By Thomas Crone
Dirty Honey doesn’t rehash tired old rock.
Rather, live shows and last year’s second album, Can’t Find The Breaks, finds the Southern California rock ‘n’ roll band injecting propulsion, youthful energy, and a new spin on sound that is rooted in the ’60s.
“To have people say that they feel like what we’re doing is fresh, I think that’s a high honor, to be fresh in a world where we’ve already had psychedelic blues,” says guitarist John Notto. “We’ve had ’70s commercial rock. We had ’80s glam metal. We’ve had ’90s stoner rock. We’ve had rap rock in the late ’90s. We’ve had basically commercialized rock since 2000. It’s almost like what else is there? What has freed us up is we feel like we can be sort of the melting pot of all our influences. And that’s kind of our thing.”
Dirty Honey started its thing in 2017. That’s when Notta, who grew up in Maine, moved to Los Angeles. There he met Marc LaBelle and joined the singer’s band Ground Zero. Adding a couple of new members, the band changed its name to Dirty Honey and largely dropped the covers from their set.
The determinedly independent quartet broke through nationally in 2019, when, with its debut single “When I’m Gone,” it became the first unsigned band to top Billboard magazine’s Mainstream Rock Songs in the four decades of the chart’s existence.
That song, and the group’s 2021 self-titled debut album, propelled Dirty Honey into co-headlining clubs with Mammoth WVH, touring Europe, and opening for The Who, Guns N’ Roses, Kiss, and Rival Sons, as the band brought its Aerosmith-meets-AC/DC classic rock assault and high energy stage show to multi-generational audiences.
That wide appeal comes in part from the band’s knowledge and absorption of rock history. Notto credits his mother’s record collection and the discoveries he made at 8 or 9 years old, long before he picked up a guitar.
“There were all the Jimi Hendrix originals and only one Led Zeppelin record,” says Notto. “It was Led Zeppelin II, an amazing record to stumble upon. Those guys, the Jimmies were massive. The Allman Brothers were there. But the biggest of the big three is probably Jimmy Page. … I really am a melting pot of influences. I have so much information because, you know, of the generation I’m part of.
“I love everyone,” says Notto. “Jimmy Page. Jimi Hendrix, Van Halen, Slash. Brian May, and the oddball is Trey Anastasio from Phish.” These influences come up in the riffs that drive Dirty Honey’s songs, a process that Notto calls tricky. “It’s sort of like trying to catch a bird, I think. You do it once. You do it twice. You think you know how to do it and as soon as you get cocky, you miss it.
“You get part of it showing up, putting the work in, and part of it is for me, trying out fresh approaches,” Notto says. “I think variety is the spice of life for me, and maybe it’s the ADHD, I don’t know.”
Getting those fresh approaches was a process for Lotto.
“Five years ago, I was really analytical about what makes a riff great, what makes a riff engaging, from a musical standpoint,” he says. “I really dissected it down to every beat.
“Then after a while, you know, the technical approach got stale, and so then ‘Won’t Take Me Alive’ came out,” he says. “It was ‘What if I really just want to go into the studio and make music that makes me happy tonight?”
“Won’t Take Me Alive” climbed to No. 7 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Songs chart when it was released last fall, and its follow-up single, “Can’t Find The Breaks,” helped to cement Dirty Honey‘s broad audience. Outside of some festival dates, the band is headlining in clubs and theaters rather than taking on opening slots.
“I like playing packed headlining shows,” Notto says. “We can play music longer and we play for fans who came for us. We’re sort of accepted as soon as we get up there. The result is I feel a little freer and put on a great show. … I mean, we can already hear them screaming for us before we get on stage and it is spilling over,” he says. “You can’t beat that.”