Dirty Honey is one of the most-exciting bands to emerge in the past few years. The Los Angeles quartet stands out by playing straight-up guitar-based rock and roll with a distinct ’70s hard-rock vibe and a fresh attitude.
Touring heavily on their own and opening for Kiss, Guns ’N Roses, and the Black Crowes rapidly built a sizeable fan base. Guitarist John Notto, vocalist Marc LaBelle, bassist Justin Smolian, and new drummer Jaydon Bean have just released Can’t Find the Brakes, the band’s second full-length album, once again produced by Nick DiDia, who helmed their 2019 EP and full-length debut.
Given your heavy touring schedule, were the new songs written on the road?
It was a piecemeal process that started on the road. When we got Jaydon out for the winter tour in Europe, we started working on songs during soundcheck. Then, we did three days a week for three weeks straight at my home studio. That’s a lot of where the magic of the record started to take shape, where we really started to put effort into tunes that stretch our repertoire. There was one song where I demoed 90 percent myself, and that was (the first single) “Won’t Take Me Alive.”
When you’re recording, do you consider guitar tracks as you think ahead to live performance?
There is guitar multi-tracking. We’ve been very slick all along about it, and the thing we mostly stay away from is very obvious guitar overdubs that become so essential you’ll miss them live. We do want to avoid that. On this record, there are more keyboards and background vocals, and some of those are going to be essential, but we decided, “Let’s let our imaginations take more of a driver’s seat this time. Let’s make a great record and figure it out later.”
Your first release was an EP and your first album had eight songs. Can’t Find the Brakes has 11. Did you consciously want to release more material this time?
I think so. We all felt it was time to put forth that effort. Also, the addition of Jaydon unlocked something in terms of freedom in the writing room. We’ve known Jaydon for many, many years, so we knew his talent. What we didn’t see coming was how talented he is as a background vocal arranger. He also sings live. And he jumped right in at the chance to write.
Do you have a couple of personal highlights among the new songs?
“Don’t Put Out the Fire” started in the rehearsal studio with me playing drums and Justin playing bass; he did a bendy lick that I copied and made into a guitar thing.
The night I made the demo for “Won’t Take Me Alive,” I knew I had something. I played it for some people and said, “I don’t know what the hell happened, but you’ve got to hear what I just made!”
“Coming Home (Ballad of the Shire)” is fingerpicked, and that’s Justin playing guitar. He was a classical-guitar major in college and wrote that song. I’m playing slide on a dobro, 12-string, and a steady rhythm part underneath – all the adornments.
On “You Make it All Right,” Marc was sitting at the Rhodes, tinkering around. He was singing some soulful stuff in rehearsal, but saying, “I can’t come up with any chords. What would you guys use with this?” We start following each other, and the tune wrote itself. For the solo, I said, “What if Slash and David Lindley had a baby?”
The ending on “Rebel Son” was a re-record. We had piano player Ian Peres come in. We said, “Why don’t we just get creative and slice the second half of this tune.” The song is basically two recordings. I pulled out this old riff for the groove and the piano parts.
Which guitars did you use on the album?
The two that saw the most action were the Custom Shop ’59 Les Paul Lemon Drop that I play live and a Custom Shop heavy-aged Les Paul Junior I used a lot to pair with it. We also used a ’66 ES-335 and a ’64 330.
On the first half of “Rebel Son,” I used a ’90s Strat that Nick had, and I used a Greco Les Paul copy on the solo for “Can’t Find the Brakes.”
I approached the solos asking myself, “What would separate the sound from whatever I used on the rhythm?” Because the album is varied, it didn’t feel right to do the whole thing with one guitar.
This article originally appeared in VG’s November 2023 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
