Review: Impromptu as always, Someday Honey teases new music at another powerful show in St. Pete

Someday Honey is fervidly averse to set lists. And the quartet stays firmly in the moment. Such was pointedly affirmed last Saturday night when—just as it was about to embark on a second set at the Palladium Side Door—I hustled to stage left, notebook in hand, and asked bassist Mark Cunningham what tune they opened with. He paused for a few seconds, then asked the other members. It took quite a bit of commiseration and puzzlement and hemming-and-hawing, but they finally came up with the title of a song they had played just an hour earlier:

Ray LaMontagne’s “You Can Bring Me Flowers,” which the quartet built around a throbbing medium-slow groove and gave the first set a bewitching start. From there, they delivered a typical Someday Honey performance—full of twists and turns and surprises, ranging from quiet moments that made you lean in, to crescendos that raised hairs on your neck.

Lead singer Kaleigh Baker told the nearly full house that the band was trying out new material for an album soon to be recorded. During a Someday Honey performance, it’s always difficult to determine which songs come from their vast cupboard of obscure covers, which songs are seasoned originals and which ones are new.
One new tune in the second set, “Tan Lines,” exhibited the band’s no-rules approach. It seamlessly stitched together disparate sections—including a brief, sweetly melodic bridge that would’ve worked in a ‘60s girl-group tune—that was laced by Beach Boys-style woo-woo harmonies on the chorus.

That was followed by “Turtle Blues,” a simmering 12-bar piece penned by Janis Joplin. This is where Baker, a powerfully elastic singer, pulled out all the stops with snarls and shouts and roars and the rest of her bag. I’m not familiar enough with Joplin’s version to know how closely Baker adhered to it—I’m guessing not much—but I do know that the crowd went bonkers and the Side Door ceiling probably has some cracks in it.

Guitarist Matt Walker accented “Turtle Blues” with fills and solos that included a smattering of standard licks that were countered by all kinds of stuff that you don’t hear a guitarist use in a conventional blues number. Which was apropos, because Walker is anything but conventional. In the years since Someday Honey came together in the late-2010s during a Monday night residency at the now-defunct Hideaway Cafe, Walker’s playing has become more subtle, more abstract, more reverb-y, more twangy. And more mature. It borders on avant-garde, which is good by me.

And despite his disinterest in serving up crowd-pleasing tropes, he still makes audiences giddy. True believers anticipate the solo, knowing it's as vital as the song, the singing, and the ensemble performance. Even better, Walker keeps his solos tight, in service of the tune, often bending it slightly out of shape. He’s less a monster—a favorite adjective of guitarists—than he is a savant.

However—one of Walker’s trademarks is facial contortions, which can be amusing. But as I discussed with a local music scenester a couple of years ago, they had devolved into clowning, which distracted from his guitar work. To Walker’s credit, on Saturday he had toned the mugging down, whether consciously or unconsciously.

The show contained a generous helping of ballads, including the song “Someday Honey,” co-written by Baker and Walker, which gave rise to the band name. Another slow number, “Desahogo,” was as achingly gorgeous as always.

And then there was the closer, the deliciously confounding “What Would Tom Waits Do?” The tune begins with a smoldering melody marked by dissonant guitar chords, hushed vocals, and bowed upright bass, then suddenly breaks into a rousing, countrified two-step. An instrumental section that I’ll call Middle-Eastern-raga-psychedelia filled up the middle. All of these elements shouldn’t gel, but they do. As many decades as I’ve been in this music-writing racket, and as jaded as I can be sometimes, the song has always left me shaking my head in awe.

Now to the not-so-great stuff—namely, Someday Honey’s pacing. Baker and Walker delight in between-song patter. She landed some funny off-handed jokes at the Side Door, to which Walker added often nonsensical asides, but the chatter went on too long. Between every song. At the end of “Turtle Blues,” while many audience members stood up and cheered, I muttered, “Now go, go, go,” wanting them to build on the energy, take the crowd over the top. Nope. They reverted to form and resumed their gabbing.

Someday Honey’s been a band for going on seven years, give or take, and it doesn’t appear that tightening up their stage presentation is a priority. In fact, they seem quite contrary about doing so. To be clear: I’m not suggesting playlists, just a sense of awareness that the audience—especially regulars—may not be as amused as they are.

Still and all, I’ll continue to go see my favorite Tampa Bay band every chance I get, even as I continue to get antsy over their shenanigans between tunes. If that’s something Someday Honey needs in order to make every performance different from the last—damn the set lists, I’m OK with it.

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