The Local Honeys–'Little Girls Actin' Like Men'

Originally posted to Instagram, November 21, 2020

I was going to save this for @stephanatelyvinyl’s #sundaycountryvinyl this week, but I’m not sure I can wait that long. Here’s an album by a group I originally learned about from #sundaycountryvinyl: The Local Honeys, Little Girls Actin’ Like Men.

In their bio on the La Honda Records website, the Local Honeys are described as “writ[ing] music for people who need it,” and as being “here to talk about suffering. They will help you through it.” I’d say this is spot on. As folk/traditional country artists, the Local Honeys assemble a combination of originals, covers, and old traditional songs to tell the story of a land and its people.

The combination of old and new music is seamless, and works in surprising ways. I suspect the title of “Cigarette Trees”, a defiant cry against the environmental devastation caused by corporate greed, comes from a lyric in “Big Rock Candy Mountain”, a Depression-era song about a hobo’s paradise. Meanwhile, the modern “Junkman” and traditional “Hills of Mexico”, placed back-to-back in the track listing, seem to be two answers to the same question: what will you do when times get tough? Will you stay and take advantage of the desperation of others? Or will you leave, uncertain of whether things are better somewhere else? Some people can’t see a way out or a way to stay, and “I Love You, Charlene”, Linda Jean Stokely’s song about the lonesome death of her own father, brings tears to my eyes.

But there is always hope. Hard to see, sometimes, but always there. It takes the form of Heaven, in the sacred song “Gloryland”, and of a sex worker, in “Beattyville Bomber”. Most importantly, it takes the form of the title song’s “Little Girls Actin’ Like Men”, who answer to no one and make their own way. This is an album made with tough love by strong women, who use the sounds of the past to tell a timeless story.