“When you get the spark, you got to ride that energy,” says G. Love, and that spark certainly ignites on his 10th studio full-length Love Saves The Day. He calls the new release “the fullest realization of the hip-hop blues” that he first pioneered with Special Sauce in the early ‘90s. The album, due out October 30 on Brushfire Records, not only features G. Love’s long-term Special Sauce rhythm section – upright bassist James “Jimi Jazz” Prescott, and drummer Jeffrey “The Houseman” Clemens – but also prominent guest performers including Los Lobos guitarist David Hidalgo, Lucinda Williams, Citizen Cope, Ozomatli, DJ Logic, Money Mark, Zach Gill and Adam Topol.
To create their down and dirty “trashcan blues” sound, G. Love and Special Sauce returned to Brushfire Records’ Solar Powered Plastic Plant in Los Angeles. The band was excited to reteam with Sugar engineer and producer Robert Carranza (Jack Johnson, Beastie Boys, Mars Volta). They recorded live with few edits to capture the immediacy of the music: G. Love making his guitar snarl and his harmonica moan, bassist Prescott bringing nimble funk to the bottom end and Clemens’ drum work crackling with power. “The music,” G. Love enthuses, “jumped off the tape.”
The new album completes the trilogy for G. Love that started with 2011’s Fixin To Die. That disc stripped his music down to its roots and saw him record with The Avett Brothers, while Sugar, in G. Love’s words, “reconnected the blues with the electric side” and reunited the original trio to create the band’s signature style of blending John Lee Hooker blues with “Golden Era” hip-hop beats. On Love Saves The Day the group dives even deeper, making the grooves heavier, the music rawer and the performances more authentic.
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The enigmatically smooth Garrett “G. Love” Dutton is one of Philadelphia’s funkiest performers of laid back, alternative hip-hop blues (a genre he helped define). As an insatiable musical omnivore, G. Love somehow manages to synthesize his iconic influences by shedding their layers to find that harmonic convergence where song and listener bare their souls to each other speaking nothing but the raw-boned truth. G. Love mines the sonic ore of his heroes only to emerge with a fresh lode of precious stones.He explains his sounds as, “a nod back and a step forward. I return to the roots of blues and folk to make my music. It's what first moved me. I fell in love with it and learned music as a teenager, which is such a developmentally pivotal point in one's life. That point when you decide you wanna play guitar, right? I was 16 when I discovered folk music, the blues, and Bob Dylan and that was simply the backbone for everything that followed for me musically. I mean, this is my second decade as a recording and touring musician and at heart I've always been a roots musician. I want to carry on the tradition not in a nostalgic way, but by keeping it fresh, real and unexpected."
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Twenty years after the release of their self-titled debut and eight years since their last live performance together, the original lineup of G. Love & Special Sauce return with their first album in nearly a decade. Built on the trio’s signature hip-hop blues sound, Sugar finds vocalist/guitarist/harmonica player G. Love (aka Garrett Dutton), upright bassist James “Jimi Jazz” Prescott, and drummer Jeffrey “The Houseman” Clemens breathing new life into their groove-heavy, Chicago-blues-infused brand of stripped-down rock & roll.
“The goal for the album was to make it really raw and immediate, with live takes and live vocals and everybody playing so that it all comes together in that intangible way,” says G. Love. “That’s what our music is all about.”
G. Love’s lyrics draw inspiration from the street-wise storytelling of Lou Reed, Prescott is highly studied in New Orleans jazz, and Clemens’s drumming references everything from early-‘70s Nigerian funk to the rocksteady era of reggae.
show less
To create their down and dirty “trashcan blues” sound, G. Love and Special Sauce returned to Brushfire Records’ Solar Powered Plastic Plant in Los Angeles. The band was excited to reteam with Sugar engineer and producer Robert Carranza (Jack Johnson, Beastie Boys, Mars Volta). They recorded live with few edits to capture the immediacy of the music: G. Love making his guitar snarl and his harmonica moan, bassist Prescott bringing nimble funk to the bottom end and Clemens’ drum work crackling with power. “The music,” G. Love enthuses, “jumped off the tape.”
The new album completes the trilogy for G. Love that started with 2011’s Fixin To Die. That disc stripped his music down to its roots and saw him record with The Avett Brothers, while Sugar, in G. Love’s words, “reconnected the blues with the electric side” and reunited the original trio to create the band’s signature style of blending John Lee Hooker blues with “Golden Era” hip-hop beats. On Love Saves The Day the group dives even deeper, making the grooves heavier, the music rawer and the performances more authentic.
------
The enigmatically smooth Garrett “G. Love” Dutton is one of Philadelphia’s funkiest performers of laid back, alternative hip-hop blues (a genre he helped define). As an insatiable musical omnivore, G. Love somehow manages to synthesize his iconic influences by shedding their layers to find that harmonic convergence where song and listener bare their souls to each other speaking nothing but the raw-boned truth. G. Love mines the sonic ore of his heroes only to emerge with a fresh lode of precious stones.He explains his sounds as, “a nod back and a step forward. I return to the roots of blues and folk to make my music. It's what first moved me. I fell in love with it and learned music as a teenager, which is such a developmentally pivotal point in one's life. That point when you decide you wanna play guitar, right? I was 16 when I discovered folk music, the blues, and Bob Dylan and that was simply the backbone for everything that followed for me musically. I mean, this is my second decade as a recording and touring musician and at heart I've always been a roots musician. I want to carry on the tradition not in a nostalgic way, but by keeping it fresh, real and unexpected."
-----
Twenty years after the release of their self-titled debut and eight years since their last live performance together, the original lineup of G. Love & Special Sauce return with their first album in nearly a decade. Built on the trio’s signature hip-hop blues sound, Sugar finds vocalist/guitarist/harmonica player G. Love (aka Garrett Dutton), upright bassist James “Jimi Jazz” Prescott, and drummer Jeffrey “The Houseman” Clemens breathing new life into their groove-heavy, Chicago-blues-infused brand of stripped-down rock & roll.
“The goal for the album was to make it really raw and immediate, with live takes and live vocals and everybody playing so that it all comes together in that intangible way,” says G. Love. “That’s what our music is all about.”
G. Love’s lyrics draw inspiration from the street-wise storytelling of Lou Reed, Prescott is highly studied in New Orleans jazz, and Clemens’s drumming references everything from early-‘70s Nigerian funk to the rocksteady era of reggae.
“When you get the spark, you got to ride that energy,” says G. Love, and that spark certainly ignites on his 10th studio full-length Love Saves The Day. He calls the new release “the fullest realization of the hip-hop blues” that he first pioneered with Special Sauce in the early ‘90s. The album, due out October 30 on Brushfire Records, not only features G. Love’s long-term Special Sauce rhythm section – upright bassist James “Jimi Jazz” Prescott, and drummer Jeffrey “The Houseman” Clemens – but also prominent guest performers including Los Lobos guitarist David Hidalgo, Lucinda Williams, Citizen Cope, Ozomatli, DJ Logic, Money Mark, Zach Gill and Adam Topol.
To create their down and dirty “trashcan blues” sound, G. Love and Special Sauce returned to Brushfire Records’ Solar Powered Plastic Plant in Los Angeles. The band was excited to reteam with Sugar engineer and producer Robert Carranza (Jack Johnson, Beastie Boys, Mars Volta). They recorded live with few edits to capture the immediacy of the music: G. Love making his guitar snarl and his harmonica moan, bassist Prescott bringing nimble funk to the bottom end and Clemens’ drum work crackling with power. “The music,” G. Love enthuses, “jumped off the tape.”
The new album completes the trilogy for G. Love that started with 2011’s Fixin To Die. That disc stripped his music down to its roots and saw him record with The Avett Brothers, while Sugar, in G. Love’s words, “reconnected the blues with the electric side” and reunited the original trio to create the band’s signature style of blending John Lee Hooker blues with “Golden Era” hip-hop beats. On Love Saves The Day the group dives even deeper, making the grooves heavier, the music rawer and the performances more authentic.
------
The enigmatically smooth Garrett “G. Love” Dutton is one of Philadelphia’s funkiest performers of laid back, alternative hip-hop blues (a genre he helped define). As an insatiable musical omnivore, G. Love somehow manages to synthesize his iconic influences by shedding their layers to find that harmonic convergence where song and listener bare their souls to each other speaking nothing but the raw-boned truth. G. Love mines the sonic ore of his heroes only to emerge with a fresh lode of precious stones.He explains his sounds as, “a nod back and a step forward. I return to the roots of blues and folk to make my music. It's what first moved me. I fell in love with it and learned music as a teenager, which is such a developmentally pivotal point in one's life. That point when you decide you wanna play guitar, right? I was 16 when I discovered folk music, the blues, and Bob Dylan and that was simply the backbone for everything that followed for me musically. I mean, this is my second decade as a recording and touring musician and at heart I've always been a roots musician. I want to carry on the tradition not in a nostalgic way, but by keeping it fresh, real and unexpected."
-----
Twenty years after the release of their self-titled debut and eight years since their last live performance together, the original lineup of G. Love & Special Sauce return with their first album in nearly a decade. Built on the trio’s signature hip-hop blues sound, Sugar finds vocalist/guitarist/harmonica player G. Love (aka Garrett Dutton), upright bassist James “Jimi Jazz” Prescott, and drummer Jeffrey “The Houseman” Clemens breathing new life into their groove-heavy, Chicago-blues-infused brand of stripped-down rock & roll.
“The goal for the album was to make it really raw and immediate, with live takes and live vocals and everybody playing so that it all comes together in that intangible way,” says G. Love. “That’s what our music is all about.”
G. Love’s lyrics draw inspiration from the street-wise storytelling of Lou Reed, Prescott is highly studied in New Orleans jazz, and Clemens’s drumming references everything from early-‘70s Nigerian funk to the rocksteady era of reggae.
read more
To create their down and dirty “trashcan blues” sound, G. Love and Special Sauce returned to Brushfire Records’ Solar Powered Plastic Plant in Los Angeles. The band was excited to reteam with Sugar engineer and producer Robert Carranza (Jack Johnson, Beastie Boys, Mars Volta). They recorded live with few edits to capture the immediacy of the music: G. Love making his guitar snarl and his harmonica moan, bassist Prescott bringing nimble funk to the bottom end and Clemens’ drum work crackling with power. “The music,” G. Love enthuses, “jumped off the tape.”
The new album completes the trilogy for G. Love that started with 2011’s Fixin To Die. That disc stripped his music down to its roots and saw him record with The Avett Brothers, while Sugar, in G. Love’s words, “reconnected the blues with the electric side” and reunited the original trio to create the band’s signature style of blending John Lee Hooker blues with “Golden Era” hip-hop beats. On Love Saves The Day the group dives even deeper, making the grooves heavier, the music rawer and the performances more authentic.
------
The enigmatically smooth Garrett “G. Love” Dutton is one of Philadelphia’s funkiest performers of laid back, alternative hip-hop blues (a genre he helped define). As an insatiable musical omnivore, G. Love somehow manages to synthesize his iconic influences by shedding their layers to find that harmonic convergence where song and listener bare their souls to each other speaking nothing but the raw-boned truth. G. Love mines the sonic ore of his heroes only to emerge with a fresh lode of precious stones.He explains his sounds as, “a nod back and a step forward. I return to the roots of blues and folk to make my music. It's what first moved me. I fell in love with it and learned music as a teenager, which is such a developmentally pivotal point in one's life. That point when you decide you wanna play guitar, right? I was 16 when I discovered folk music, the blues, and Bob Dylan and that was simply the backbone for everything that followed for me musically. I mean, this is my second decade as a recording and touring musician and at heart I've always been a roots musician. I want to carry on the tradition not in a nostalgic way, but by keeping it fresh, real and unexpected."
-----
Twenty years after the release of their self-titled debut and eight years since their last live performance together, the original lineup of G. Love & Special Sauce return with their first album in nearly a decade. Built on the trio’s signature hip-hop blues sound, Sugar finds vocalist/guitarist/harmonica player G. Love (aka Garrett Dutton), upright bassist James “Jimi Jazz” Prescott, and drummer Jeffrey “The Houseman” Clemens breathing new life into their groove-heavy, Chicago-blues-infused brand of stripped-down rock & roll.
“The goal for the album was to make it really raw and immediate, with live takes and live vocals and everybody playing so that it all comes together in that intangible way,” says G. Love. “That’s what our music is all about.”
G. Love’s lyrics draw inspiration from the street-wise storytelling of Lou Reed, Prescott is highly studied in New Orleans jazz, and Clemens’s drumming references everything from early-‘70s Nigerian funk to the rocksteady era of reggae.
show less
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