Author: Michael Witthaus

Bees Deluxe return to New Hampshire

Guitarist Conrad Warre calls the music of his band Bees Deluxe “acid blues for the 21st century.” It’s one way of saying that their hyphenate sound is hard to pin down, like catching a honeybee bare-handed. Some say it’s too rock for blues, others flip that analysis upside down, while more than a few detect jazz lurking between the bars.

“In the Venn diagram of those three genres, we’re right in the middle where no one else wants to be, where we overlap and are denied access by all the neighbors,” Warre said by phone recently. “Occasionally, we’ll throw them a bone and we will do something in 1/4/5/4/1 and confuse them, because they didn’t expect it.”

Music writers have a lot of fun with them. One called it “what might happen if Freddie King took a lot of acid then wrote a song with Pat Metheny and asked a strung-out Stevie Ray Vaughan to take a solo” and another likened their most recent album, Hallucinate, to “what Steely Dan would sound like if they played the blues.”

The 2023 album ranges across the spectrum. “Queen Midas” begins with gentle acoustic guitar, then shifts gears into a straight-up rocker. “When Is Yesterday” falls squarely into classic blues territory, though its lyrics sound like Warre was reading a Robert Heinlein novel when he wrote them. The spooky “Houdini” approximates the aforementioned Dan with a swampy undertone that keeps listeners guessing while they groove.

In New Hampshire, bikers seem to really enjoy the band, which consists of Warre, keyboard and harmonica player Carol Band, drummer Paul Giovine and a rotating cast of bass players — usually Adam Sankowski, but at an upcoming show in Laconia, Kevin Tran. The biker love has been around since Warre’s time coming up as a musician in England.

“I once played a castle in Austria, it was in a ruined courtyard,” he recalled. “The audience were all on Harley-Davidsons. To show their appreciation, at the end of every song they flicked their headlights at me.” At a recent gig at the Hawg’s Pen in Farmington, a bar owned by a guy who also runs a Harley dealership, the regulars told him Bees Deluxe played the kind of music the place needed.

“So that was nice,” Warre said. “What we do is we hit that sweet spot of the kind of tempos and keys and moods of people like the Allman Brothers but without playing covers or ‘The Thrill is Gone’ or ‘Mustang Sally.’ They like the groove and it’s a novelty to them, because they never heard Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland or wouldn’t recognize him if they saw him.”

Don’t ask Warre to name any influences.

“I don’t listen to the kind of music that we play; I’d rather listen to Coltrane or Miles Davis or Bach,” he said, adding keyboard player Band has a similar story. “She’s a classicist; I met her when she was playing jazz at Ryles Jazz Club in Cambridge, she’s a real book player. I don’t suspect I’ll find her listening to Led Zeppelin when I come in the room unexpectedly.”

There are a few guitarists that Warre admires, including Jeff Lee Johnson, who played with The Time and appeared in the Prince movie Purple Rain. Another favorite is New Yorker Wayne Krantz. “His philosophy is, ‘Don’t play anything you’ve ever played before’ and I kind of liken that to what I try to do,” he said. “Like Jackson Pollock once said, ‘If you recognize something in the painting, blur it out.’”

Bees Deluxe
When: Saturday, Aug. 31, 1 p.m.
Where: Tower Hill Tavern, 264 Lakeside Ave., Laconia
More: beesdeluxe.com

Featured photo: Bees Deluxe. Courtesy photo.

Skynyrd and ZZ Top hit Gilford

The canon of classic rock has two songs on its Mount Rushmore. How to fill out all four spots is an endless discussion. “Johnny B. Goode”? “Hotel California”? Every track on Dark Side of the Moon? Forget it, there will never be consensus. However, to question the placement of “Stairway to Heaven” or “Free Bird” would be so lame.

The Lynyrd Skynyrd song’s been shouted out at cover bands and more than a few headliners over the years. Jason Isbell may someday even perform it — he and his band played its wild tradeoff jam outro every night during rehearsals for their Weathervanes tour a few years back.

Fun fact, though: The song that most fans know by heart almost never was. More precisely, it began very differently, and became timeless almost by accident. At least that’s the story Johnny Van Zant told in a recent phone interview. Since he’s the younger brother of the guy who wrote it, Ronnie Van Zant, there’s reason to believe him.

The original demo of “Free Bird” was a four-minute ballad. “It’s one of the few love songs that Skynyrd had,” Van Zant said. “Duane Allman had died during that time, and one night when Ronnie had a sore throat, he said, ‘Hey, man, let’s do the song ‘Free Bird’ and then at the end, y’all play out for Duane Allman.’ That’s how that baby was born.”

During concerts in the mid-’70s, Ronnie would dedicate the song to Allman and Berry Oakley, the Allman Brothers Band bassist who died a year after Duane. Then in October 1977, a tragic plane crash killed Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and backup singer Cassie Gaines, along with the band’s assistant road manager. The plane’s pilot and co-pilot also perished.

Six members survived the crash, and in 1980 four of them reunited — Allen Collins, Gary Rossington, Leon Wilkeson and Billy Powell — as the Rossington Collins Band. With a female lead singer, Dale Krantz, it wasn’t a Skynyrd revival. They made two albums before breaking up.

A full-scale tour with five members of the original band –—Rossington, Powell, Wilkeson, Artimus Pyle and Ed King, who’d left two years before the crash — happened in 1987. That’s when Johnny joined, and he’s been carrying Ronnie’s torch ever since. Early on, however, he wouldn’t sing “Free Bird,” letting the band play an instrumental version instead.

The group embarked on what was to be a final run in 2018, but fate had other ideas. The pandemic turned a Farewell Tour into “farewell touring,” and when live music resumed, the mood had changed for Van Zant, Rossington and guitarist Rickey Medlocke, who’d left Skynyrd before their first album to form Blackfoot, rejoining in 1996. Recalled Johnny, “Gary was like, ‘Man, I’ve been off for 15 months, I don’t want to freaking retire. I want the music to continue.”

Sadly, Rossington passed away last year, leaving Van Zant and Medlocke to carry on. “We’re never without him, I believe that in my heart,” Van Zant said, adding a statement also true for his brother and other fallen band members. “I know this is what he would want us to be doing. Every time I get a little tired, I feel a kick in my ass. I know it’s him.”

“Free Bird” helped launch Southern rock, though at the time, Skynyrd was one of many bands playing it. At an upcoming appearance in Gilford, they’ll be joined by two of them, ZZ Top, who brought Texas boogie to the world, and the Outlaws, best-known for their hit “Green Grass and High Tides.”

Asked what distinguishes the genre from regular rock music, Van Zant had a few ideas.

“I think it was the blues country factor, the English influence, and if you listen to a band like Marshall Tucker, hell, it’s got jazz in it,” he said. “The boys were raised on that old blues stuff, and then, of course, The Beatles came along … but it could have been in the water or eating collard greens. I don’t know what the heck it was.”

Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top, The Outlaws
When: Friday, Aug. 23, 6:30 p.m.
Where: BankNH Pavilion, 61 Meadowbrook Lane, Gilford
Tickets: $54 and up at livenation.com

Johnny Van Zant and Ricky Medlocke will sign bottles of their Hell House Whiskey from noon to 2 p.m. Aug. 23 at New Hampshire Liquor & Wine Outlet Store No. 56, 18 Weirs Road, Gilford

Featured photo: L-R Ricky Medlocke, Johnny Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd (Courtesy Photo).