LETTUCE is (a) the prime ingredient in a salad, (b) a slang for cash, (c) a green herb that can be smoked, (d) a genre-busting six-member musical collective formed in 1992 by four alumni of the prestigious Berklee College Of Music, or (e) all of the above. If you answered "e," then you're in on the sheer magic of a band that both feeds the rich history of funk music and combines it with strains of hip-hop, rock, psychedelia, jazz, soul, jam, go-go, and the avant-garde.
The GRAMMY® Award-nominated six-piece is comprised of Adam Deitch [drums, percussion], Adam "Shmeeans" Smirnoff [guitar], Erick "Jesus" Coomes [bass], Ryan Zoidis [alto, baritone, tenor sax, Korg X-911], Eric "Benny" Bloom [trumpet, horns], and Nigel Hall [vocals, Hammond B-3, Rhodes, clavinet, keyboards].
GZA
https://www.instagram.com/therealgza
GZA will perform his seminal album 'Liquid Swords' in its entirety.
GZA/The Genius is a founding member of the seminal hip hop group the Wu-Tang Clan. GZA boasted some high-profile appearances on the group's debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), including one of only two solo tracks, "Clan in da Front."
GZA's 1995 solo effort, Liquid Swords, produced entirely by RZA, met with critical and commercial acclaim, and is largely considered one of the best albums to come out of the Wu-Tang camp. In 1998, the album was selected as one of The Source Magazine's 100 Best Rap Albums of all time. Steve Huey of Allmusic called him "one of the best lyricists of the 1990s," while the editors of About.com ranked him #17 on their list of the Top 50 MCs of Our Time (1987-2007), making him the highest-ranking Wu-Tang Clan member on the list.
GZA's subsequent solo projects were all received to great critical acclaim: Beneath the Surface (1999); Legend of the Liquid Sword (2002); Grandmasters (2005) with DJ Muggs (the producer for hip-hop group Cypress Hill) which saw GZA using chess as a metaphor for the rap game; and finally, Pro Tools (2008) featured production from past collaborators RZA, Mathematics, and True Master..
GZA made an appearance with RZA in Jim Jarmusch's film Coffee & Cigarettes, opposite Bill Murray.The two also appeared on the Chappelle Show's in the now legendary skits "Wu Tang Financial" and "Racial Draft."
GZA has been working on a Wu Tang documentary for the better part of the last decade, which will prove to be the ultimate statement about the super group. He also has TV shows and graphic novel ideas in development.
GZA has recently lectured at Harvard, Oxford, USC, MIT, NYU and Cornell.While at MIT he also visited with marine biologists, geneticists, and quantum physicists to seek inspiration for his forthcoming projects.
GZA's next album entitled DARK MATTER will be released on BabyGrande in 2012.The project is a natural extension of his longtime fascination with the cosmos and further inspired by his recent meetings with quantum physicists at MIT and in London. "I will take a quantum leap and discuss the universe while taking us on a journey through deep space.Traveling at lightspeed from the galactic center of one galaxy to the farthest corners of another. I hope my listeners will enjoy this cosmic adventure within a world of colossal planets, gas giants, meteorites, comets, and asteroids in the most extreme conditions."
~~~
More about Lettuce
For more than two decades Brooklyn-based funk outfit Lettuce has kept fans moving and shaking with their skittering beats, snaking basslines, and squelching brass. At their live shows the septet takes their instrumental grooves to the next level, pushing the two-hour mark with sizzling sets chock-full of extended solos, incredible improvisation, and infectious on-stage chemistry. Whether they're busting out trumpet-heavy early tracks like "Outta Here" or letting the synth and sax shine on newer numbers like "Hang Up Your Hangups", Lettuce always leaves ticket buyers feeling euphoric with their finger-licking, booty-shaking sets on tour.
Lettuce was formed in 1992 when its members began jamming together while attending a music intensive at Boston's Berklee School of Music. An unique bond was formed, and when they all returned to the school as undergrads in 1994 they picked up right where they left off. The group began hitting up club owners throughout Boston asking if they would "let us play", thus arriving at the moniker Lettuce. Their red-hot live shows helped them build a reputation in several major US cities and Tokyo, and in 2001 they released their first album Live In Tokyo, recorded at the city's famous Blue Note jazz club. They released their proper studio debut album Outta Here the following year, continuing to grow their fanbase with razor-sharp performances on tour. In addition to their roles in Lettuce, many of the band's members have worked as studio and touring musicians for big-name artists like Britney Spears, The Game, and Wyclef Jean. In 2012 the band released their third album Fly!, a groove-heavy collection of scorching funk tunes that remains a staple of their adrenaline-filled live shows.
~~~~~~~~
Lettuce is (a) the prime ingredient in a salad, (b) a slang for cash, (c) a green herb that can be smoked, (d) a genre-busting six-member funk / jazz / soul / jam / psychedelic / hip-hop / avant-garde / experimental collective formed in 1992 by four alumni of the prestigious Berklee College Of Music, or (e) all of the above.
If you answered "e," then you're on to the ever-changing musical palette and all-inclusive goals of LETTUCE's sixth studio album, Elevate, and its ongoing re-interpretation of the band's name as "Let Us." In their earliest days as students, they would roam the cities of the Northeast, and implore others to "Let Us play." Starting with their 2002 debut album, the phrase has been affixed to their first four albums, as in (Let Us) Outta Here (2002), (Let Us) Rage! (2008), (Let Us) Fly! (2012) and (Let Us) Crush (2015). Elevate (2019) is the band's first studio album since 2016's Mt. Crushmore and the follow-up to its 2017 live effort, Witches Stew.
Recorded at Colorado Sound outside of Denver, near the home of New York transplants and band co-founders, guitarist Adam "Shmeeans" Smirnoff and percussionist Adam Deitch, with legendary engineer Russ Elevado (D'Angelo, The Roots, Erykah Badu), Elevate shows LETTUCE touching on its past while moving full force into the future. The band explores its funk roots in the Tower of Power like punch of "Ready to Live" (the cover of a song by Cold Blood's Lydia Pense), the Prince-like swagger of "Royal Highness" and the OG blues-soul of "Love Is Too Strong," while expanded trip-hop sounds of the space age audio-scapes like "Trapezoid," "Gang 10" and "Purple Cabbage" show the influence of sax player Ryan Zoidis' Korg X-911 synths and Nigel Hall's Rhodes keyboards.
"This album definitely stretches the boundaries," says chief composer/percussionist Deitch, whose chance meeting with co-founder "Shmeeans" while 16-year-olds at a summer camp before their freshmen year of college proved momentous. "The idea was to keep exploring the different areas of funk and hip-hop beats, then writing melodies to those songs that made sense."
The more progressive/spacey vibe, with elements of Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, Eno and Miles Davis, also comes naturally to the band, according to founding member and bassist Erick "Jesus" Coomes, an Orange County native whose father, Tommy Coomes, is a successful musician with a number of albums to his credit.
"We're big improvisational music and arts fans," Erick says. "We consider them part of the same world. It's like painting live with five other people, one arm and a single brush."
Guitarist Shmeeans compares the group's eclectic, free-wheeling approach to "the modern NBA and its position-less basketball," Nigel Hall, the band's resident singer, also takes vocals on the album's two covers, Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" (one of the album's two focus tracks, along with "Krewe") and Lydia Pense's "Ready to Live." "As long as you listen, play your part and remember where the 'one' is, you can thrive in this band," says Nigel.
Trumpet and horn-player Eric "Benny" Bloom, a Rhode Island native who has been a full-time member of LETTUCE since 2011, notes, "This isn't just a funk band anymore. We're playing every style of music in every song. You can't categorize it. We have the freedom to do whatever we want that's appropriate for the song."
Much of the futuristic, yet warm and analog feel, of Elevate can be attributed to sax player, Portland, ME native and co-founding member Ryan Zoidis, who continued to explore the limits of his new toy, a vintage Korg X-911 synth.
"I was still figuring it out on the last album, trouble-shooting how it would work," says Ryan. "It's responsible not just for the ways the band has changed musically, but it's improved my life in general. It's great to have have a lot more options with my sound rather than just relying on the one standard timbre of the dry saxophone. There are now a bunch of different voices I can pull up." He points to "Trapezoid" as a piece for which he recorded himself playing the synth over a click track and then sent to Deitch, who turned it into the song on the album.
Other album highlights include Smirnoff's nod to Carlos Santana and Trey Anastasio on the Latin-flavored and playfully named "Shmink Dabby," the spaghetti western meets '60s Ethiopian funk by way of the French Ethiopiques compilation albums in the focus track, "Krewe" and the Marcus King cameo vocal on the B.B. King/Al Green gospel blues of "Love Is Too Strong." The latter is reminiscent of other guest appearances in the past by the likes of John Scofield and Fred Wesley on LETTUCE's debut, Outta Here, or Dwele on Rage!
"There's always something new to be learned as musicians and as people," adds Shmeeans. "We're trying to get a little bit better every day."
Says Ryan: "We realize more and more that this band is a gift we've been given. Everyone contributes, like a successful sports team. We've really become family over the years. We've known there was magic in this from the moment we first got together as 16-year-olds."
That magic continues to grow with the band's new album, a democratic ensemble in which there is no leader, but a complete unit that functions as a single entity, with plenty of moving parts.
All together now... Let us Elevate.
show less
The GRAMMY® Award-nominated six-piece is comprised of Adam Deitch [drums, percussion], Adam "Shmeeans" Smirnoff [guitar], Erick "Jesus" Coomes [bass], Ryan Zoidis [alto, baritone, tenor sax, Korg X-911], Eric "Benny" Bloom [trumpet, horns], and Nigel Hall [vocals, Hammond B-3, Rhodes, clavinet, keyboards].
GZA
https://www.instagram.com/therealgza
GZA will perform his seminal album 'Liquid Swords' in its entirety.
GZA/The Genius is a founding member of the seminal hip hop group the Wu-Tang Clan. GZA boasted some high-profile appearances on the group's debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), including one of only two solo tracks, "Clan in da Front."
GZA's 1995 solo effort, Liquid Swords, produced entirely by RZA, met with critical and commercial acclaim, and is largely considered one of the best albums to come out of the Wu-Tang camp. In 1998, the album was selected as one of The Source Magazine's 100 Best Rap Albums of all time. Steve Huey of Allmusic called him "one of the best lyricists of the 1990s," while the editors of About.com ranked him #17 on their list of the Top 50 MCs of Our Time (1987-2007), making him the highest-ranking Wu-Tang Clan member on the list.
GZA's subsequent solo projects were all received to great critical acclaim: Beneath the Surface (1999); Legend of the Liquid Sword (2002); Grandmasters (2005) with DJ Muggs (the producer for hip-hop group Cypress Hill) which saw GZA using chess as a metaphor for the rap game; and finally, Pro Tools (2008) featured production from past collaborators RZA, Mathematics, and True Master..
GZA made an appearance with RZA in Jim Jarmusch's film Coffee & Cigarettes, opposite Bill Murray.The two also appeared on the Chappelle Show's in the now legendary skits "Wu Tang Financial" and "Racial Draft."
GZA has been working on a Wu Tang documentary for the better part of the last decade, which will prove to be the ultimate statement about the super group. He also has TV shows and graphic novel ideas in development.
GZA has recently lectured at Harvard, Oxford, USC, MIT, NYU and Cornell.While at MIT he also visited with marine biologists, geneticists, and quantum physicists to seek inspiration for his forthcoming projects.
GZA's next album entitled DARK MATTER will be released on BabyGrande in 2012.The project is a natural extension of his longtime fascination with the cosmos and further inspired by his recent meetings with quantum physicists at MIT and in London. "I will take a quantum leap and discuss the universe while taking us on a journey through deep space.Traveling at lightspeed from the galactic center of one galaxy to the farthest corners of another. I hope my listeners will enjoy this cosmic adventure within a world of colossal planets, gas giants, meteorites, comets, and asteroids in the most extreme conditions."
~~~
More about Lettuce
For more than two decades Brooklyn-based funk outfit Lettuce has kept fans moving and shaking with their skittering beats, snaking basslines, and squelching brass. At their live shows the septet takes their instrumental grooves to the next level, pushing the two-hour mark with sizzling sets chock-full of extended solos, incredible improvisation, and infectious on-stage chemistry. Whether they're busting out trumpet-heavy early tracks like "Outta Here" or letting the synth and sax shine on newer numbers like "Hang Up Your Hangups", Lettuce always leaves ticket buyers feeling euphoric with their finger-licking, booty-shaking sets on tour.
Lettuce was formed in 1992 when its members began jamming together while attending a music intensive at Boston's Berklee School of Music. An unique bond was formed, and when they all returned to the school as undergrads in 1994 they picked up right where they left off. The group began hitting up club owners throughout Boston asking if they would "let us play", thus arriving at the moniker Lettuce. Their red-hot live shows helped them build a reputation in several major US cities and Tokyo, and in 2001 they released their first album Live In Tokyo, recorded at the city's famous Blue Note jazz club. They released their proper studio debut album Outta Here the following year, continuing to grow their fanbase with razor-sharp performances on tour. In addition to their roles in Lettuce, many of the band's members have worked as studio and touring musicians for big-name artists like Britney Spears, The Game, and Wyclef Jean. In 2012 the band released their third album Fly!, a groove-heavy collection of scorching funk tunes that remains a staple of their adrenaline-filled live shows.
~~~~~~~~
Lettuce is (a) the prime ingredient in a salad, (b) a slang for cash, (c) a green herb that can be smoked, (d) a genre-busting six-member funk / jazz / soul / jam / psychedelic / hip-hop / avant-garde / experimental collective formed in 1992 by four alumni of the prestigious Berklee College Of Music, or (e) all of the above.
If you answered "e," then you're on to the ever-changing musical palette and all-inclusive goals of LETTUCE's sixth studio album, Elevate, and its ongoing re-interpretation of the band's name as "Let Us." In their earliest days as students, they would roam the cities of the Northeast, and implore others to "Let Us play." Starting with their 2002 debut album, the phrase has been affixed to their first four albums, as in (Let Us) Outta Here (2002), (Let Us) Rage! (2008), (Let Us) Fly! (2012) and (Let Us) Crush (2015). Elevate (2019) is the band's first studio album since 2016's Mt. Crushmore and the follow-up to its 2017 live effort, Witches Stew.
Recorded at Colorado Sound outside of Denver, near the home of New York transplants and band co-founders, guitarist Adam "Shmeeans" Smirnoff and percussionist Adam Deitch, with legendary engineer Russ Elevado (D'Angelo, The Roots, Erykah Badu), Elevate shows LETTUCE touching on its past while moving full force into the future. The band explores its funk roots in the Tower of Power like punch of "Ready to Live" (the cover of a song by Cold Blood's Lydia Pense), the Prince-like swagger of "Royal Highness" and the OG blues-soul of "Love Is Too Strong," while expanded trip-hop sounds of the space age audio-scapes like "Trapezoid," "Gang 10" and "Purple Cabbage" show the influence of sax player Ryan Zoidis' Korg X-911 synths and Nigel Hall's Rhodes keyboards.
"This album definitely stretches the boundaries," says chief composer/percussionist Deitch, whose chance meeting with co-founder "Shmeeans" while 16-year-olds at a summer camp before their freshmen year of college proved momentous. "The idea was to keep exploring the different areas of funk and hip-hop beats, then writing melodies to those songs that made sense."
The more progressive/spacey vibe, with elements of Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, Eno and Miles Davis, also comes naturally to the band, according to founding member and bassist Erick "Jesus" Coomes, an Orange County native whose father, Tommy Coomes, is a successful musician with a number of albums to his credit.
"We're big improvisational music and arts fans," Erick says. "We consider them part of the same world. It's like painting live with five other people, one arm and a single brush."
Guitarist Shmeeans compares the group's eclectic, free-wheeling approach to "the modern NBA and its position-less basketball," Nigel Hall, the band's resident singer, also takes vocals on the album's two covers, Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" (one of the album's two focus tracks, along with "Krewe") and Lydia Pense's "Ready to Live." "As long as you listen, play your part and remember where the 'one' is, you can thrive in this band," says Nigel.
Trumpet and horn-player Eric "Benny" Bloom, a Rhode Island native who has been a full-time member of LETTUCE since 2011, notes, "This isn't just a funk band anymore. We're playing every style of music in every song. You can't categorize it. We have the freedom to do whatever we want that's appropriate for the song."
Much of the futuristic, yet warm and analog feel, of Elevate can be attributed to sax player, Portland, ME native and co-founding member Ryan Zoidis, who continued to explore the limits of his new toy, a vintage Korg X-911 synth.
"I was still figuring it out on the last album, trouble-shooting how it would work," says Ryan. "It's responsible not just for the ways the band has changed musically, but it's improved my life in general. It's great to have have a lot more options with my sound rather than just relying on the one standard timbre of the dry saxophone. There are now a bunch of different voices I can pull up." He points to "Trapezoid" as a piece for which he recorded himself playing the synth over a click track and then sent to Deitch, who turned it into the song on the album.
Other album highlights include Smirnoff's nod to Carlos Santana and Trey Anastasio on the Latin-flavored and playfully named "Shmink Dabby," the spaghetti western meets '60s Ethiopian funk by way of the French Ethiopiques compilation albums in the focus track, "Krewe" and the Marcus King cameo vocal on the B.B. King/Al Green gospel blues of "Love Is Too Strong." The latter is reminiscent of other guest appearances in the past by the likes of John Scofield and Fred Wesley on LETTUCE's debut, Outta Here, or Dwele on Rage!
"There's always something new to be learned as musicians and as people," adds Shmeeans. "We're trying to get a little bit better every day."
Says Ryan: "We realize more and more that this band is a gift we've been given. Everyone contributes, like a successful sports team. We've really become family over the years. We've known there was magic in this from the moment we first got together as 16-year-olds."
That magic continues to grow with the band's new album, a democratic ensemble in which there is no leader, but a complete unit that functions as a single entity, with plenty of moving parts.
All together now... Let us Elevate.
LETTUCE is (a) the prime ingredient in a salad, (b) a slang for cash, (c) a green herb that can be smoked, (d) a genre-busting six-member musical collective formed in 1992 by four alumni of the prestigious Berklee College Of Music, or (e) all of the above. If you answered "e," then you're in on the sheer magic of a band that both feeds the rich history of funk music and combines it with strains of hip-hop, rock, psychedelia, jazz, soul, jam, go-go, and the avant-garde.
The GRAMMY® Award-nominated six-piece is comprised of Adam Deitch [drums, percussion], Adam "Shmeeans" Smirnoff [guitar], Erick "Jesus" Coomes [bass], Ryan Zoidis [alto, baritone, tenor sax, Korg X-911], Eric "Benny" Bloom [trumpet, horns], and Nigel Hall [vocals, Hammond B-3, Rhodes, clavinet, keyboards].
GZA
https://www.instagram.com/therealgza
GZA will perform his seminal album 'Liquid Swords' in its entirety.
GZA/The Genius is a founding member of the seminal hip hop group the Wu-Tang Clan. GZA boasted some high-profile appearances on the group's debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), including one of only two solo tracks, "Clan in da Front."
GZA's 1995 solo effort, Liquid Swords, produced entirely by RZA, met with critical and commercial acclaim, and is largely considered one of the best albums to come out of the Wu-Tang camp. In 1998, the album was selected as one of The Source Magazine's 100 Best Rap Albums of all time. Steve Huey of Allmusic called him "one of the best lyricists of the 1990s," while the editors of About.com ranked him #17 on their list of the Top 50 MCs of Our Time (1987-2007), making him the highest-ranking Wu-Tang Clan member on the list.
GZA's subsequent solo projects were all received to great critical acclaim: Beneath the Surface (1999); Legend of the Liquid Sword (2002); Grandmasters (2005) with DJ Muggs (the producer for hip-hop group Cypress Hill) which saw GZA using chess as a metaphor for the rap game; and finally, Pro Tools (2008) featured production from past collaborators RZA, Mathematics, and True Master..
GZA made an appearance with RZA in Jim Jarmusch's film Coffee & Cigarettes, opposite Bill Murray.The two also appeared on the Chappelle Show's in the now legendary skits "Wu Tang Financial" and "Racial Draft."
GZA has been working on a Wu Tang documentary for the better part of the last decade, which will prove to be the ultimate statement about the super group. He also has TV shows and graphic novel ideas in development.
GZA has recently lectured at Harvard, Oxford, USC, MIT, NYU and Cornell.While at MIT he also visited with marine biologists, geneticists, and quantum physicists to seek inspiration for his forthcoming projects.
GZA's next album entitled DARK MATTER will be released on BabyGrande in 2012.The project is a natural extension of his longtime fascination with the cosmos and further inspired by his recent meetings with quantum physicists at MIT and in London. "I will take a quantum leap and discuss the universe while taking us on a journey through deep space.Traveling at lightspeed from the galactic center of one galaxy to the farthest corners of another. I hope my listeners will enjoy this cosmic adventure within a world of colossal planets, gas giants, meteorites, comets, and asteroids in the most extreme conditions."
~~~
More about Lettuce
For more than two decades Brooklyn-based funk outfit Lettuce has kept fans moving and shaking with their skittering beats, snaking basslines, and squelching brass. At their live shows the septet takes their instrumental grooves to the next level, pushing the two-hour mark with sizzling sets chock-full of extended solos, incredible improvisation, and infectious on-stage chemistry. Whether they're busting out trumpet-heavy early tracks like "Outta Here" or letting the synth and sax shine on newer numbers like "Hang Up Your Hangups", Lettuce always leaves ticket buyers feeling euphoric with their finger-licking, booty-shaking sets on tour.
Lettuce was formed in 1992 when its members began jamming together while attending a music intensive at Boston's Berklee School of Music. An unique bond was formed, and when they all returned to the school as undergrads in 1994 they picked up right where they left off. The group began hitting up club owners throughout Boston asking if they would "let us play", thus arriving at the moniker Lettuce. Their red-hot live shows helped them build a reputation in several major US cities and Tokyo, and in 2001 they released their first album Live In Tokyo, recorded at the city's famous Blue Note jazz club. They released their proper studio debut album Outta Here the following year, continuing to grow their fanbase with razor-sharp performances on tour. In addition to their roles in Lettuce, many of the band's members have worked as studio and touring musicians for big-name artists like Britney Spears, The Game, and Wyclef Jean. In 2012 the band released their third album Fly!, a groove-heavy collection of scorching funk tunes that remains a staple of their adrenaline-filled live shows.
~~~~~~~~
Lettuce is (a) the prime ingredient in a salad, (b) a slang for cash, (c) a green herb that can be smoked, (d) a genre-busting six-member funk / jazz / soul / jam / psychedelic / hip-hop / avant-garde / experimental collective formed in 1992 by four alumni of the prestigious Berklee College Of Music, or (e) all of the above.
If you answered "e," then you're on to the ever-changing musical palette and all-inclusive goals of LETTUCE's sixth studio album, Elevate, and its ongoing re-interpretation of the band's name as "Let Us." In their earliest days as students, they would roam the cities of the Northeast, and implore others to "Let Us play." Starting with their 2002 debut album, the phrase has been affixed to their first four albums, as in (Let Us) Outta Here (2002), (Let Us) Rage! (2008), (Let Us) Fly! (2012) and (Let Us) Crush (2015). Elevate (2019) is the band's first studio album since 2016's Mt. Crushmore and the follow-up to its 2017 live effort, Witches Stew.
Recorded at Colorado Sound outside of Denver, near the home of New York transplants and band co-founders, guitarist Adam "Shmeeans" Smirnoff and percussionist Adam Deitch, with legendary engineer Russ Elevado (D'Angelo, The Roots, Erykah Badu), Elevate shows LETTUCE touching on its past while moving full force into the future. The band explores its funk roots in the Tower of Power like punch of "Ready to Live" (the cover of a song by Cold Blood's Lydia Pense), the Prince-like swagger of "Royal Highness" and the OG blues-soul of "Love Is Too Strong," while expanded trip-hop sounds of the space age audio-scapes like "Trapezoid," "Gang 10" and "Purple Cabbage" show the influence of sax player Ryan Zoidis' Korg X-911 synths and Nigel Hall's Rhodes keyboards.
"This album definitely stretches the boundaries," says chief composer/percussionist Deitch, whose chance meeting with co-founder "Shmeeans" while 16-year-olds at a summer camp before their freshmen year of college proved momentous. "The idea was to keep exploring the different areas of funk and hip-hop beats, then writing melodies to those songs that made sense."
The more progressive/spacey vibe, with elements of Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, Eno and Miles Davis, also comes naturally to the band, according to founding member and bassist Erick "Jesus" Coomes, an Orange County native whose father, Tommy Coomes, is a successful musician with a number of albums to his credit.
"We're big improvisational music and arts fans," Erick says. "We consider them part of the same world. It's like painting live with five other people, one arm and a single brush."
Guitarist Shmeeans compares the group's eclectic, free-wheeling approach to "the modern NBA and its position-less basketball," Nigel Hall, the band's resident singer, also takes vocals on the album's two covers, Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" (one of the album's two focus tracks, along with "Krewe") and Lydia Pense's "Ready to Live." "As long as you listen, play your part and remember where the 'one' is, you can thrive in this band," says Nigel.
Trumpet and horn-player Eric "Benny" Bloom, a Rhode Island native who has been a full-time member of LETTUCE since 2011, notes, "This isn't just a funk band anymore. We're playing every style of music in every song. You can't categorize it. We have the freedom to do whatever we want that's appropriate for the song."
Much of the futuristic, yet warm and analog feel, of Elevate can be attributed to sax player, Portland, ME native and co-founding member Ryan Zoidis, who continued to explore the limits of his new toy, a vintage Korg X-911 synth.
"I was still figuring it out on the last album, trouble-shooting how it would work," says Ryan. "It's responsible not just for the ways the band has changed musically, but it's improved my life in general. It's great to have have a lot more options with my sound rather than just relying on the one standard timbre of the dry saxophone. There are now a bunch of different voices I can pull up." He points to "Trapezoid" as a piece for which he recorded himself playing the synth over a click track and then sent to Deitch, who turned it into the song on the album.
Other album highlights include Smirnoff's nod to Carlos Santana and Trey Anastasio on the Latin-flavored and playfully named "Shmink Dabby," the spaghetti western meets '60s Ethiopian funk by way of the French Ethiopiques compilation albums in the focus track, "Krewe" and the Marcus King cameo vocal on the B.B. King/Al Green gospel blues of "Love Is Too Strong." The latter is reminiscent of other guest appearances in the past by the likes of John Scofield and Fred Wesley on LETTUCE's debut, Outta Here, or Dwele on Rage!
"There's always something new to be learned as musicians and as people," adds Shmeeans. "We're trying to get a little bit better every day."
Says Ryan: "We realize more and more that this band is a gift we've been given. Everyone contributes, like a successful sports team. We've really become family over the years. We've known there was magic in this from the moment we first got together as 16-year-olds."
That magic continues to grow with the band's new album, a democratic ensemble in which there is no leader, but a complete unit that functions as a single entity, with plenty of moving parts.
All together now... Let us Elevate.
read more
The GRAMMY® Award-nominated six-piece is comprised of Adam Deitch [drums, percussion], Adam "Shmeeans" Smirnoff [guitar], Erick "Jesus" Coomes [bass], Ryan Zoidis [alto, baritone, tenor sax, Korg X-911], Eric "Benny" Bloom [trumpet, horns], and Nigel Hall [vocals, Hammond B-3, Rhodes, clavinet, keyboards].
GZA
https://www.instagram.com/therealgza
GZA will perform his seminal album 'Liquid Swords' in its entirety.
GZA/The Genius is a founding member of the seminal hip hop group the Wu-Tang Clan. GZA boasted some high-profile appearances on the group's debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), including one of only two solo tracks, "Clan in da Front."
GZA's 1995 solo effort, Liquid Swords, produced entirely by RZA, met with critical and commercial acclaim, and is largely considered one of the best albums to come out of the Wu-Tang camp. In 1998, the album was selected as one of The Source Magazine's 100 Best Rap Albums of all time. Steve Huey of Allmusic called him "one of the best lyricists of the 1990s," while the editors of About.com ranked him #17 on their list of the Top 50 MCs of Our Time (1987-2007), making him the highest-ranking Wu-Tang Clan member on the list.
GZA's subsequent solo projects were all received to great critical acclaim: Beneath the Surface (1999); Legend of the Liquid Sword (2002); Grandmasters (2005) with DJ Muggs (the producer for hip-hop group Cypress Hill) which saw GZA using chess as a metaphor for the rap game; and finally, Pro Tools (2008) featured production from past collaborators RZA, Mathematics, and True Master..
GZA made an appearance with RZA in Jim Jarmusch's film Coffee & Cigarettes, opposite Bill Murray.The two also appeared on the Chappelle Show's in the now legendary skits "Wu Tang Financial" and "Racial Draft."
GZA has been working on a Wu Tang documentary for the better part of the last decade, which will prove to be the ultimate statement about the super group. He also has TV shows and graphic novel ideas in development.
GZA has recently lectured at Harvard, Oxford, USC, MIT, NYU and Cornell.While at MIT he also visited with marine biologists, geneticists, and quantum physicists to seek inspiration for his forthcoming projects.
GZA's next album entitled DARK MATTER will be released on BabyGrande in 2012.The project is a natural extension of his longtime fascination with the cosmos and further inspired by his recent meetings with quantum physicists at MIT and in London. "I will take a quantum leap and discuss the universe while taking us on a journey through deep space.Traveling at lightspeed from the galactic center of one galaxy to the farthest corners of another. I hope my listeners will enjoy this cosmic adventure within a world of colossal planets, gas giants, meteorites, comets, and asteroids in the most extreme conditions."
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More about Lettuce
For more than two decades Brooklyn-based funk outfit Lettuce has kept fans moving and shaking with their skittering beats, snaking basslines, and squelching brass. At their live shows the septet takes their instrumental grooves to the next level, pushing the two-hour mark with sizzling sets chock-full of extended solos, incredible improvisation, and infectious on-stage chemistry. Whether they're busting out trumpet-heavy early tracks like "Outta Here" or letting the synth and sax shine on newer numbers like "Hang Up Your Hangups", Lettuce always leaves ticket buyers feeling euphoric with their finger-licking, booty-shaking sets on tour.
Lettuce was formed in 1992 when its members began jamming together while attending a music intensive at Boston's Berklee School of Music. An unique bond was formed, and when they all returned to the school as undergrads in 1994 they picked up right where they left off. The group began hitting up club owners throughout Boston asking if they would "let us play", thus arriving at the moniker Lettuce. Their red-hot live shows helped them build a reputation in several major US cities and Tokyo, and in 2001 they released their first album Live In Tokyo, recorded at the city's famous Blue Note jazz club. They released their proper studio debut album Outta Here the following year, continuing to grow their fanbase with razor-sharp performances on tour. In addition to their roles in Lettuce, many of the band's members have worked as studio and touring musicians for big-name artists like Britney Spears, The Game, and Wyclef Jean. In 2012 the band released their third album Fly!, a groove-heavy collection of scorching funk tunes that remains a staple of their adrenaline-filled live shows.
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Lettuce is (a) the prime ingredient in a salad, (b) a slang for cash, (c) a green herb that can be smoked, (d) a genre-busting six-member funk / jazz / soul / jam / psychedelic / hip-hop / avant-garde / experimental collective formed in 1992 by four alumni of the prestigious Berklee College Of Music, or (e) all of the above.
If you answered "e," then you're on to the ever-changing musical palette and all-inclusive goals of LETTUCE's sixth studio album, Elevate, and its ongoing re-interpretation of the band's name as "Let Us." In their earliest days as students, they would roam the cities of the Northeast, and implore others to "Let Us play." Starting with their 2002 debut album, the phrase has been affixed to their first four albums, as in (Let Us) Outta Here (2002), (Let Us) Rage! (2008), (Let Us) Fly! (2012) and (Let Us) Crush (2015). Elevate (2019) is the band's first studio album since 2016's Mt. Crushmore and the follow-up to its 2017 live effort, Witches Stew.
Recorded at Colorado Sound outside of Denver, near the home of New York transplants and band co-founders, guitarist Adam "Shmeeans" Smirnoff and percussionist Adam Deitch, with legendary engineer Russ Elevado (D'Angelo, The Roots, Erykah Badu), Elevate shows LETTUCE touching on its past while moving full force into the future. The band explores its funk roots in the Tower of Power like punch of "Ready to Live" (the cover of a song by Cold Blood's Lydia Pense), the Prince-like swagger of "Royal Highness" and the OG blues-soul of "Love Is Too Strong," while expanded trip-hop sounds of the space age audio-scapes like "Trapezoid," "Gang 10" and "Purple Cabbage" show the influence of sax player Ryan Zoidis' Korg X-911 synths and Nigel Hall's Rhodes keyboards.
"This album definitely stretches the boundaries," says chief composer/percussionist Deitch, whose chance meeting with co-founder "Shmeeans" while 16-year-olds at a summer camp before their freshmen year of college proved momentous. "The idea was to keep exploring the different areas of funk and hip-hop beats, then writing melodies to those songs that made sense."
The more progressive/spacey vibe, with elements of Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, Eno and Miles Davis, also comes naturally to the band, according to founding member and bassist Erick "Jesus" Coomes, an Orange County native whose father, Tommy Coomes, is a successful musician with a number of albums to his credit.
"We're big improvisational music and arts fans," Erick says. "We consider them part of the same world. It's like painting live with five other people, one arm and a single brush."
Guitarist Shmeeans compares the group's eclectic, free-wheeling approach to "the modern NBA and its position-less basketball," Nigel Hall, the band's resident singer, also takes vocals on the album's two covers, Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" (one of the album's two focus tracks, along with "Krewe") and Lydia Pense's "Ready to Live." "As long as you listen, play your part and remember where the 'one' is, you can thrive in this band," says Nigel.
Trumpet and horn-player Eric "Benny" Bloom, a Rhode Island native who has been a full-time member of LETTUCE since 2011, notes, "This isn't just a funk band anymore. We're playing every style of music in every song. You can't categorize it. We have the freedom to do whatever we want that's appropriate for the song."
Much of the futuristic, yet warm and analog feel, of Elevate can be attributed to sax player, Portland, ME native and co-founding member Ryan Zoidis, who continued to explore the limits of his new toy, a vintage Korg X-911 synth.
"I was still figuring it out on the last album, trouble-shooting how it would work," says Ryan. "It's responsible not just for the ways the band has changed musically, but it's improved my life in general. It's great to have have a lot more options with my sound rather than just relying on the one standard timbre of the dry saxophone. There are now a bunch of different voices I can pull up." He points to "Trapezoid" as a piece for which he recorded himself playing the synth over a click track and then sent to Deitch, who turned it into the song on the album.
Other album highlights include Smirnoff's nod to Carlos Santana and Trey Anastasio on the Latin-flavored and playfully named "Shmink Dabby," the spaghetti western meets '60s Ethiopian funk by way of the French Ethiopiques compilation albums in the focus track, "Krewe" and the Marcus King cameo vocal on the B.B. King/Al Green gospel blues of "Love Is Too Strong." The latter is reminiscent of other guest appearances in the past by the likes of John Scofield and Fred Wesley on LETTUCE's debut, Outta Here, or Dwele on Rage!
"There's always something new to be learned as musicians and as people," adds Shmeeans. "We're trying to get a little bit better every day."
Says Ryan: "We realize more and more that this band is a gift we've been given. Everyone contributes, like a successful sports team. We've really become family over the years. We've known there was magic in this from the moment we first got together as 16-year-olds."
That magic continues to grow with the band's new album, a democratic ensemble in which there is no leader, but a complete unit that functions as a single entity, with plenty of moving parts.
All together now... Let us Elevate.
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Fox Theater - Oakland
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1807 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland, CA 94612
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