Soulive Makes Glorious Jazz Fest Return For First New Orleans Show In 8 Years [Photos/Videos]

Soulive made its glorious and long-awaited return to New Orleans last Friday to help kick off the Jazz Fest season with the band’s first show at The Joy Theater in ten years. The trio had not played New Orleans since April 28th, 2017, when it opened for Gov’t Mule at the Saenger Theatre amid another Jazz Fest.

While much has changed in the world since Soulive last stepped foot onstage at The Joy on April 30th, 2015—opening for Lettuce at a time when guitarist Eric Krasno started moving away from Lett to focus on his myriad other projects—things have remained concretely solid within Soulive. Organist Neal Evans still has one of the hardest-working left hands since Ray Manzarek, and his brother Alan Evans on drums still controls an astonishing funk pocket on a minimalist kit. Eric Krasno remains a centerpiece as dynamic as he is cooperative, as the spirit of collaboration remains Soulive’s core.

The trio shot out of an energetic cannon to start the show, playing as if this wasn’t only the band’s third show of the year and first in nearly three months. Krasno soon weaved swirling psychedelic Jimi Hendrix guitar leads around Neal’s B3 organ swells for some Soulive synergy at its finest. At one point, Neal even turned his Clavinet into a shimmering, hallucinatory guitar to further underscore the band’s symbiotic identity. Elsewhere, the group paid tribute to late guitar legend Jeff Beck with his Stevie Wonder-penned instrumental, “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers”, with Kraz’s acid-rock serenade melting distorted hysteria with technical elegance.

As it was only the second night of Jazz Fest, most visiting musicians still had fresh legs (or lungs in case of this show’s special guests). Krasno reconnected with his former Lettuce bandmate Eric “Benny” Bloom late in the show, before the band brought out local heavy Nicholas Payton for some dueling trumpets. The horns soared as the two visiting musicians pushed each other to greater heights, with the crowd and Soulive privileged to watch the friendly competition. In the end, the playing all came back to the spirit of cooperation that has powered Soulive for over a quarter of a century.

Check out photos from Soulive in New Orleans courtesy of photographer Jay Strausser along with some fan-shot videos. Hopefully, it won’t take them another ten years to come back to the Joy.