaliere, who provides subtle keyboard washes to the song, Reale’s emotional vocals accompanied by some timely blasts of saxophone. The mid-tempo “Out of Love” treads unabashedly onto Curtis Salgado’s soul-blues turf, Cropper lightning up the performance with his imaginative and varied fretwork while “She’s So Fine,” co-written by Bad Company’s Paul Rodgers with Cropper and Tiven, is the sort of ramshackle R&B rave-up suitable for the Blues Brothers.     

“Two Wrongs” is a sort of rock-infused, late 1960s/early ‘70s R&B construct that helps showcase the depth of Reale’s vocal talents, his performance here reminiscent of the great Otis Redding while “Heartbreak Street” is the sort of narrative soul that Stax Records superstars Sam & Dave cut their teeth on. The song’s deep emotional undercurrent is pumped-up and magnified by Reale’s turbo-charged, emotional vocals. “The Go-Getter Is Gone” is a tasty soul-drenched rocker, a brassy song that demands a larger-than-life performance from everybody involved, and it works in creating a real liver-quivering foot-stomper of a song. “Bush Hog, Part 2” leads into the lengthier, album-closing “Bush Hog,” a shimmering and buzzing instrumental throwback to the mesmerizing music of Booker T. & the M.G.’s, bringing Cropper full circle, as it were.   

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Steve Cropper’s guitar skills are unassailable, informed as they are by 60+ years of blues, soul, and rock ‘n’ roll. Tiven, too, is a talented musician whose contributions to these songs (and the album’s production) are paramount in achieving the sort of rock ‘n’ soul fusion I imagine the two men had in mind. Cropper’s Fire It Up is a helluva lot of fun, an entertaining album guaranteed to bring back memories of a simpler, more joyful era of rock ‘n’ soul music. Grade: B+  (Provogue Records, released April 23rd, 2021)

Buy the album from Amazon: Steve Cropper’s Fire It Up