Dirty Honey
London Hackney Oslo
California’s hotly tipped classic rock’n’rollers bring a dose of the Sunset Strip to East London.
It’s a mid-heatwave Tuesday. Streets of beer gardens glitter outside, but here we are, sweating waterfalls in a windowless black box, assuring ourselves that we’ve definitely made the right choice. Tonight’s gig has oversold and you can feel the extra bodies. Cooling beers are passed above young and older heads. Dirty Honey T-shirts mingle with other rock tour tees and a scattering of stylish hats, most of which remain jammed on despite the heat. Slash would be proud.
This is Dirty Honey’s first time in London, and their second UK headline gig (the first was in Glasgow a few days ago, followed by a morning Download set that pulled in thousands). Over the coming weeks they’ll play across the UK and Europe, flitting between support slots with Guns N’ Roses, Kiss and Rival Sons. In other words, a ton of stadiums, arenas and big theatres. It’s all very in keeping with the A-list gigs they’ve been bagging in their relatively short lifespan – The Who, Slash, Alter Bridge and The Black Crowes are among previous stage buddies. All that, and they’re still unsigned.
Right now, though, they’re in this East London dive ready to kick some arse. “We’re perfectly at home at a sweaty little rock club in the middle of a city. That’s what we did for many years,” singer Marc LaBelle says with a smile. “So it’s kinda like coming home. It’s exciting, especially somewhere like here where we feel like we have something to prove.”
Backstage pre-show it’s all coffee cups, tuning guitars and hanging out with their road crew of three. LaBelle’s best friend is their merch guy.
They’re an easy-going bunch, with that relatively rare ability to act like rock stars without being jerks.
It’s a manner that transfers to the stage, where the thick grooves of opener California Dreamin’ seem to swagger through bourbon-spiked treacle, without a shred of nerve-induced acceleration; proudly oldschool rock’n’roll, emphasis on the roll, with a fresh set of teeth.
The band slip into it all like a pair of silk gloves, dressed in the sort of Rolling Stones-via-Black
Crowes wardrobe that’s been adopted by everyone from Blackberry Smoke to Rival Sons. Almost toocool-for-school, were it not for the sense of fun that bounces through their set. And they relish the intimacy; they’ve done the business in stadiums, LaBelle has hung out backstage with Axl (“He was very sweet”), but this sort of sweatbox setting is what built Dirty Honey. Cool as cucumbers in aviators, but unbothered? Oh no.
“We like the rock’n’roll in London, don’t we?”
LaBelle says with a grin, to affirmative roars, before sliding into the deliciously nasty, Guns-y Take My Hand. The heat thickens. By the time they reach a feelgood Gypsy it’s so hot you can see LaBelle’s hair curling, Hasidic-style, under his hat, while bassist Justin Smolian’s already Slash-esque mop has grown into a giant cloud on top of his head.
With such strong tunes, the pre-encore bass, drum and guitar solos feel unnecessary (or at least a bit much in one go); a little too much like dickmeasuring, laying on skilled chops that already come across quite happily through their songs.
“I feel like rock’n’roll bands are few and far between these days,” LaBelle says earlier. “Like I noticed at Download there was a lot of hard rock and metal and not a lot of that blues-based rock like Zeppelin, the Stones and AC/DC.”
To be fair, there are newcomers shooting for those particular stars. Dirty Honey are one of the few that are generating a real buzz, as reflected by the singalongs that flow with almost every song tonight. They bring it home with Rolling 7s. An encore of Aerosmith’s Last Child is fun because it’s a great song, but they don’t need it – and that says a lot.