Austin Escorts: Minneapolis finally gets into the Black
Although eager to finally play the Cities as a headliner Sunday at the Cedar Cultural Center, Lewis was not shy about stating the poor impression he got of Minnesota in his midteens, when his mom took a job through IBM that brought him to Rochester for about a year: “I hated it,” he said. “Too much snow, and there were as many rednecks up there as there are here in Texas.”
Lewis talked with the same kind of candor about some of the songs on “Scandalous.” True to the title, these aren’t tunes you’re likely to hear on the Disney Channel.
The shout-and-response-filled single “Booty City,” for instance, was inspired by a visit to an area of Washington, D.C., that Lewis said is heavily populated by Ethiopian-Americans. “Me and the bassist Bill [Stevenson] gave it that nickname after we got a look at some of those women,” he said, shaking his head.
One of the album’s grittiest (and best) tracks, “Mustang Ranch,” pays homage to an infamous brothel outside Reno. What sounds like a pretty clever piece of fiction is actually a true recap of the Honeybears’ effort to get their “hams glazed” during a long cross-country trek.