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| Left to right: Ben Malament, Lech Wierzynski, Beau Bradbury, Lorenzo Loera |
Lech Wierzynski
was born in Warsaw, Poland, where he listened to contraband American records
and imitated the vocal styles of Sam
Cooke, Ray Charles, and Louis Armstrong. Coming to the United
States as a first-generation immigrant youth, where he was raised by Polish
political refugees, he listened intensely to American rock and roll, soul, jazz
and hip-hop recordings. During his teenage years, he studied trumpet and started
playing blues and jazz at after-hours jam sessions in Washington D.C., and eventually
launched a music career on the club circuit in the San Francisco Bay Area of
California. In 2007, he formed a blues and rhythm and blues band, which played on
the sidewalks and in the subway stations of Oakland. With Wierzynski as the vocalist
and multi-instrumentalist band leader, and co-founder Ben Malament as the percussionist, the busking California Honeydrops' public party music quickly developed a
passionate local following. The band's fifth and most recent studio album is
2015's A Higher Degree.
Headlining at the Bowery
Ballroom tonight, the California Honeydrops' sound was bound by their New
Orleans-rooted style of bluesy vocals, barrelhouse piano, and punctuating brass
riffs. With virtually no guitars in the mix, the bubbling energy was sparked
simply by the interplay of vocals, keyboards and four horn players. Crossing
genres from Delta blues to southern soul with funk and a dash of Americana, the
band’s shows featured extensive jamming, with many songs hovering around 10 minutes
of length. Wierzynski made crowd interaction an integral element to the
defining results, dissolving the boundaries between the band and the audience.
In the end, this was more of a party than a concert, especially when Wierzynski
surprised the audience by announcing that the band would take a brief break and
return in a few minutes for a second set.
Visit the California Honeydrops at www.cahoneydrops.com.
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