Funky blues guitarist Black Joe Lewis headlines Cornerstone in Berkeley
BERKELEY -- A hard-grooving veteran funk and blues guitarist hits the stage at Cornerstone in Berkeley Thursday when Black Joe Lewis headlines the East Bay venue.
Austin-based artist Black Joe Lewis has been refining its pugilistic mix of wailing blues, horn-heavy soul and vintage garage-rock since he first picked up a guitar in the pawn shop where he worked in the early 2000s. The gruff-voiced guitar-slinger nodded more to the Otis Redding/James Brown school of retro-soul on early independent albums, but those recordings led to a deal with Lost Highway/Universal Motown for his debut album Tell 'Em What Your Name Is! in 2009, co-billed with longtime backing band the Honeybears. The follow-up album Scandalous continued in the vein of fuzzed-out garage and gritty, bluesy funk in the same territory as like-minded UK band the Heavy and long-running Boston act Barrance Whitfield and the Savages.
His 2013 effort Electric Slave credited to Lewis alone embraced a more primitive psych-blues style reminiscent of late '60s Chess Records releases by Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. However, the guitarist and his group have since returned to their earlier horn-driven, garage-funk style on more recent self-released recordings Backlash and The Difference Between You & Me. For his current tour, Lewis is joined by fellow Austin guitarist and songwriter Emily Wolfe, who channels the sounds of early '90s alternative rock on her tuneful self-produced latest effort The Blowback.
Black Joe Lewis
Thursday, Nov. 9, 7 p.m. $21-$25
Cornerstone Berkeley
