Benjamin Malament of the California Honeydrops on Busking, Recording, and Great Covers

In an industry where trends come and go faster than you can ask “What is Hip?” there are few sounds as reliably satisfying as classic soul and rhythm & blues. No matter what is going on in the pop landscape, there will always be an audience for those vintage styles, along with a host of artists drawing from them.

Of the many modern bands exploring and mining these timeless influences, few do so as convincingly and effectively as the California Honeydrops. Blending old soul and R&B with blues, jazz, and tasteful modern flourishes, The Honeydrops have built a reputation as a highly compelling act on record and on the road.

On their latest release, Keep on Diggin’, the Honeydrops showcase their excellence in uniquely synthesizing many of those familiar influences while adding new wrinkles to the equation. With doses of laid-back funk (“Good Enough”), reggae (“Fall in love again”), and jazz (“Morning Song”), the stylistic mix is as diverse as ever, and the songs are sharp to boot. This eclecticism and songcraft propel the record into something inarguably fresh, even by Honeydrops’ standards.

Given that penchant for creatively synthesizing classic and modern influences, it should come as no surprise that the Honeydrops also thrive in the live setting. With origins as buskers in the Bay Area, and nearly 20 years playing on the road, they are long established as a must-see live act. Drawing from deep catalogs of originals and covers, loads of on-stage charisma, and improvisational leanings, no two shows are exactly the same, but a good time is all but guaranteed.

The Honeydrops make their return to the Twin Cities Wednesday night at First Avenue, which should be a great fit for the high energy show. Fans can expect some familiar along with a heavy dose of the unexpected. Given their track record, the band would have it no other way.

The interview below with California Honeydrops’ drummer Benjamin Malament has been edited for length and clarity.

Music In Minnesota: I know the Honeydrops started out busking. That’s far behind you now, but I’m curious what you feel you carry from that as you play increasingly larger venues.

Benjamin Malement: I think playing in the street, playing at the BART stations, it’s still the kind of energy we bring to the shows because it’s important for us to play for the people who are in the room. We don’t just do a set; we don’t make setlists. We know hundreds of songs and we feel the room, and we ask “what’s going to feel good to play for these people?” I think playing on the street helped us get right next to the energy of the people that we’re playing for. So I think that element still is very much a part of what happens at a Honeydrops show to this day.

It’s exciting because, when we busked on the street, there were three of us, with a tub bass and a washboard, and now we have a lot of horns and percussion and all these instruments. We just try and bring that same energy with a bigger band.

MIM: With regards to your live show, what you guys are doing seems grounded in a lot of classic timeless sounds but is still a pretty unique thing. In the early days or later, were there any particular performers or sounds that you were seeking to emulate or draw from?

BM: Definitely, that’s part of what makes the band so unique. Everybody in the band is coming from different places, which makes it unique and makes the sound what it is. For me, in L.A. I was part of the reggae and the ska scene out there and that sound of the old Jamaican music was something I loved: that groove and the feeling of the music.

Another big influence was brass bands like Rebirth Brass Band, Hot 8 and the music out of New Orleans. Zigaboo’s drumming or Earl Palmer’s drumming. Those are sounds and feelings that we wanted to express in our band even though we weren’t a brass band or instrumental funk band. It’s similar for everyone in the band. Lech’s dad was listening to old Louis Armstrong records when he was a kid. You listen to Lech and you can tell he really wanted to sound like that too.

MIM: I can hear a lot of that in the music you guys make. I feel like on “Fall in Love Again,” I can really hear the reggae influence you mentioned.

BM: Yeah that’s like it’s own thing, too. I wasn’t playing what I would play as a reggae beat. If someone was like “play a one-drop” that’s not the beat that I would play, but the song was such a particular “Country Reggae” feel. It’s like folk music meets country meets reggae, it’s own beat. For most of the albums in the band that’s what we do, we take these ideas of like “what’s a one-drop,” “what’s a second line beat,” “what’s an R&B Groove” and we morph it into something different in the song.

MIM: As a listener, it seems like there are a lot of bands that really bring it live, or in the studio. I’ve always felt you guys do a really good job of making great sounding records in addition to putting on a really high energy live show. I’m curious if you guys have any approaches or philosophies that help things translate well from the stage to the studio, or vice-versa? Do they inform one another?

BM: A lot of songs get worked out on stage, like to know if the energy of an arrangement works. On stage, we have fun throwing stuff out there and that’s what we want on a record: the stuff we have fun doing together as a band. So that totally informs the music.

At the same time, we cannot play things the way we do live all the time, and vice-versa. On this record, there’s a lot of songs we really learned in the studio and then re-learned a little again on stage. Some of them we even re-recorded. We did a couple things with double drums on this record and that led us to doing more of that live. The record gave us confidence because we were able to execute some stuff that sounded pretty good.

Also when you’re recording, it’s just a different vibe. The energy is different. It’s easy to go down the rabbit hole in the studio, which we try to avoid, but you’re definitely under the microscope. We want to make it sound fun under the microscope. Live, it’s just a whole different energy thing. But they both help each other out.

MIM: Because of the way things worked out with recording this record, would you guys consider a more “studio-centric” approach  in the studio or is that something you feel in the moment?

BM: We’ve been doing that for the last several records. We’ve gotten better at that over the years, just knowing “this is a studio song,” or “this is a studio approach.” We’ve learned over the years how to become a better studio band, knowing how to be more efficient, and the sounds that we like and want to go for.

We recorded a bunch of stuff at home too. There’s a bunch of stuff recorded at The Cave in Oakland that sounds great just straight off the tape, and live too. But yeah, we’ve learned a lot over the last decade plus.

MIM: On the subject of The Cave, I do want to ask about covers. You had mentioned you have hundreds of songs in your repertoire, and you’re always weaving songs in and out of your sets. You recently released a cover of Bobby Charles’ “Street People,” which is a personal favorite. You integrate covers so well, what goes into making those choices and what inspired that particular selection?

BM: Bobby Charles, as far as I remember, was introduced to us by our old piano player Charlie Hickox whose song “Higher Degree” we also covered. We all just fell in love with that album so hardcore. Every single song on that album is great. That’s a song that, along with most of those Covers from the Cave, that we were doing live. It’s a great song that we had our own funky little take on.

A lot of those songs that we cover we hear in the van or something; someone pulls something up and we’re like “damn that’s a dope song,” and then we start trying it out on stage. If we don’t do the whole version, maybe we’ll do parts of a song in another song. So that’s how those Covers from the Cave work. We just love listening to music, everybody loves throwing songs out there. Some of them stick and then we just go for it.