The Old Time Sound of Honey Don’t

From their days building custom furniture out of deer and elk antlers to playing in the bluegrass-based group the Sweet Sunny South and, later, forming their husband-and-wife duo Honey Don’t, Bill Powers and Shelley Gray have a knack for keeping it old school while embodying the changing spirit of the West. Having spent some time in the state of Colorado, they and their two sons, Jobim and Rowan, recently relocated to the Pacific Northwest, where they now reside in the town of Bend, Oregon, near the banks of the Deschutes River.

TipJar: Good to talk to you. I remember seeing some great shows by your band The Sweet Sunny South down in Telluride at the Fly Me to the Moon Saloon and listening to some really nice CDs that you sent me from Paonia. Are you originally from Colorado?

Bill Powers: I was born and raised in Mississippi and also spent a few years living in southeast Missouri. I  came to Colorado with my family on a skiing trip when I was a kid and from the first time I set foot in the state I just knew I was gonna get my way back there.  My sister moved to Aspen in 1986 and invited me to spend a summer with her. And so I did. She worked as an interior designer for Ralph Lauren and I became friends with some of her clients who lived in the nearby town of Redstone. These folks supplied antlers to her for various projects and they had kids my age and invited me to visit them on weekends. I’d hitchhike over to Redstone on a Friday and meet up with all their crazy friends and help them out with whatever they needed. The next summer they invited me to work for them, and that turned into working with them for a few summers, and eventually I moved to the area full time.

How’d you get into playing music?

I saw the Grateful Dead in Telluride during my first summer in Colorado (1987). I didn’t know much about the band or anyone who was into them, but I kind of got immersed in that whole scene there and started playing music with some people who turned out to be from Austin, where my dad and I were living at the time. I was also taking some guitar lessons. I started seeing more shows over the next few years and jamming with these folks. We were just learning to play and kinda did our own interpretations of Dead songs.

How did that experience transition into bluegrass and the rootsier sound that you later developed?

Well, when I got to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 1991, I was introduced to artists like Sam Bush and David Grisman and all these people that I just loved. Their music was challenging to me. I had basically been playing pretty simple garage rock up ’til then and after witnessing the bluegrass fest I went back to Austin and got a cheap mandolin. I began messing around with it. I was really working on my flat-picking at the time.  With the mandolin, and bluegrass, I felt like I was playing at about 40,000 miles an hour (laughs). I loved it though. It was a journey of hearing the music, appreciating the sound and then trying little by little to do it myself. In terms of playing, things got real when I moved to Paonia and started working as a DJ at the local radio station (KVNF.org)  where I filled in for the guy was doing the country music slot, which later turned into the bluegrass show. In the process of gathering people to help me with the bluegrass program I met the folks who would become my band members. We were all  learning a lot about the genre while doing the radio show, and we were bringing bluegrass artists to Paonia to perform. Among other acts, we brought the band Open Road to town. They made a big impact on us. They came down from Fort Collins, which was one of the hotspots for bluegrass in the state at that time.

It was wonderful to be inspired by these bands and we determined to learn the traditional stuff. While I had started out listening to groups like Leftover Salmon and the more progressive outfits associated with the genre, bluegrass has a way of drawing you back farther and farther into its history. So we decided we’d wear suits, gather around a single microphone and present ourselves in the old time tradition. Our thinking was that while we might not sound very good we could at least look like we might (laughs).

Why did you choose Paonia as a place to settle?

Shelley and I first met in Redstone and later she taught school in Marble. We were looking for a place in that part of Colorado where we could afford to live and buy a house. We thought about Carbondale, but Paonia was more affordable and it was kind of off-the-beaten-path. We’d been there a few times to check out music at places like the Paradise Theatre and it was kind of like going back in time.  Living in the mountains we’d gotten used to being in a canyon where the sun came up at 11 a.m. and went down at 2 in the afternoon. It was a lot nicer in Paonia. After you go over McClure Pass out of Redstone, the land  just opens up and there’s more light. So I sold my motorcycle, made a down payment on a house  and we set up a little shop to build furniture and custom home decorations.

And it was while you were living there that you formed the Sweet Sunny South?

Yeah,  the band grew out of my bluegrass radio show experience. There weren’t a lot of people living there when we first got to town, it was pretty darned quiet. It started out as a bunch of okay musicians who had an interest in learning and who kept at it and improved. Around 2001 an early version of the group went to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and played in the band contest. We probably had seven songs total that we knew how to play. At the end of our set they asked us to play an extra song and we were like no thanks we’re good (laughs). We had everything worked out to a T on those tunes but that was the extent of our comfort level. The next year we went up to RockyGrass in Lyons and came in second place. That was really exciting.  I think the band Broke Mountain Bluegrass won the contest that year. Shelley joined the SSS on upright bass sometime in 2003, and in 2004 we released our first CD, Bell Creek Dance Club.  By 2006, we had a few CDs out and we were really moving along. Rob Miller was on guitar and Cory Obert was on the fiddle. That was when you saw us in Telluride. The band the Wilders had taken us under their wing around that time and really encouraged us. They were great. Phil Wade from the Wilders produced our last SSS record.  We identified with each other because we were both a little bit outside of the bluegrass box.  We played a mix of bluegrass and old time music. We loved bluegrass but we seemed to have a knack for incorporating the old time sound as well. That mix of bluegrass and old time was our sweet spot.

Do you still have your classic old wooden Sweet Sunny South sign?

Yeah, we have all that stuff including the old suitcase with the stickers all over it and our suits and stuff.  It was a throwback thing like you would have seen at the Grand Ole Opry back in the day. We were shaping our image (laughs).

How many CDs did you release as the Sweet Sunny South?

Four studio CDs and one live CD.

http://www.sweetsunnysouth.com/music.php

And out of the SSS came Honey Don’t?

Yes, in 2006 Shelley and I started Honey Don’t as a way to play some songs that didn’t fit the SSS band. I think we played our first set on New Year’s Day in 2006 at an open mic.  It was easier for me to work my songs into being using Honey Don’t.  I’d always wanted to do some side stuff and it was an outlet that allowed me to work up a tune without having to go through the process of teaching it to the whole group. It turned into what we do now.  We were very fortunate to have Greg Schocet and Ryan Drickey join us for our first release, which came out in 2009.

Ryan and Greg arranged and produced that CD, which made it to the Top 40 on the National Americana charts. I think we topped out at about no. 24. That was a great achievement, because the Americana charts have gotten to a point now where a group like ours would have a really hard time making any kind of a dent. The genre has really blown up, with artists including Bob Dylan being part of it. In 2014 we put out our second release, Heart Like a Wheel, which I had in bigger hand in producing and promoting.

www.honeydont.net 

Nice. I have the Heart Like a Wheel  CD. I really like it.

I recorded much of that CD in  our home studio. I spent a lot of time trying to get it to be exactly how I envisioned it. In my mind the release was a true expression of what I wanted to say musically. It did really well in Europe, where it was largely promoted by the blogging community. Europe has its own Americana charts, the EuroAmericana Charts —http://euroamericanachart.eu/chartarchivefield_month_tid=2. One of my dreams is to do a European tour once our kids get a little older.

Do you have a new release in the works?

I’m thinking about doing an EP. Currently we’re playing with a great dobro player and I have a bunch of new songs in line.

How are you liking your new state of Oregon?

So far it’s been good. Moving out here was something Shelley was really excited about.  She’s originally from Minnesota and she had checked out some schools here earlier in her life but wound up going to school in Missoula, which was a little closer to Minnesota. But she had always wanted to go out to Oregon when she was younger and when we got to a point in Paonia where we needed to try something new, so we took a trip out this way. It was just gorgeous. I am such the Colorado person, it’s ingrained in me, the history and everything, it became part of me, but my two kids wanted to move and Shelley wanted to further her education as a reading and dyslexia specialist. She wasn’t getting enough use of her expertise in Paonia, and we found a guy who wanted to buy our house there and things fell together for us. We got a decent price on the house and we went for it. I was sad to leave but it was good to get outside the little bubble that we had created. There aren’t many places I could leave Colorado and go, but it’s working out well for us. People tell us we’re doing great in terms of becoming a part of the community. Bend is kind of like a grown-up version of Paonia.

How’s the music scene there?

We get great music coming through Bend. There are concerts coming up by artists including Robert Plant, Alison Krauss, Willie Nelson, and Wilco at the Les Schwab Amphitheater (www.bendconcerts.com), which is a great place to see a show. I don’t usually go to big shows but I just got my tickets for Wilco the other day. You get all kinds of different music coming through. Culturally, this has been a good move for us and our kids. We have a lot more opportunities now.  And I also like the music scene in Portland. The scene there represents just about any genre you could think of, everything from old time roots music to old school country and beyond.

What’s it like working as a husband-and-wife team?

It’s great.  I have a lot of respect for my wife. She can tackle just about anything she puts her mind to.  She was very supportive of me in my musical endeavors and then she actually stepped in and started playing in the band. She had been a tap dancer growing up and she has a great sense of rhythm. Her bass playing really helped bring the music together. And of course having a woman playing bass lends a sense of mystery. People want to see her — “Who’s the gal on bass?!” We have a certain groove that we play that’s a little behind the beat, it’s not like bluegrass that pushes forward all the time. It’s more laid-back. Our biggest thing is our singing. I’m not a vocal powerhouse singer on my own, but our vocal harmonies blend really nicely and that’s the crux of Honey Don’t. I can always go to her when I’m trying to figure out a sound.  And we’ve worked together a lot in general. We made furniture and then we started a couple bands. We’ve always been really entwined and able to make it work. It’s not always perfect but we’ve always been able to keep things going. I give her a lot of credit for being the kind of person she is. She’s very mellow, very flexible and very mature.

That’s awesome. What are you plans for the near future?

We’re  still in the process of plugging into the music scene here. We’re figuring out who we might pair up with for shows and that kind of thing. But we’re reaping the benefits of being in a bigger place and it’s pretty damned nice.  Honey Don’t recently opened up for the Jeff Austin Band at the Domino Room here in Bend, which was a great opportunity for us and a lot of fun. It’s the kind of thing that we might have gotten to do had we lived closer to Denver when we were in Colorado. We’re looking forward to laying the ground work here in Bend and then eventually we plan to play all over the state of Oregon.

Sounds like a fun plan. Thanks for your time.

Have a good one.

(Photos of Honey Don’t by JT Thomas)

#Music