JP Soars, the guitarist and vocalist for his band the Red Hots and is a musical melting pot, with influences form just about all genres of music. Most blues guitarists haven’t played in a handful of metal bands and aren't influenced by jazz icons like Django Reinhardt and Wes Montgomery. Which, as much as anything, explains why South Florida based JP Soars doesn’t sound like any other area guitar slinger. The guitarist and vocalist fronts a self titled blues band and plays with both former Elvin Bishop saxophonist/vocalist Terry Hanck as well as “the Gypsy Blue Acoustic Revue”, which updates the classic 1930s and 1940s material of Django Reinhardt and violinist Stephane Grappelli.

JP was born in California and raised in Arkansas. He moved to South Florida in 1985. "I love Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan… but I don't try to play like them. I listen to the guys they listened to, like Albert King, Johnny Guitar Watson, T-bone Walker, Muddy Waters and Guitar Slim. I'm also very into Django Reinhardt and Wes Montgomery as well as horn players like Louie Jordan I have always loved music and knew that this is what I wanted to do ever since I was a kid…My first influences were my dad. He played guitar around the house a lot.. He showed me my first chords and got me going."

Something that may come as a surprise to JP's fans is that he used to play and sing in extreme metal bands at all. How did a seemingly heavy metal kid morph into a blues force to be reckoned with in four years? During those two mostly headbanging decades (in ’97 he played in blues bands while also playing in metal bands), Soars listened to lots of blues and Gypsy jazz. In 2005, he hung up his combat boots to explore those two genres.

A trip to Memphis Tennessee to meet Blues legend Jessie Mae Hemphill was a life altering moment. The simple beauty of the hypnotic country blues, and a chance meeting with Cigar box guitar pioneer John Lowe opened another door of musical majesty to a very receptive Mr. Soars.

JP is a versatile guitarist who is constantly evolving and reaching for new heights. He usually likes to write a lot and will come up with some riff or a vocal line. He generally will spend time doing pre production before going into the studio. Basically they do a mock recording to see what the stuff sounds like when listening back to it. At that stage they make adjustments to make it feel right. The next CD will see JP stretching out a bit and trying to find their own sound.

Soars has chosen the independent route for his second album More Bees With Honey, but that doesn’t mean he’s lacking for help. Well-known sax player Terry Hanck returns from Soars’ first release, Back of My Mind, this time assisted by fellow saxist Gordon Beadle, harmonica player Jason Ricci and, most poignantly, the late blues vocalist Robin Rogers. More Bees With Honey is very much a traditionalist blues album, and if that’s your bag, you’ll find plenty here to like, with a sampling of just about every electric blues style lending a nice sense of variety. The title track opens with a killer ascending guitar riff leading into sax lines that fit the song’s aggressive melody perfectly. When Rogers chimes in with her duet vocals, you can see why Soars chose to open the album with such an irresistibly upbeat number.

“The harder sound is both a conscious effort as well as evolution,” he tells Good New Music. “It’s more of my own personal tastes and styles coming out. The first album was playing it safe and trying to appease the purists. People would buy the CD and ask why there wasn’t more ripping guitar solos and stuff. So I figured I’ll just go for it on this album, trying to showcase more of my history.”