The ‘deans of Grand Rapids pop/rock scene’ mark four decades March 27 at SpeakEZ Lounge, a good time to resurrect the RSVP Music Podcast hosted by Ralston Bowles, who digs into The Honeytones’ history.
Rocking the RSVP Podcast & Lots of Stages: The Honeytones with Ralston Bowles. (Photo/Local Spins)
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Sometimes, the disastrous gigs as a band make the best stories.
And when you’ve been playing in a rock band for 40 years, that’s a lot of calamities and a lot of stories.
When guitarist Charley Honey and I formed The Honeytones in 1986 with bassist Ron Hovingh, little did we know that we’d still be rocking stages and writing new music four decades later.
During that time, we recorded two albums (and a goofy studio session only preserved on cassette tapes), played Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts 15 years in a row, staged more than two dozen Feedback benefits for charity with a who’s who roster of 50-plus Michigan bands and generally reveled in the unique camaraderie and thrills that come with turning up amps and singing with talented musicians and friends.
For good or bad, we’ve been described as the “deans of Grand Rapids pop-rock scene” and the “cicadas of rock” (emerging from our burrows just a few times a year), and our lineups over the years have included more than 20 different musicians and singers. (Fortunately, current bassist Matt Fouts and drummer Tom Taylor have put up with us longer than any other bandmates. Must be our sense of humor and impeccable fashion taste.)
We’re also incredibly thankful for the recent addition of singer Alistair Beerens, whose mother, Susan, was a beloved longtime member of our band until she sadly and tragically passed away after a long battle with cancer in 2025. Such is the magical circle of life.
Robust History: The Honeytones over the years.
Astonishingly, as one of the area’s longest continuously operating rock bands, we’re getting set to play our 40th anniversary show (What?!? Did we start this band when we were 12 years old?!?) at SpeakEZ Lounge on March 27 with several special guests. As part of that, we’ll dig out tunes we haven’t played in 30 years as well as a couple of brand new originals, not to mention covers by some bands you’ve never heard of before.
It seemed only apropos then for Local Spins to resurrect its long dormant RSVP Music Podcast, co-hosted by another music scene veteran, Ralston Bowles, to discuss this unlikely anniversary and the event-filled journey of The Honeytones with myself and Mr. Honey.
You can listen to our ramblings below, but because those aforementioned disasters didn’t find their way into that podcast, let us recount a few of them for your entertainment:
• During our nerve-racking, first-ever, prime-time, main-stage Festival appearance — which we found out about at the 11th hour due to a cancellation of the scheduled band — our drummer Stevie Ray gave a thumbs up to the stage manager way before we were ready to roll: Charley was still tuning his guitar to my keyboard as part of our old-school routine. As Charley recalls: “I’m tuning up my guitar to your keyboard, and even as we’re doing that, the emcee says, ‘Ready, fellas?’ And Stevie Ray pipes up, ‘Let’s go!’ The emcee introduces us: ‘Let’s have a big warm welcome for the Honeytones!’ and then I spend the next three minutes desperately trying to get in tune as we’re barreling thru our cover of a BoDeans tune. Also, I’m playing thru an amplifier Stevie Ray had brought that I’d never used before, and my guitar lead sounded like a squadron of kazoos. So once we got through that we knew we could get through anything.” Another footnote: As we finished up our set, the stage manager waved us on saying we had time to play a couple more songs. We were flabbergasted. More songs? Being new to this whole thing, we just threw up our hands and said, “That’s all we’ve got.”
• Years later, we played the City Stage at Festival in a downpour where only the drummer was protected from the rain. At one point, I looked down to see that my keyboard was plugged into an outlet that seemed to be floating in a puddle. Probably not ideal. When our set wrapped up, I picked up my trusty Yamaha DX7 keyboard and poured a torrent of water out of it. Miraculously, it didn’t get fried and worked for our next gig. (We did find out later that all of the other stages at Festival had been shut down during that downpour, except ours.)
The Interview: In The Honeytones’ Lair (Courtesy Photo)
• At two different gigs over the years, fights between drunken revelers took place right in front of the stage, with the combatants bumping into our equipment and forcing me to hold onto my keyboard for dear life as beer sloshed over the equipment.
• Then there was “The Oil Painting Gig.” We were hired to play a banquet room filled with Grand Rapids Press newspaper carriers and their parents dressed in coats and ties (this after our drummer arrived from Nashville literally 15 minutes before we were supposed to start playing). Our audience barely moved as we churned out our energetic rock set, only “clapping ever so politely while peering up at us over their empty plates and cups of half-drunk coffee,” Charley recalled. Afterward, our bassist Ron Hovingh put it perfectly: “It felt like we were performing in front of an oil painting.”
• Naturally, there have been plenty of on-stage blunders and exasperating incidents along the way: failing to get paid what we were promised, drum pedals falling apart, keyboard stands collapsing on stage, cops arriving to shut us down due to noise complaints and sound guys cursing us, not to mention fending off unwanted advances from drunken fans. (OK fine, I know, that’s par for the course when it comes to rock bands.)
Yet, through it all, we can honestly say it’s been nothing but a joyous gift to share our music with others and to rock the house wherever we’ve played.
To commemorate our 40th year, The Honeytones will even head back into the studio (Goon Lagoon) in April to record two songs and do something we’ve never done before: release a vinyl 45, in true retro, back to the future fashion.
Listen to the podcast conversation about The Honeytones below.
PODCAST: RSVP Music Podcast featuring The Honeytones
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