For Dirty Honey’s Marc LaBelle, Opening For The Black Crowes Is Coming Full Circle

But every budding music career is reinforced by great albums like the Crowes’ classic Shake Your Money Maker, one of the Dirty Honey singer’s favorites, which again he can thank his family for. “My step-brother and I worked for a shipping company in upstate New York part-time all through growing up,” Labelle says. “He had a really crappy Lincoln Mark VIII, which we would take back and forth to work or Route 7. We would listen to music and he introduced me to bands he liked. We heard ‘Hard to Handle’ on the local radio and I was like, ‘Oh that’s a good tune.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, you would love this whole record.’ And he had the Shake Your Money Maker CD and I fell in love with the band that day.”

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LaBelle wore out the digital files on the disc learning the solo to “Hard To Handle,” which he says was one of the first he learned on guitar. “Obviously, that grabbed me and pulled me into the rest of the album,” he says. “When you pop the record in, you hear ‘Sister Luck,’ ‘Twice as Hard,’ ‘She Talks to Angels,’ ‘Jealous Again’ – it’s just loaded with great stuff.”

Meanwhile, over the last several years, LaBelle’s hard rock band Dirty Honey has exploded with their 2019 debut single “When I’m Gone,” becoming the first song by an unsigned act to land at No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart. They’ve also opened for a number of high-profile acts, including Guns N’ Roses, Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, and Alter Bridge, but the Crowes’ tour is their biggest yet. And for the lifelong uber-fan, the opportunity is life-changing.

“In late 2019 I flew to New York to see The Black Crowes reunion at the Bowery Ballroom – like I said, I love the band,” LaBelle says. “I brought a buddy with me and we went out for a drink before the show. Completely by accident, Chris Robinson was sitting at this lounge on the Bowery with my manager (both acts share Red Light Management’s Mark DiDia). It was a cool spot and it was like a half hour before showtime. He’s just sitting there, having a cocktail, doing his thing. So I was like, ‘What the hell.’ I was kind of freaked out because he’s in full stage garb at this lounge full-on looking like a rock star as he should. It was pretty intimidating at first, but he’s so disarmingly sweet. And so is Rich. My first interactions with them couldn’t have been more fun. They were in very good spirits having played their first show together in many years, it was quite a celebration.”

Dirty Honey, whose debut full-length, The Dirty Honey Album, dropped April 21, is amidst a 16-date June club tour with Joyous Wolf. Then July 20-21 the band kicks off its tour with the Crowes at Nashville’s Ascend Amphitheater, though there’s one date of the 35 stops that especially stands out to LaBelle.

“It’s really crazy,” he says, “I’ve never been backstage at SPAC.” LaBelle is referring to Saratoga Performing Arts Center, his hometown venue where he saw the Crowes and many others growing up. “I’ve only gone there as a fan. So just to walk around that back area is weird and strange and unique. I’m sure the days leading up to it, my family, who are obviously very proud of what we’ve accomplished so far, though there’s still a long way to go, they’ll all be there.”

LaBelle says the band may even have its own cheering section. “Literally, between cousins, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, it’ll probably be like 100 people, I would imagine. There’s going to be one section in the audience going absolutely bananas and the rest of the place will be like, ‘Who are these guys?’”