“Live Learn,” the second single off The California Honeydrops new double album, Call It Home: Vol, 1 & 2, measures equal parts Marvin Gaye, Sly and the Family Stone, and the music of Muscle Shoals and Stax into a flavorful soul stew. The song opens with a plunking bass before lead singer Lech Wierzynski joins in on a call-and-response banter with the bass, even as a bright guitar riff adds some tasty seasoning to the bubbling stew. In a playful tune that’s impossible not to dance along to, “Live Learn” offers the age-old counsel that the only lesson we truly learn is the one we learn ourselves, sometimes the hard way: “Nobody could tell me/I had to find out for myself/You got to live learn/Get burned/I had to find out for myself.” Wierzynski channels Al Green on the bridge, floating over Johnny Bones’s sax and Lorenzo Loera’s B3. “Live Learn” is a feel-good song that wraps itself around a topic that often doesn’t give us a reason to dance.
Bandleader/co-founder Lech Wierzynski talks about origin the song: “My dad likes to say that no one ever grew wise off someone else’s mistakes. This is a song about letting go of the past, learning the tough lessons in life and moving on.”
