The Local Honeys are a charming duo, born and raised in Central and Eastern Kentucky. The pairing is comprised of Montana Hobbs and Linda Jean Stokley. Montana and Linda Jean are the first females to graduate with Bachelor of Arts degrees in Traditional Music from Morehead State University.
Their sincere dedication to Kentucky music led them to spend many late evenings in the college’s traditional music archives where they listened in awe to the many regional fiddle and banjo players from which they have drawn much of their repertoire. They listened eagerly through the static and crackle of many field recordings to transliterate the living and late Kentucky artists whose stories, songs, and tunes were recorded by those foreseeing the importance of their survival.
These ladies have cultivated a distinguishing sound by utilizing their powerful voices, in both sweet and haunting, intricate harmony. Their voices lay fittingly suspended in air in a capella fashion or befittingly entwined with appropriate instrumental accompaniment. Late one evening in Cork City, Ireland they found themselves singing in an abandoned stairwell with thirty-sum Irish companions where a man proclaimed, “My sweet girls, you sing like angels and play like devils!” They diversely incorporate entrancing balladry, pleasing lullabies, the blues, and driving fiddle and banjo tunes.
These ladies are bringing the home music of the mountains to listening audiences throughout the region and elsewhere. They have sung and played for audiences across the Appalachian region and internationally in Ireland, Jamaica, and Canada. They are so very proud of their culture and hope to instill a sense of curiosity in their audiences about their own heritage while strengthening the appreciation of the high lonesome sound some have forgotten.
Conceived at a greasy spoon, Joe's Truck Stop is here to replace the pills in that there jar.
Please, put those away.
You can usually find them ripping apart Old Time Appalachian fiddle tunes, paying tribute to their country heroes, and dishing out original songs to the dancing feet in the crowd.
Their unique sound is characterized by traditional vocal harmonies, Bluegrass drive, wild fiddling, hot guitar picking, doghouse slapping, and the Honky Tonk and Swing sounds of old...
Check out new songs from our upcoming record and download our acoustic, Old Time album "Demo Derby" for free at http://joestruckstop.bandcamp.com/.
More about the band: Members of the band are award winning instrumentalists from Bluegrass and Old Time Contests around the country, and the band itself has placed twice in the largest Old Time band contest at the Galax Old Fiddlers' Convention. In our progression from being solely an Appalachian Old Time stringband to an acoustic and electric Country and Blues band, we have played numerous festivals and venues from the Whispering Beard Folk Festival, to the Kennedy Center, to the many stages we've frequented in Boston/New England becoming regulars in the scene. We've shared bills with: JP Harris & the Tough Choices, the Sweetback Sisters, Rachel Brooke, the Ten Foot Polecats, King (Sasquatch) Sickabilly & the Howlin' Moon Boys, Jake & the Burtones and many other acts. We've also appeared on television and radio, including several Boston stations and Rockabilly Worldwide's 24-hr. Rockin' Therapy Radio.
Joe Macheret, the bandleader, has also lent his instrumental skills to folks like Wayne Hancock, the Tillers, Lucky Tubb and the Modern Day Troubadours, the Goddamn Gallows, and many other well known musicians and bands.