Black Joe Lewis is the realest motherfucker there is. When Covid sidelined his touring thispast year, he started laying concrete to help support his baby mama and his kid. That’sfuckin’ real. When Joe and his band, the Honeybears, popped onto the national stage over adecade ago, many critics embraced him but still, there were some that maintained that theyhadn’t paid their dues. Joe’s still here. Still going. Still cashing checks and snapping necks.The dues of hard work; the delirious heights of the industry as well as the disappointmentsand low hanging fruit. Through this all, Joe’s only honed his mastery over gut bucket bluesguitar and his true voice. It’s a vital and distinctly American voice that never anticipated theattention he wound up receiving, never went looking for it either. It just started happening.The garage, the blues, the propulsive and synergistic live performances that inhabit thespaces of James Brown, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and the MC5...those things happened naturallyfrom the very beginning and could only be accurately communicated in the live experience,not a press release or a slick brand campaign. Sharon Jones, Charles Bradley, Cedric Burnsideand Lightnin Malcolm, The Dirtbombs, Detroit Cobras, the Strange Boys; these are some ofthe artists that Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears shared countless bills with; almost a rollcall of the most influential soul and garage bands of the last twenty five years. Has the soulblues garage explosion from that era been commodified or worked into the overall templateof pop rock? Sure. But the ground floor was a vital space for people that like guitars andgrease and at this point Black Joe Lewis is one of the last standing that was there.Last of adying breed. Or maybe a missing link. Does this make him a throwback? A throwback to athrowback? It’d be tempting and easy for Joe to go along with that but nah, we don’t thinkso. We know that Joe Lewis is genuinely doing his thing and that he’d do it regardless ofwhat’s coming down the pipe. A stone cold original and a veteran at that. If you likewhistling in your music and some floppy hat, quaky kneed dudes cloyingly singing at you,then you might not “get it” but whatever...there are enough intrepid, degenerate weirdosthat do. Those are the folks Joe cares about. Not the glad handing set. Not the fair-weatherfriend set getting down with the flavor of the month. Like the title of his last album says,“the difference between me and you” is Joe defining for himself that there’s the belaboredwannabes and then there’s dudes that actually “HAVE the blues”...whatever the hell THATis! Joe’s concrete pouring boss is gonna miss him.

Eddie 9V has an endless stockpile of cool stories – and you’ll find twelve of them on his most recent studio album Saratoga, released in November 2024 on the fabled Ruf Records label. A thrilling mix of Southern soul, blues, rock, and funk, Saratoga proved to be a gamechanger: a road trip-ready record filled with razor-sharp observations, vintage textures, and raw humanity. It also marked a major career milestone: Eddie 9V’s soulful sound began reaching hundreds of thousands of new fans across the globe. Now signed to Easy Eye Sound — the Nashville-based label founded by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys — Eddie 9V is preparing to release a brand-new album in 2026. And the momentum keeps growing. Since Saratoga dropped, Eddie’s monthly listeners on Spotify have exploded from 8,000 to peaking at over 800,000.. Songs like “Halo,” “Saratoga” and “Love Moves Slow” have become SiriusXM Spectrum-certified tracks, gaining steady spins and major audience love. But this rise is years in the making. From the day he first slung a guitar on a local Georgia stage, Eddie 9V (born Brooks Mason) has been an artist to watch. First cutting his teeth in cover bands and regional blues circuits, he made the leap to full-time frontman with a name that couldn’t be ignored. "I wanted to start from scratch – and I ain’t never heard of no bluesman named Eddie 9V." That leap paid off. His early albums Left My Soul In Memphis (2019) and Little Black Flies (2021) turned heads for their wild energy and vintage flair. 2022's Capricorn was a breakout moment, earning rave reviews from Classic Rock, The Guardian, and more. It debuted at #1 on the blues charts before being dethroned by Bonnie Raitt — "a cool story to be able to say," Eddie laughs. By the time Saratoga arrived, Eddie 9V had evolved into a full-spectrum songwriter, tapping into deep wells of soul and storytelling alongside his brother and longtime collaborator Lane Kelly. Much of the album was recorded at their Echo Deco Studio in Atlanta, with some sessions at Denver’s Crown Lanes Studio. From the disco-tinged horns of the title track to the fuzzed-out dreamscape of “Delta,” it’s a record that widened the lens without losing the grit. Now with a major label partner, national tours, SiriusXM airplay, and streaming growth that shows no signs of slowing, Eddie 9V is poised for the next chapter. A new album is on the horizon. The band is sharper than ever. And if Saratoga was the ignition, what's coming next is the open highway. "I’m already writing new songs," he says. "You never stop."