Young Guns Tour featuring Mammoth WVH and Dirty Honey
The Bluestone (Columbus, Ohio)
March 18, 2022
Having swung through Ohio’s capital city as opening acts (Dirty Honey opening for Alter Bridge in 2019, Mammoth WVH opening for Guns N’ Roses in 2021), it was time for these “young guns” to take center stage, play longer sets, and deliver some good, old-fashioned rock n’ roll to fans who, this time around, were there specifically to see them.
The Bluestone provided the ideal backdrop for this bill, there’s something reaffirming about feeling the power of rock course through your blood as if delivered by some higher power. The fact that The Bluestone was formerly a church was not lost on Wolfie Van Halen who exclaimed “Praise the Lord!” after the band finished “You’ll Be the One.” But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
With an audience packed in tighter than families attending a Christmas Eve service, Dirty Honey hit the stage about 25 minutes later than scheduled and the fans – standing shoulder to shoulder, something that would have seemed impossible a year ago – were amped up and ready to receive the gift from the gods. Right out of the gate, Dirty Honey had people banging heads, throwing up arms, and singing along with every word as they opened with the blues-rocker “Gypsy.” These guys have thoroughly impressed me every time I’ve seen them (the first time being early in the afternoon on a Sonic Temple side stage) and I’m thoroughly convinced that they would have been arena headliners in the early ‘90s. That’s not to say there still isn’t a chance for arena headlining to happen – Dirty Honey is just an EP and album into, hopefully, a long career.
While Dirty Honey did pay their dues playing L.A. gigs, it’s apparent that they spent a lot of time not only working on songs but becoming a family, the interplay between the members is clearly on display at they moved around the stage, stood back-to-back with each other and generally built off each other’s energy. Marc LaBelle is simply one of the best vocalists around, while he doesn’t mimic any of the classic rock vocalists of years past, he’s easily in the same league as guys like Steven Tyler, Robert Plant and Chris Robinson and his talents were on full display throughout Dirty Honey’s twelve song set. And, as Tyler had Perry, Plant had Page, Robinson had Robinson, LaBelle’s got John Notto, a guitar hero in the making, by his side, matching his vocals with some amazingly memorable riffs. What’s amazing about Dirty Honey is, like AC/DC, they write somewhat formulaic songs in that they don’t try to do anything special – it’s verse, chorus, verse – but the choruses are insatiably memorable, even if you’ve only heard the song once or twice. Looking around the venue, fans were singing back every word to every song and tracks like “Heartbreaker” and “California Dreamin’” were particularly well received.
Though its inclusion in the set wasn’t a big surprise, it was nice to hear Dirty Honey’s bar-room blues take on Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” towards the end of the set. Before taking their final bows, Notto, bassist Justin Smolian and drummer Corey Coverstone were each given the opportunity to showcase through extended solos before Dirty Honey launched into the powerful closing songs “When I’m Gone” and “Rolling 7s.”
On most nights, this would have been enough of a show to send the thousand or so attendees home happy but there was still more to come and everyone maintained their position on the floor, not willing to give up prime space before Mammoth WVH hit the stage.
If Dirty Honey looked and sounded like a cohesive unit that spent lots of time in a rehearsal space dreaming of the day where they’d finally get the chance to play in front of an audience, Mammoth WVH came across like a more-than-suitable business arrangement with skilled guns-for-hire providing support for Wolfie Van Halen. On this particular run of dates, guitarist Frank Sidoris was absent (he’s on the road as a member of Slash’s band) though he was there in spirit – a cardboard cutout of Sidoris was set up towards the back of the stage. Jon Jourdan and Wolfie picked up the slack with their twin guitar attack doing a fantastic job of adding teeth to the recorded material from Mammoth WVH’s debut album. The sleeveless and tattooed bassist, Ronnie Ficarro (Falling in Reverse), owned his part of the stage, stalking around animatedly while laying down the groove with drummer Garrett Whitlock (Tremonti).
While my initial impression of Mammoth WVH – when seeing them with Guns N’ Roses – was that their sound was generic and indistinguishable from most of the 99.7 FM playlist, seeing them up-close-and-personal in a more intimate setting provided a different perspective and won me over. The band’s twelve-song set started out with full octane, “Mammoth” and “Mr. Ed” mix heavy guitars with powerful vocals and got the crowd pumped. Introducing the new single, “Epiphany,” by asking the crowd if they were ready for some ready for a hot and sweaty night of rock n’ roll, Wolfie and band eased into the floor shaking and melodic chorus – the interplay between the laidback verses and the thumping chorus showed diversity and then flipped the script in the second half of the song with Wolfie adding some keyboards.
The crowd seemed to be a bit on the older side, some Van Halen shirts were spotted (not a surprise at all) and it left me wondering how many people had shown up to see the son of Eddie Van Halen rather than the singer of Mammoth WVH? Perhaps it was just my vantage point, but while there were many smiles on the faces of the audience, not as many people were singing along to Mammoth WVH as they were to Dirty Honey. While the new song “I Don’t Know At All” has been played on all the Young Guns Tour dates, it was still a pleasant surprise to hear something that’s not on the album and the song was met with an excited response.
Throughout the set, Wolfie took time to thank the audience and it doesn’t feel like an act to think that he truly is grateful that people show up to see his band. The world was first introduced to Mammoth WVH via the debut single, “The Distance,” which Wolfie wrote about his dad so it made sense to hold that one until close to the end. As that song came to end, Wolfie shared that the band had been playing around with a cover during rehearsals and that they were going to play it next. “Don’t worry, it’s not a Van Halen song,” Wolfie said, which caused a few boos. “What? You don’t think I fucking love Van Halen? It’s my last name, I was in the god damn fucking band. I love Van Halen. All I’m saying is, if you come to a Mammoth show and expect Van Halen, that’s like going to a Foo Fighters show and being pissed that they didn’t play Nirvana.” What followed was a pretty honest, note-for-note cover of Alice in Chains’ “Them Bones” which was a little out of character for the band but cool to hear nevertheless.
Closing the show was the grungy “Don’t Back Down,” which made total sense considering the Alice in Chains cover just before it, and Wolfie kicked off the song by, once again, thanking the audience and saying, “I don’t want to leave. You guys raised hell in this fucking church.”
While Young Guns may have more to do with where they’re at in the careers than their ages (most, if not all, of the members of both bands are in their 30s), Dirty Honey and Mammoth WVH accomplished what they set out to do with the tour and that was to provide a solid night of guitar-driven hard rock. As the house lights slowly started to come out, there was a noticeable buzz among the crowd who, no doubt, left with ringing ears and smiles on their faces.
