Most people know Eric Benny Bloom as the trumpet player for future-funk phenom Lettuce, but this Saturday, January 6th, the prolific instrumentalist and his bandmate Taylor Scott will celebrate the release of their debut country album as Benny & Taylor’s Honkytonk Express.
Formed in 2022, the duo has served as an outlet for Bloom and Scott’s mutual love of old-school honky-tonk country music and their shared desire to do something different.
“There’s a great bar called Yacht Club in Denver, and I’m the musical director,” Bloom told Live For Live Music. “The owners, Mary Allison Wright and McLain Hedges, are my best friends, and they really got me deeper into country. They took me to the national western stock show where I saw this band playing and I didn’t think they were that great, but I was like, ‘Man, I wish I could sing these f–king tunes. I bet I can put a band together that would kill this kind of music.'”
Bloom’s interest in country music actually dates back to his time touring with Diane Birch Band in the early 2000’s, before he joined Lettuce.
“We toured the world and did David Letterman and all these shows, and we played a lot in Nashville at The Ryman, and two of the guys in the band were really into country. They were from Iowa, so they used to listen to a lot of country in the car. And I really got into it, because I couldn’t play a bunch of jazz since I was the only guy that liked jazz. I got into early outlaw country and old-school, kind of funky country, not like modern country, which I find is not my vibe at all. When people look at country, they think of people singing about Trump and guns and sh–t like that, and it’s kind of whack. Back in the day, they were standing up for the common man. I feel like if the old-school country guys saw what the state of country music is today, I don’t know if they’d be happy, meaning, I don’t think they’d be happy with some of the values that they’re promoting.”
After being inspired by the rodeo, Bloom knew what he had to do: “Since I’m the MD at this little place and I book shows every week, and I had this great friend of mine that I had just met, Taylor Scott, who’s a fabulous singer and guitar player originally from St. Louis but grew up in Wyoming, we decided to put a band together with some local jazz and funk players like Braxton Khan and Hunter Roberts from BTTRFLY Quintet. We just played a bunch of covers of some older, classic kind of outlaw stuff and some old Hank Williams Sr. and George Jones, and we sounded pretty good for a band of f–king jazz and funk musicians.”
Together, they developed a sound both classic and innovative, with Scott on vocals and guitar and Bloom on vocals and trumpet—an instrument not typically associated with country music. “Trumpet and horns, in general, just play background parts. They play horn parts, but as the leader of the band, I can do whatever the f–k I want, and I can rip over that sh–t for sure. So, it’s like I kind of take the role of a fiddle. I try to approach it like a fiddle when I’m soloing, but I’m not soloing generally, I’m just singing. I’m singing leads. I just use my trumpet to have some fun, but my main thing is that we’re singing songs, singing harmonies, and hootin’ and hollerin’.”
The Honkytonk Express developed a unique approach, stretching out relatively simple tunes with extended improvisation like a cross between a jazz or jam band and traditional country. “Everyone in the band is one of the best soloists out there, and so we rip. It’s not like a lot of country, where you just sing the tune, someone solos for four bars, you take eight bars, and you’re done. We open these songs up and stretch ’em out. So it’s really more tailored to my scene. There’s a lot of solos, which I love. I love getting the chance to connect with the band and the audience, and we’re doing that here.”
Soon, Benny & Taylor’s Honkytonk Express was packing out the Yacht Club every Sunday night, and Bloom was starting to like his new cowboy persona. “I went out and got my f–king Stetson. I got the snakeskin boots, I went all in. It’s not like I’m sitting there talking with a drawl or any bullsh–t. It’s just a great vibe. It’s just so much fun. The music is so fun. So we just kept going with it.”
Eventually, they decided to record and tapped pedal steel guitarist and engineer Ben Waligoske of Clubhouse Recorders to capture their jazz-infused honky-tonk sound. They recorded six tracks for the band’s debut album and released four singles, two written by Scott (“Light One Up” and “Wyoming Summer”), a cover of Hank Williams’ “Tear In My Beer”, and one written by Bloom, “Two For The Table”. The full EP is available now, and the band will celebrate the album’s release with a concert at Cervantes’ Other Side in Denver on Saturday, January 6th.
It may strike fans as unexpected—odd, even—for a funk and jazz musician like Bloom to step into the world of country, but he said he doesn’t really understand why, pointing to acts like The Allman Brothers Band, Widespread Panic, Billy Strings, Railroad Earth, and Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country (who will be in Cervantes’ main room on Saturday) as examples of the pervasive influence of country music on the live music scene.
“All this music came from Africa and went through Jamaica and Puerto Rico and the islands and through New Orleans, but when it came up to America, I think Black music became blues and gospel and then white people took it. They took that same thing and made it folk and country. So, I find it to be really the same music, but with a different feel. I don’t know what the big difference is. It’s all the same chords. It’s all simple. It’s all people telling stories. There’s a through-line, a commonality through all of these styles of music. And it’s like you listen to some of that bluegrass stuff, and it’s a lot of jazz vocabulary, the way you solo on that stuff. It’s really hard to find where something starts and where something ends.”
He went on to add that he’s enjoying playing in a band where he can sing without being compared to Lettuce’s vocal powerhouse Nigel Hall. “I’ve been singing for years, and I’m getting better at singing, but it’s tough to sing in Lettuce when you have Nigel Hall, one the greatest singers of all time, but we’re also not in a vocal band. We do a couple of vocal tunes, but we’re an instrumental funk band generally. So this is one of my little outlets to sing.”
Benny & Taylor’s Honkytonk Express’s debut EP is out now. Tickets for the album release show are available here. Listen to the full album below, and follow the band on Instagram to stay up to date.
Benny & Taylor’s Honkytonk Express – “Two For The Table”