Mac Leaphart’s ‘Honey, Shake!’ Will Get You Groovin’ [Premiere]

Put on your dancin’ shoes: Mac Leaphart‘s new song “Honey, Shake!” will have you ready to groove. It’s premiering exclusively on The Boot; press play below to listen.

Leaphart wrote “Honey, Shake!” alone, “out of necessity,” he explains. He was living in Charleston, S.C., playing hours-long bar sets, and while his setlists were largely made up of covers, “as long as we kept it upbeat, it didn’t matter what we played.”

“At the time, most of the originals I had were sort of in the folk/country vein — not the kind of thing that keeps folks moving, necessarily. So, I sorted through my influences and gravitated towards some early rock ‘n’ roll … as well as some Texas artists who really kept things moving … really anything that grooved but didn’t skimp on lyrical content,” the artist tells The Boot, citing Chuck Berry and Billy Joe Shaver, among others.

“I wrote “Honey, Shake!” to be a song I could slip in between one of the upbeat covers I was playing, and the room would be none the wiser, or even better,” he adds, “possibly be drawn to the song and ask how they could listen to it again.”

“Honey, Shake!” is one of 10 songs on Music City Joke, Leaphart’s forthcoming new album. Recorded in Nashville and produced by Brad Jones, it features, among others, Will Kimbrough, Fats Kaplin and Aaron Raitiere as backing musicians and vocalists. The record follows 2018’s Lightning Bob, and is Leaphart’s fourth career album.

Music City Joke is due out on Feb. 12. Learn more at MacLeaphart.com.