G. Love & Special Sauce, accompanied by half empty bottles of the actual self-branded hot sauce, brought their signature trashcan blues to Northern California on Friday, February 5th.
Coming out of the San Francisco Bay Area unscathed just before Super Bowl 50, The Mystic Theatre of Petaluma, CA was packed for the eighth stop of the 22 date tour leg. Along for the first leg as the opening act Boston based funk outfit Ripe.
Touring with the original Special Sauce line up of bassist James “Jimi Jazz” Prescott and Jeffrey “Houseman” Clemens, guitarist/harp player Garrett “G. Love” Dutton couldn’t be happier – Jimi Jazz took a five year solo act hiatus before reconnecting with Special Sauce in 2014.
The rekindled chemistry has been so on-point lately that, when they saw an opportunity to record G. Love & Special Sauce’s 10th studio album, Love Saves The Day, less than a year after the success of 2014’s Sugar, they jumped at it.
G. Love Is Here To Save The Day On New Guest-Laden Album
“It’s one of those things, you can’t really tell how much you put on that band chemistry,” explained G. Love. “When [Jimi] was gone we missed him more than we thought we would.”
“We had a great unit with Timo Shanko, who’s just an amazingly gifted musician – upright and electric bass player and a saxophonist from Boston and Mark [Boyce] on keys – but there’s just something special about the original trio,” he continued. “[Jimi] wrote almost all of these bass lines. When you’re tied to something that’s yours it’s different from covering someone else. Even if you cover it great, it’s still someone else’s part.”
Featuring a slew of guest musicians on the record, the band intentionally operates as a trio for a stylistic reason.
“The greatest thing about doing what we do is all the people we get to share the stage and studio with,” he said. “From De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest to Bonnie Raitt, John Hammond or even Jim Dickinson, father of North Mississippi All-Stars guitarist Luther Dickinson.”
“But here’s the thing,” he continued, “the original concept of a trio is that everyone has to have and bring a certain thing to the table. Our style is really loose, but we three bring it. When you add other players, it really fills the sound out even more”
One thing that G. Love & Special Sauce are doing to make this tour memorable for each stop has been embracing an intimate connection with die hard fans who want to be involved with a pre show sound check, complete with meet and greet and Q+A with G. Love.
During the sound check the band works through a few songs on the list for the second set, practicing arrangements in different keys and running through them a few times with deliberate focus. It was immediately obvious that G. Love cares about the people that his music has touched. As Jimi Jazz and Houseman retreated to the bus, G. Love stayed seated on the stage making small talk about the local surf at Mavericks as the VIP patrons rolled into the sound check.
Running through some requests, G. Love saved a few of them for the show but obliged others on the spot with solo acoustic renditions of “Fat One”, “Fixin’ To Die” and “Girl At The Laundromat.” When asked what this girl looked like, G. Love laughed and confessed, “I don’t know man, I made her up.”
Following the event, G. Love heads backstage for publicity shots and media connections to elaborate on questions about some of his favorite artists, the best shows he saw in 2015 and why the “slop” blues label isn’t such a bad thing.
“One thing we don’t like is blues that’s too clean, too nice, like soft rock type smooth shit,” he said. “We like to keep our sound rugged and raw and we record like that. Just having a trio sounds like that on stage. A lot of time I go and see bands on stage and the only thing they’re missing is me just puttin’ some dirt on it,” he laughs. “Like they’re afraid to make a mistake or let it hang out. I mean we try our hardest to play the shit right but you know we still like to keep it raw.”
“Slightly Stoopid have really become such a great band over the years, with the addition of Karl Denson and the horn section, you know, the musicianship of everyone in that band is really top notch, they continually impress me with their live show. Dead & Co with John Mayer, that was really great,” he added.
“John Mayer is one of those guys who just kinda plays a soft rock, light on his records you know, but on stage his guitar playing was just unbelievable. I was really proud of him. I saw them in Boston so I’m sure it just kept getting better too.”
Back inside The Mystic, the doors have opened and Ripe prepares to take the stage. Even though this is Ripe’s first tour out West, and for several of the seven members of the band it’s their first time on the left coast in general, the crowd still showed up for the opener.
Ripe wasted no time getting down and dirty. In the first song, “Brother Sky” the lyrics open: “It hits you like a brick” and that is exactly what happened. The crowd was visibly shocked, and then quickly stepped in closer to the stage. Ripe brings an insanely refreshing, soulful take on the ever-evolving East Coast funk scene.
Hitting Petaluma hard and fast they moved straight into the “Talk To The Moon > Lola > Stanky J’s” section, proving that they have the chops to be noticed.
The dual horn and dual guitar approach of Josh Shpak on Trumpet/EWI, Calvin Barthel on Trombone and Tory Geismar and Jon Becker switching leads, respectively, works incredibly well as they elevate each other and take turns running through impressive scale work.
Part of Ripe’s immediate draw is lead vocalist Robbie Wulfsohn’s non-stop action. He encourages the crowd to dance not just verbally, but with his own dance moves. When his vibrant, soulful voice a la Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard isn’t restricted to the microphone, he is bouncing around the stage and getting involved with every member of the band and the audience, even teaching them specific dance moves to songs.
Although every member of the band brings their own specific eccentricities to the table, the vibrant, high-energy element Wulfsohn is unmatched except perhaps by trade in the wildly tight efforts of drummer Sampson Hellerman or the funky foundation set by Nadav Shapira on bass guitar.
Standout tracks included a cover of The Kinks’ “Lola” sandwiched early in the set as well as a 10 minute dance party tribute to funk legends both past and present via mash up of Stevie Wonder’s 1973 hit “Living For The City” and Lettuce’s 2008 track “Sam Huff’s Flying Raging Machine” dubbed “Sam Huff’s For The City.”
Meanwhile, less than an hour before they hit the stage, G. Love is writing the set list for tonight’s show. “The first set is the new record, all those songs,” he explains, adding that horn section of Ripe, Shpak and Barthel, will be sitting in on the appropriate songs from the late 2015 release, Love Saves The Day.
G. Love takes his time doodling on an already painted up piece of paper dedicated with Petaluma, The Mystic and the date, a unique page per show, which he explains is photocopied for the stage.
“The original is framed and sold at the merch booth. It’s a good pre show relaxation tool for me to personalize it like this and for me to connect one on one with fans in each city,” he said.
The songs get rearranged and played out of order of the album to keep things unpredictable on stage, but as if that weren’t enough, G. Love takes his fan connection a step further in the second set.
Throughout the day and up until 30 minutes before show time, G. Love can be found checking his personal Instagram, @phillyglove, Twitter, @glove and Facebook accounts to personalize the set by fulfilling requests for fans in attendance via social media or the VIP meet and greet before each show.
G. Love & Special Sauce took the stage at 10:30 PM and kicked the evening off with a blistering “Shotgun Tongue.” Houseman on the drums keeps his beats wide yet perfectly in time like a human metronome, the pot to G. Love’s sloppy stew.
Jumping all around the album and across a large line up of guitars and harmonica keys, it was the middle of the set where the Ripe Horns added their flair to the appropriate tracks. “Muse” featured a standard blues run through and had the crowd hanging on every note, including a solid Jimi Jazz bass solo segue into “Baby Why You Do Me Like That?”.
Featuring DJ Logic on the album, having live horns interpret the energy of the room and the song in real time turned out to be irreplaceable and the vibe inside The Mystic led into an epic drum solo segue into the third and final horn track, “Let’s Have a Good Time” featuring Ozomatli. The two bands meshed in an extended jam that resulted in G. Love egging on Shpak in what became a wild trumpet solo.
The first set continued bouncing around, including G. Love who displayed his inner rhythm a la stylized Elvis leg shaking on “Pick Up The Phone” leaving “R U Kidding Me” and the titular track “Love Saves The Day” before ending the set at 11:15.
In what was less than a five-minute break, G. Love returned for two songs solo with an acoustic guitar. Beginning with some VIP and social media fan requests, “Sunshine” and “Love” off 2004’s The Hustle and 1999’s Philadelphonic, respectively.
“Rodeo Clowns” the song written and popularized by Jack Johnson, was performed on G. Love’s 1999 album Philadelphonic, and even featured Johnson.
“Cold Beverage” appropriately followed a red hot blues clinic on the harp heavy track “Still Hanging Around” off of G. Love’s 2006 solo release Lemonade and led into one of the highlights of the set: the bust out of the rarely played track “Fresh Lila,” a tribute to a 1967 Buick once owned by G. Love. That song segued into “Come Up Man.”
“This Ain’t Living” from the group’s self-titled debut album in 1994 led into a rowdy “Obama Smokes Weed > Who’s Got The Weed,” a request made during the sound check, and possibly in upcoming celebration roots reggae legend Bob Marley’s birthday that saw many billows of smoke rising from the crowd.
G. Love abandoned his guitar momentarily for some heavy vox duties on “Friday Night” and “Baby’s Got Sauce”, each featuring plenty of on the spot ad-libs in the lyrics to really kick the end of the show into next gear.
After the on stage party reached a break, G. Love reintroduced the band, said thank you, and went straight into David Bowie’s “Suffragette City” for the encore, ending the show around 1:15 AM.
After more than 20 years and 10 studio albums, G. Love & Special Sauce have continually put forth consistent effort after consistent effort and continue to demonstrate themselves on the upswing.
If you plan on catching an upcoming show, do yourself a huge favor and do not miss opening act Ripe. They have 12 more shows before jumping off the tour at the end of February.
Setlist: Ripe at The Mystic Theater, Petaluma, CA – 2/5/16
One Set: Brother Sky, Talk To The Moon > Lola* > Stanky J’s, Ex – Life, Downward, Goon Squad, Sam Huffs City& > Caralee
* cover, The Kinks
& tribute, Stevie Wonder/Lettuce
Setlist: G. Love & Special Sauce at The Mystic Theater, Petaluma, CA – 2/5/16
Set 1: Shotgun Tongue, Dis Song, Lil’ Runaround, Back To Boston, NYC, Muse#, Baby Why You Do Me Like That?#, Let’s Have A Good Time#, Pick Up The Phone, Peanut Butter Lips, R U Kidding Me, Love Saves The Day
Set 2: Sunshine, Love, Rodeo Clowns, Still Hanging Around, Cold Beverage, Fresh Lila > Come Up Man, This Ain’t Living, Obama Smoke Weed > Who’s Got The Weed, Friday Night, Baby’s Got Sauce
Encore: Suffragette City^
# feat. Ripe Horns
* cover, Jack Johnson
& cover, Slightly Stoopid ft. G love
^ cover, David Bowie
A full gallery of Joshua Huver’s photos can be seen below:
