Hops & Honey String Band Jazz Band from Portland, OR

The Hops & Honey String Band brews up an intoxicating blend of early jazz, ragtime, and country blues music from the 1920s and '30s. Audiences of all ages enjoy the authentic string band sound, which includes spirited vocals, fiddle, mandolin, string bass, fingerstyle guitar, rustic percussion, and cornet. With a songlist covering such diverse artists as Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Frank Stokes, Rosa Henderson, Bo Carter, Sweet Emma Barrett, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Mance Lipscomb, a performance by The Hops & Honey String Band is like travelling back to a different time and place. Unrequited love, money troubles, and dust-ups with the law are not new to pop music. Hops & Honey audiences gain a deeper appreciation of the roots of today's popular music; and they find that the human foibles chronicled in the old songs have not changed much in the last century. “The melodies are catchy, and often the lyrics are funny double-entendres,” comments guitarist Andrew Yeomans. “We're serious about doing justice to the music, but it's not always serious music; a lot of it is just the party music of those days.”