Hello and welcome to APPLAUSE Performances Surveying the Music landscape of Northeast Ohio.

Here's the Cleveland based Americana act country Honk with music from the band's debut album, Bad Decision.

There must have been a time or two when you saw me or I saw you across a small billboard.

Music three Fisted Love Go Twisted Fate.

Let us go our separate ways.

I'm gonna love that makes onscreen.

There must've been a time or two when you saw me or I saw you running down that road.

Broken hearts.

Then when it finally came, the best bar in love comes out of a burning brightly.

Right on from the spark ceiling.

You go round and round the love bins of the markets down Even making all my dreams come true.

Here we go Round and round, saving up to settle down.

And I've been waiting my whole life for you.

While I was out running round the courts from town to town.

Lonely man with his old guitar.

You're sad and lonely, too.

He wasn't any good to you.

The name is Girl.

That always leaves a scar.

When I'm down round and round.

Spinning goes from town to town.

Making bets and drinking through the night.

Your beauty is shown down on me.

To be the man I ought to be in your heart.

My love would soon deny.

I'd see me go round and round.

The lovers of the markets that I'm been making All my dreams come true.

Here we go Round and round saving.

I'm settle down and I'll be waiting.

My love for you and me.

Go round and round.

The lovers of the markets down.

And you been making all these dreams come true.

Here we go Round and round saving on to settle down.

And I've been waiting my whole life for you, honey.

I'm in waiting My whole life What?

I've been waiting my whole life.

I've been waiting my whole life.

For your roof.

What a great start.

I love that song.

Cleveland's country.

Honk with the song Round and Round.

I'm Amanda Rabinowitz with Ideastream Public Media and host of the local music podcast Shuffle.

And I'm here with Country Honks Thaw Platter for APPLAUSE performances thaw.

Thanks for being here.

Great to be here.

I know that you have a background in business, but music's been a part of your life for a long time.

And when the pandemic came, that kind of give you an opportunity to explore music a little bit more.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

Sure.

That's it's the reason I came to northeast Ohio from Buffalo originally.

I had a day job and I always did music part time.

And during the pandemic, at the start of the pandemic, I lost that job and was kind of faced with, well, do I really dig in and do music full time or go back to that or try and find something?

So I just jumped, you know, feet first, headfirst, whatever.

And at the end of 2020, I just kind of dug into it and started going full speed.

And I know that country song started out as kind of an, you know, an outlaw country cover act like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.

But it didn't take long for you guys to start writing your own songs.

Yeah, over the years we had played together and had this idea and definitely we incorporated the band in 2021, but we had that idea a few years before that and we'd played a bunch of shows and put it together as that and as something we could just, you know, perform with.

And then we started writing songs and the rest is this album and the next one, do you know?

Yeah.

The Heart of Country Honk is your back beat.

Tom Prebys, He's on bass and you have drummer Freddy Perez.

These guys have played together since high school.

And you know, what does that mean to have a rhythm section that's been together that long?

Those guys were some of the first people that I met when I moved to northeast Ohio through a couple of other musical friends that they had all grown up with.

And I saw that rhythm section play countless times when I was playing in other bands and we were always all friendly.

And so when I had the opportunity to start hiring them, I just jumped at it.

So it's really been great because they're established.

They're set to known each other since they were teenagers, so they speak their own language and I keep trying to write a love song from Bobby around my floor, but the words don't come no matter how I strumming can't even find or I call it turns out you need to write a love song.

You need sugar mate, sweetie Lowdown girl.

She made my heart unfurl That would hurt on me.

Well, nothing seems to come easy since you didn't warn me no more like Romeo and Juliet.

But Juliet turns out to be love.

Not a love song You need sugar Make sweet Jamie little girls obey my heart Unfurl love and put her down.

Be knows I'd be lying if I said she was the best I have love.

The only thing she done for me is make the others seem not so bad.

Turns out to be love.

Write a love song You need sugar Make sweet Take down girls You made my heart on girl Never Hurt On Me and Lowdown Girl to the Bone World.

Amber Heard On Me Thought You see avoid in this region For a band like country honk and you talk about, you know, Great Lakes versus Nashville area Can you talk about a band like Country Song fitting in here in Cleveland?

I'm biased to it, but I think that we're really approachable band and our fanbase definitely is is wonderful.

And I the reason that I would maybe ever say there was a void is because like people come out and they want to, you know, put boots and hats on and they want to see themselves the travel down to to Nashville too.

And we're not better than any Nashville band like we can.

We could definitely go down there and hold our own.

And we have a lot of friends that play down there, but we also get to sleep in our own beds, you know, every night until we start getting on the road a little more.

But yeah, I think this, this fanbase up here like people are, are starving for it to have acts that are that are home based and they can come out and see, you know, a couple times a month.

Did you ever have a thought of moving to Nashville?

Yes, like everybody.

But I missed the window.

I feel like the time to move to Nashville was in 2010 to 2012 because I and a lot of my friends moved down there at that point and they're really successful.

And I think going into it now, it's it's a little scary when you get down there.

It's it's and I'm anybody could call me out for being a bigger fish in a small pond up here for sure.

But there was a point down there where East Nashville was really swinging.

And it was it was great.

And I feel like it was right around then and now.

Everybody should just keep moving to Nashville.

That's fine, you know?

But now it's great.

I love it.

I love the city, I love everything about it.

And everybody should visit that and they should visit Austin and Chicago, New York City and everything.

But I think we have something really special here in Cleveland.

It's just much smaller.

Yeah, well, I'm glad you didn't move to Nashville, too.

It's great to have this kind of music right here.

And, you know, I know you were mentioning there's an appetite for this kind of music and that led you to something called Saving Country Music.

And it's really helped you kind of reach out and kind of catch on.

Talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, I think that's a it's a great I don't even know if you'd call it a publication, but they're they're online and they have a really strong you know, we were saying when we got the review in Saving country music, we felt like it was when we were teenagers, what you would get in Rolling Stone.

And for now, it's more important to us.

Like it's it's a much more followed thing and and legit or underground or indie or whatever the the term is.

So it was that's a really good stepping stone for us and definitely opened we have a lot of European audience now from that that follow it because still Europeans are very much into to American country music.

I don't know if that means that will be playing Ireland the next year, but we'd like to play around, you know, the U.S. a little bit more.

That's incredible.

You're reaching overseas.

Yeah, our our streaming numbers are like higher than any.

I had a couple of solo albums that I put out and these numbers have blown those apart.

And I thought and I paid a bunch of money to have streams up and all that stuff on that.

And these are just organically growing, which is really exciting for us, a shot in our heart.

And I couldn't feel the moon.

I wouldn't have to fall apart each time I'm missing you till when you find me crying When the day is through Wow we shot it never haha but I do and I wash my feet will get tired from walking the floor.

A thousand memories go by without you anymore than with myself.

Right down to the room below.

Oh, I wish I didn't have a hard to let go.

This is where we will find how much your heart can stand splintered in the light Inside a lonely man.

Now is the tears that were coming out for me.

The moon so I could drink away Each fall in the hold of you with I'll see another day.

It's so hard to lose.

I wish I didn't know how hard would I do?

I wish I didn't know how hard but I do Oh, you're not from Ohio.

You're actually from Buffalo.

And you really found a home here in Cleveland.

What was it about Cleveland that kind of captured your heart?

Yeah.

When I first moved to northeast Ohio, it was a stepping stone.

I had a day job that was able to have me move around, and so I got out of the Buffalo to get to Ohio and thought, I'll check it out for a couple of years.

And my end goal was definitely to either move west or to Nashville or to Texas or something like that.

And after being here for three or four years, I really fell in love with northeast Ohio and everything that it has to offer.

And we're a little closer to everything else and not as much snow at least where my house is.

So it was really great to be welcomed into the music scene, too, here in town.

So now that Country Honk has dropped the debut album, Bad Decision.

What's the touring schedule?

You're going to start hitting the road probably a little bit in the fall this year, and then hopefully next year we'll have we'll have some dates that we'll string together.

Okay.

Before you play the last song I know, Country Honks guitarist is Anthony Pappalardo.

He's doing double duty on the electric and steel guitars.

He's so fun to watch, you know, he's quite a perfectionist and especially when it comes to his guitar strings.

So talk a little bit about this next song that we're going to hear.

I know it's an instrumental.

Bob's Your Uncle.

Yeah, we we were in the basement green room of a club in Cleveland, and Anthony was was re stringing is guitars as he does right before we play usually within 10 minutes or 15 minutes.

But he started playing this thing and we were sitting around I think we might have been having a beer and we just said, What?

What exactly is that?

And that was that song.

And he had just was in the green room writing it because that was what was in his head.

And we put it on the album Thor Thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Amanda Rabinowitz Thank you for tuning in to this edition of APPLAUSE performances with Country Honk.

Be sure to follow the Northeast Ohio independent music scene with our podcast Shuffle.