Evan Honer Showcases Emotional Songwriting in Little Rock Tour Opener

by Julian Spivey

Aprille Hanson-Spivey Photo

Evan Honer, an indie-folk-Americana singer-songwriter from Arizona, opened his 2025 tour with a performance at The Revolution Room in Little Rock, Ark. on Sunday, Feb. 23, that showcased his incredible songwriting talent and entertained a horde of fans who seemed to know his young body of work in-and-out.

Although Honer has only released two albums—his 2023 debut West on I-10 and last year’s Fighting For—he has built up a loyal and loving fan base based on Sunday night’s show. Honer has built this audience by posting videos on social media, with a cover of Tyler Childers' deep cut “Jersey Giant” going viral, leading to fans finding his original music.

Honer began Sunday night’s performance with his latest single, “Everything I Wanted,” which is already among the best tracks of his young career. The performance began with Honer flipping onto the stage – which seems to be a recent fad in music, having seen Benson Boone do it recently at the Grammy Awards. After the show, I found out via research that Honer was a collegiate champion diver at California Baptist University, which made more sense.

Honer’s early career output is known for its exceptionally emotional and sad lyrics, which seem to speak directly to Gen Z. There aren’t many happy songs in his repertoire and his audience doesn’t seem to mind one bit.

His music is reminiscent of Noah Kahan and even a little Zach Bryan. If you split the difference, it might be Honer. And I think he’s only bound to get bigger with more output. He seems prolific in his work, having released two albums in the last two years and already having released a new single this year.  

It was Honer’s 2023 release “idk shit about cars,” which wound up on Fighting For, that I first heard from the singer-songwriter. It was a comical song – I also don’t know shit about cars – that name-dropped a musical hero of mine Jason Isbell and spoke to me with lyrics of loneliness and breaking one’s heart. It instantly became one of my favorites of 2023.

Honer performed many tracks from Fighting For, which he released last June, at the Rev Room Sunday night, including a couple of my favorites in “Wake Up, Come Down,” which he did as a duet with Wyatt Flores – another great up-and-coming singer-songwriter - on the album, and “Nowhere Fast,” which would come during the show’s encore.

“Wake Up, Come Down” was slightly disappointing. You couldn’t make out any of the song’s verses due to the mix, which got lost in the sound, though the chorus was epic.  

Among other nice performances from the album were “I Figured We’d Go Dancin’,” about trying to resuscitate a dying relationship, and the title track, “Fighting For.”

Honer’s performance of “Jersey Giant” was quite special for one young man, I believe named Eli, from Little Rock. Eli joined Honer and his band on stage for the performance, singing the second chorus and doing a fine job.

After great performances of “Jersey Giant” and a fun as hell “idk shit about cars,” Honer began his encore by attempting to bring tears to the eyes of the crowd with his emotional “Mr. Meyers,” about an older gentleman who lost the love of his life too soon. Following the tearjerker, his band rejoined him on stage for a terrific “Nowhere Fast” performance and a great cover of King Harvest’s 1972 hit “Dancing in the Moonlight.”

One of the evening’s earlier highlights had been another cover, “Linger,” which was a top-10 hit for The Cranberries in 1993.

Arkansas’ own Sierra Carson, originally from Batesville, Ark., opened the show for Honer with fantastic originals of her own, including “bad fruit,” “is it?,” “skeletons” and “holy holy” from her 2024 album swimming, which came out in early December. Her set also included a nice cover of “Landslide,” the hit for Fleetwood Mac and The Chicks.