Black Joe Lewis at the Rickshaw, Vancouver. Sandra Minarik photo.

Photos – Black Joe Lewis at the Rickshaw Theatre, Vancouver, Nov. 30

– by Katie Mackie

Black Joe Lewis played the Rickshaw Saturday night. His newest album, Electric Slave, was released earlier this year and is his fourth studio album. It features the songs “Come to My Party” and “Skulldiggin”.

Lewis formed his band back in 2007. They were originally known as Black Joe Lewis and the Honey Bears, but recently shed the name for Electric Slave. The band has played multiple music festivals, such as Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Sasquatch! Music Festival and Bonnaroo.

Over the year, Black Joe Lewis has moved from Shake Yo Ass Records to Lost Highway. For Electric Slave, they signed with Vagrant Records. With the change in membership, including losing a guitarist, Lewis’s songs have taken on a harder rock feel.

“I think with the membership changes in the past couple of years, I wanted to get back to the approach I had when I first put this band together in 2007,” Lewis told Exclaim!. “Being the only guitar player in the band now made me focus a lot more on that, too. ‘Skulldiggin’ was something we started jamming on and I decided to expand on it by putting a bunch of guitar parts down in the studio. A lot of these new songs came about that way.”

A Toronto concert review also expresses the band’s change in sound: “[Electric Slave is] a pounding punk-soul opus that seems a deliberate break with the past. That was evident when the Austin, TX singer-guitarist and his five-piece backing group took the stage with little fanfare.”

Black Joe Lewis’ tour will be over shortly; they still have to play Los Angeles, San Diego, Tucson, Albuquerque, and Chicago. In Chicago the band will bring in the New Year, playing the Metro on Dec 31.

Black Joe Lewis at the Rickshaw, Nov 30 photos: