Matt Walker is hunched over his laptop playing selections from Someday Honey’s album-in-progress. His partner in music and life, singer Kaleigh Baker, sits on a nearby couch. Their running commentary accompanies the music pouring from the speakers. The tracks are raw, but the songs, and the singing, and the playing — they’re terrific.
Someday Honey — which also includes drummer Sammy Farmer and acoustic bassist Mark Cunningham — melds an array of vintage influences into a sound that’s very much its own. It’s rock and roll, country-soul, blues, R&B, gospel, Appalachian folk and more — all wrapped in an aesthetic that emphasizes spontaneity. Roots music with a David Lynchian twist. A hippie jam band — loose, off-the-cuff — that doesn’t indulge in long, rambling solos.
“We play with a jazz mentality without playing jazz music,” Walker explains.
These four accomplished and versatile musicians are, by all appearances on this Tuesday evening in October, amiably collaborative and enjoy an easy chemistry. In other words, the opposite of dysfunctional. It’s a new experience for most of the members.
“This is the first band I’ve been in that I’m friends with everyone,” says Farmer. “We’re completely, like, buds. I know it’s cliche — but we’re family.”
“We don’t argue,” Baker adds. “We all concede when there’s a better idea. We get there fast.”
I’ve stopped by the faded pink house in St. Petersburg where Baker and Walker live. It’s the band’s HQ and recording studio — and very much looks the part. Guitars hang from the walls, line up in racks, lay haphazardly on the floor. Jammed into the high-ceilinged, wood-paneled main room are keyboards, amps, a drum kit, racks of effects, and even a flugelhorn on the mantelpiece. And let’s not ignore the year-round Christmas tree in the corner that Walker says enhances the acoustics.
Someday Honey has been a band for a little over two years. The yet-to-be-titled album came about, in part, because “we’re getting too tight,” Walker declares. “We need to record these songs and bring in a new batch.”
That shouldn’t be a problem. Baker and Walker have developed into a potent songwriting tandem. Living under one roof, they routinely chase the creative spark. Sometimes, as an exercise, they’ll quickly write a tune in a certain genre — say, hip-hop or metal — and if a keeper idea emerges, they morph it into their own style. Or sometimes a song just happens. “Tom Waits says, if you’re catching a good tune you just got to throw in your bait and be silent,” Walker says.
Baker is the “hook master,” Walker says, constantly coming up with fragments of melody and lyrics. But “I get stunted by chordal structures,” adds Baker, who plays acoustic guitar.
IF YOU GO
Melody Trucks Band CD Release
w/Someday Honey
Sat. Nov. 9, 8 p.m. $13.
Skipper’s Smokehouse, 910 Skipper Rd., Tampa.
skipperssmokehouse.com
“Matt fleshes out the harmony. He finishes my musical sentences perfectly,” she adds. “He plays all the instruments and we can get a tune recorded in a night.”
Farmer and Cunningham bring in their own material as well. Part of the band’s repertoire is Farmer’s “Haines Road,” a paean to the shabby street in St. Pete where he lives. The drummer and bassist add their own parts — however they see fit.
“I used to say to Matt, ‘I would really like this [part] here,’” Baker says. “But he says, ‘Let them do what they want. It ushers in the purest form of creativity possible.’ It took some getting used to, but I’m completely on board.”
Someday Honey mixes an eclectic group of cover songs into their live sets — not slavish copies but reimagined versions with the band’s own stamp that “come out naturally,” Walker says. A sampling includes Buck Owens’ “Tiger by the Tail,” Ruth Brown’s “I Don’t Know,” Tom Petty’s “Walls,” The Temptations’ “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” and a few by Waits, including “Jockey Full of Bourbon.” (Baker has her own original titled “What Would Tom Waits Do?”)
On a busy month, Someday Honey plays around six gigs at such places as The Hideaway Café and The Ale and the Witch in St. Pete, Skipper’s Smokehouse in Tampa, and clubs in Gainesville, Jacksonville, Sanford and Winter Haven. The members augment their schedules (and income) with solo gigs and as part-timers in other bands.
The origins of Someday Honey are a complicated web of musical and personal relationships, chance encounters, courtships (musical and romantic), shared sensibilities and near-instant connectivity. Suffice to say that they officially formed when Baker asked John Kelly, owner of the Hideaway Cafe, if she could bring in a band for a Monday night residency.
Baker, 33, grew up in rural western New York, not planning to be a professional musician. She certainly knew she could sing, though. While in her early 20s, living in Orlando, Baker did a couple of open mic nights.
“The people loved it,” she says offhandedly. “And I liked that people liked it. Then they offered me money to do it.”
That set off a rollercoaster early career. The owner of Sonic Cauldron studio in Orlando would let her and friends use the space in the early morning hours; there she wrote songs and collaborated with other musicians and was free to create.
But Orlando is a corporate town, from Disneyworld to Matchbox 20 to late jailbird Lou Pearlman’s boy-band factory. For a time, Baker got ensnared in that culture.
“Men started forming teams around me, putting money behind me,” she says with a note of disdain. “They cast me as a blues singer and started auditioning bedroom players to be my backing band. It didn’t work. And I really had no business singing the blues.”
Baker moved on to a perky jazz combo called Swing in Time, which she says was fun, albeit musically slight. Her last Orlando project, Kaleigh Baker & Her Enablers, featured her original songs, but ultimately fell apart. Meanwhile, a certain bass player was circling her orbit, interested in her musically and romantically, dropping hints to fellow musicians. She decided a change of scenery was in order and moved to St. Pete to be with Walker.
Baker admits to being a ball of anxiety and complaining a lot. Walker is a free spirit who speaks fast and pours out a torrent of ideas and random takes, his voice ranging from an excited yelp to a conspiratorial whisper.
“I tend to project my insecurities on Matt,” Baker says. “I never do it to Sammy and Mark because I don’t sleep with them.”
Walker, 29, played bass for bluesman Damon Fowler until dropping out six months into his tenure with Someday Honey. How did he manage to keep his guitar chops up as a full-time, itinerant bass player?
“It’s impossible,” he says. “I will say that playing bass ultimately helped my guitar playing.”
Going all in with Someday Honey ignited a breakthrough that enabled Walker to find his own six-string voice. He’s a quirky but cohesive player who stirs together country twang, jazz-infected lines, blues-rock bombast and clever dissonances. The guitarist is particularly adept at playing slow melodic fills and solos that support and enliven the song.
Bassist Cunningham played keyboards for the much-revered Bay area band Nervous Turkey (which still does the occasional gig). He’s also a structural engineer, the only member with a day job. Farmer drummed for the Bradenton-based blues outfit Doug Demming & the Jewel Tones prior to committing to Someday Honey.
All of them can sing — and their earthy four-part harmonies are a band trademark. Baker performs most of the lead vocals. Think Janis Joplin sans the rasp and ravage, with a range that goes from a girlish falsetto to a low moan. Most of all, her singing oozes personality and emotion, from somber to playful.
A few Saturdays ago, I took some friends to a Someday Honey show at the Hideaway. My pal Brendan, impressed, murmured to me, “Why aren’t these guys touring? I don’t think Alabama Shakes has anything on them.”
It’s a good question. I first saw the band when they opened for Los Lobos in February. They put on a show that, I wrote at the time, “oozed pure joy.” I just assumed they were traveling with Los Lobos as part of the tour. When Baker told the crowd that Someday Honey was from St. Pete, I was gobsmacked.
So, really, why aren’t they touring?
“Money,” Walker says.
“No one in the band has the connections to get next-level backing,” Baker adds. “There’s no nepotism out there for us.”
“Although if anyone’s interested…,” Walker interjects, with a sly smile.
“We could go on tour and sleep in a van a couple nights a week,” Baker continues, “or I can come home to my house after making music at night, sleep in my own bed, make enough money to pay my bills. It doesn’t make sense to go on the road if we haven’t released a record. That will kind of dictate where we go from there. Right now we’re concentrating on keeping it fun, fun, fun. The music is winning, more so than the business.”
Follow @cl_music on Twitter to get the most up-to-date music news, concert announcements and local tunes. Subscribe to our newsletter, too.
This article appears in Nov 7-14, 2019.