Solid senders, The California Honeydrops offer good times in the key of jammy soul and smooth R&B commitment derived from gleeful busking origins on the street corners of Oakland and the Bay Area. Formed at the tail end of 2007, the band has since become a hallmark of cool on the festival and club circuit, cultivating a compelling live show that mines each moment for just the right vibe.
"Good music is good music, that's what I've always thought. People like good music, so it doesn't matter what you play," said Honeydrops vocalist, guitarist and trumpeter Lech (pronounced Lesh) Wierzynski in a recent interview. "The street thing is fun because you're surprising people, and it's a great way to get your practice time in front of people and find out what works, what doesn't work, how to capture the attention of a random crowd. That just became a part of what we did on stage– try to surprise people, try to make 'em dance, try to make 'em happy."
Wierzynski, who was born and lived intermittently in Poland as a child, was raised in Chicago and Washington, D.C., by vintage music-loving parents who passed along the passion.
"I had an older dad, and him being also from Poland, everything there is like 30 years behind. Especially because it was during the old days in the communist era," Wierzynski said. "He was into really old music. He was into music from the '30s– Louis Armstrong, Sydney Bechet, Jelly Roll Morton, all the New Orleans jazz. And then he was into some of the crooner singers like Nat King Cole and Dean Martin. My mom was a lot younger than my dad and she was more into '60s music, so that's how we got into all the oldies. Over time, I filled in the gaps with different things that I discovered along the way."
From his family's record collection into college, Wierzynski studied ethnomusicology, specifically the songs and artists of the Mississippi Delta and New Orleans.
"If you're attracted to the old music, it just starts popping up everywhere," he said. "I remember my friends were big Deadheads when I was in high school, and they had Jerry Garcia playing old songs with David Grisman. You'd hear one of the songs, I'd be like, 'What song is that?' And I'd look it up on the Internet. 'Oh! That's by Mississippi John Hurt!' And then you look him up and you get his CD and then you're like, 'Oh look, there's a whole other world of music."'
Eventually landing in Oakland, Wierzynski formed the initial Honeydrops with drummer Ben Malament, and over the course of 15 years, the once tub bass jug band that thrilled departing subway riders evolved across a dozen studio and live releases to become a supremely capable and sophisticated soul outfit. The group's latest full-length release, "Soft Spot," maintains all the vintage vibes the Honeydrops are renowned for, but with a few funky updates and a wonderfully simple sound that nevertheless makes a grand impression.
"I actually tried to have less going on a lot of those songs. We've always layered the songs extensively back in the day, so I tried to make the situation a little simpler. It's a big ol' room in there and that's why we recorded in the place, said Wierzynski of the album's sessions at Oakland's Survivor Sound. "I tried to make the songs feel spacious on purpose, so I'm glad that came through because it was supposed to have a bigger feeling of space."
The majority of the tracks on "Soft Spot" sprang from Wierzynski's pandemic experience, and like many of his contemporaries, he was also concerned about not being able to perform during the band's forced downtime and the effect that would have on his voice.
"In early 2021, when shows came back in earnest, my voice was going so fast. Luckily, now it's back and now I can sing again for three hours and then do it again the next day," Wierzynski revealed. "But it got pretty bad. I was singing a lot, but it's just very different not singing in front of people on a mic on a stage with a loud band behind you.
Even though the California Honeydrops have long since surpassed their days of busking on the street for smiles and change, the group never strays far from that early energy and element of surprise.
"We don't make a set list. We try to keep the show as spontaneous as possible to this day. No matter how big the stage is, there's no set list. Ever," Wierzynski said. "We play to the room, see who's out there.
"If I start feeling us getting a little comfortable, I'll start throwing out songs we haven't played in years just to get everybody to wake up a bit," he elaborated. "If I feel like I'm going through the motions, I'll do that to myself. I'll be like, 'Let's try something crazy right now that we're going to screw up in front of all these people!' But the thing is, people like it. They don't want you to go through the motions."
