Last night you could smoke 6” outside the Mars Café door, and nobody would say a thing, today it’s a different story all together. Even though I’m not a smoker, we had to acknowledge those who are before they march their butts down the street. (ha ha) But seriously; last night’s show with The Honeybees was great.
I think we played some perfect music to smoke too, i.e. Janis, The Beatles, CSNY, Croce…all of whom once enjoyed a sweet Carolina smoke. I had my 80/35 Tee Shirt on, and the Café was decked out with 80/35 Festival posters and flyers, I was really trying to drive it home that this Fourth of July is going to be the greatest weekend ever in Des Moines.
Both Rae and Jennae of The Honeybees have great collections of vinyl, so it was easy to move from one record to the next. The hard part was deciding which records we had to leave out. The highlight for me was Abbey Road, I have the album at home but it’s too scratched up to play.
Here is some of the rest of what was played…
Elton John – Honky Chateau The Raconteurs – Consolers of the Lonely Bonnie Raitt – Give It Up Brandie Carslie – The Story The Beatles – Love Songs Rickie Lee Jones – S/T Janis Joplin – Greatest Hits Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon The Beatles – Abbey Road CSNY – So Far Heart – Dreamboat Annie Jim Croce – Life and Times Andrew Bird – Armchair Apocrypha
The Honeybees have been together for just under a year, so their relatively new to the Des Moines music scene, at least as The Honeybees. Both bring rock backgrounds to table, and draw from influences across the board. Although they’ve only been together for 10 months, The Honeybees already have built quite the following in Central Iowa by playing with the likes of Josh Davis and Dick Prall; leading to the only encore performance that I’ve seen so far on Scented Vinyl.
To find out more about The Honeybees, download the interview and check out their website. Also make sure to grab the two acoustic songs we recorded at Sonic Factory Studios; they are the only studio tracks you can get from the group right now, that is until their debut EP comes out in July.
