Honey and The Bear celebrate ten years with Shoreham date

SussexWorld

East Anglian duo Honey and The Bear – Lucy and Jon Hart – are celebrating their tenth anniversary this year with a tour which brings them to Shoreham’s Ropetackle Arts Centre on Friday, September 13.

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. It's lovely

00:06this afternoon to speak to the East Anglian duo, Honey and the Bear, Lucy and John Hart.

00:11I don't know which is the bear, which is the honey, but fantastic to speak to you both.

00:17And you are on a 10th anniversary tour, which is going to bring you to Shoreham, which is

00:21lovely. Tell me about those 10 years. Does it seem 10 years ago that you started performing

00:25together?

00:26It's that weird thing with a 10 year reflection is we sort of remember what we were doing

00:3110 years ago and where it all started. But it just seems like the blink of an eye, really.

00:37We've always really just thoroughly enjoyed all of our musical exploits with Honey and

00:42the Bear. And it's been it's been a really packed 10 years, lots of exciting highlights.

00:47Yeah.

00:48And tell me why it works as a duo. What are you different in personality? Complementary

00:54in personality? What's going on?

00:56Well, I think complementary in personality, really. John is the bubbly, chatty person

01:01on the mic. He's really good at connecting with an audience. I guess we both have our

01:07musical skills that we bring to the duo.

01:11Lucy's really organised.

01:12Are you saying you're not?

01:13I'm just straight ahead with loads of enthusiasm and just let's do it. And then Lucy's like,

01:19OK. I mean, Lucy's got such an ear for detail. She did a recording session before we got

01:27together and the engineer said, oh, it's actually just perfectly in tune. I don't need to use

01:32any auto tune on Lucy's voice. It's just there's so much auto tune that goes on these days.

01:37So, yeah, it's that mixture of forces that, yeah, I need Lucy's collected, really organised

01:47brain just to help sort of, you know, give the structure to all of my zany ideas.

01:54So that's what the honey gives to the bear then, presumably.

01:58That's the honey I can honestly say that, Phil, yeah.

02:02And to mark, as part of the things you're doing to mark this anniversary, you've produced

02:07a very rare cover of a very important song, which you're releasing as a single, aren't

02:12you?

02:13Yes.

02:14That song. And why that song?

02:16Who knows where the time goes?

02:18Yeah. Sandy Denny cover. We started this, well, we started performing it for the first

02:24time during lockdown when we were doing lockdown live streams, which we did 52. And since then

02:32it's just become a regular in our set and people really respond to it well. And we have

02:37fun singing it, especially with the band as well. The band have just added a whole new

02:41dimension to it for us.

02:43It's a very reflective song to reflect what were reflective times.

02:49Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's that hugely pivotal time during lockdown. It seems so long ago

02:56itself right now. But we are, we're so, yeah, it does. A different life. But we're so respectful

03:04for Sandy's original. It's not quite the same as the Sandy original. There's a little bit

03:09of variation in melody, but we love the original. We just, we can't help it as Honey in the

03:14Beer. We have to do something a little different with it.

03:17It always makes me laugh.

03:18You have to, there's no point in covering otherwise, isn't there?

03:20It always makes me laugh. After a gig, I'm always waiting for that person to come up

03:24and say, you're very brave to try a Sandy Denny cover. Like so many people have said

03:29that to me. It's like, tick, okay, someone said it today.

03:34We continually are bowled over with how much love there is for the song, but it's landed

03:39really well with everybody, thankfully. And even with Sandy's daughter tuned into one

03:45of our live streams from Australia and left us a lovely little note just saying, that's

03:50great, guys. Thanks so much. And we saw that as being the go ahead. Okay, it's okay to

03:57play the song. We probably needed that approval to be able to feel like it was okay.

04:02Fantastic timing then to go back to the 10th anniversary. Lovely to speak to you both,

04:08Honey in the Beer. You're playing Shoreham before too long. Really good to speak to you.

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