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G. Love & Special Sauce
w/ Redeye Empire
When: 2/11/2010 7:30 PM
Online & Phone Sales Have Closed
Tickets are available at the Marquee Box Office. Please Call (480) 829-0607 for
information.
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G. Love serves up a fresh new
release with Lemonade
Tart, Tangy, Smooth, and oh so lip-smacking Sweet! Aaah yes, time to praise the
almighty summer sippin’ thirst quencher, being served straight up G. Love and
Special Sauce style, ice cool and always refreshing. On their second release for
Brushfire Records, the Philly boys offer up Lemonade, a series of soul drenched
tracks pouring out their blues infused hip-hop, which people have been trying to
label for years. The best advice….don’t try to tame it or claim it; it’s simply their
sonic trademark, instantly recognizable and addictively delicious.
“The whole thing about lemonade for me was when I first set out from Philly to
make it in the music world I went up to Boston, and I would just sit on the front porch of my place after playing the streets
or practicing and make myself a big pitcher of lemonade. It just symbolized old time porch loungin’ for that’s where I did a
lot of my shedding and writing. It was so simple and great, I said, ‘if I ever get a record deal I’m going to get ‘Lemonade’ tattooed
on my arm.”
It’s there all right, and seven albums, thirteen years, and over a million worldwide units later, Lemonade is the most cohesive
and rewarding album Garrett Dutton - a.k.a. G. Love (guitar, vocals, harmonica, sweat and tears) has ever delivered.
Produced and engineered in the womb of Philadelphonic Studios by Chris DiBeneditto (Electric Mile & Philadelphonic) and
faithfully anchored by the Sauce, Jimi “Jazz” Prescott (acoustic bass), and Jeffrey “Thunderhouse” Clemens (drums, percussion),
G. pairs up with some of the best players in the game including Ben Harper, Donovan Frankenreiter, Jasper, Dave
Hidalgo (Los Lobos), Blackalicious, Marc Broussard, Tristan Prettyman and Jack Johnson on a fourteen song celebration of his
iconic career.
The tradition of the hip-hop blues has always been to rip open the heart and bare the soul. Tell the listener what they want
to hear and you’ll have a fair weather friend; tell them the way it is and you’ll have true love. Thankfully, the Love is Alive, for
G. delivers his loping lilt with bone humming honesty and he’s never sounded so clear. From the swarming infectious
grooves of “Ride”, “Ain’t That Right”, and “Holla!” to the laid down easy of “Breakin’ Up”, “Still Hanging Around”, and “Missing
My Baby” G. and The Sauce dance with the muses of their mentors, John Hammond, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Reed, De La Soul
without ever missing the beat of their own signature time.
Pepper this with the mercury simmer of “Hot Cookin’” with Frankenreiter, the idyllic warmth of “Rainbow” with Johnson, the
aching duet of “Beautiful” with Prettyman and the handclapping hallelujah of “Let the Music Play” with Harper and Broussard
you’re left with the pure sound of summer ringing in your ear.
As G. says of all the collaborations, “We just reached out to a lot of our friends who just happen to be incredible musicians,
and everyone was pretty enthusiastic about coming into the studio with us. So while the record maintains a real G. Love feel,
it was a real group effort. Especially on “Let the Music Play”, I mean Ben and Marc just came down and demolished this
track. We cut the rhythm track but left it wide open. So Bens comes through town and he’s just on fire. He wrote his verse
on the spot, whipped up this tight Wurlitzer part and played a crazy slide guitar solo throughout the whole thing. I already
had a chorus together, but he added this gospel style by stacking his vocals a bit which caught the vibe. To top it off I wanted
to have Broussard sing some harmony on it, but once in the studio he wanted to try out one of the verses. I asked him if
he thought he could do it and he says in his real New Orleans gruff voice, ‘you think I came down here to suck, man?’ Well
okay…. Watch out, I mean I never appreciated what an incredible vocalist he is until he just went in, put his church on it and
crushed it. To have Ben and Marc, who both come at music from such a soulful way, on the same track was simply epic.”
Even though G. is an insatiable musical omnivore when it comes to feeding off influences, Lemonade is his most stylistically
cohesive and focused album yet. Grown out of the somewhat dark tension of The Electric Mile(2001) and the ass bumping
smorgasbord of The Hustle (2004), Lemonade’s overall kickback beat begs the listener to blow out the speakers in musical
reaffirmation. “Free” perhaps its deepest and most powerful track pulls the continuity string through it all, for its positive
examination of the cycle of rebirth through a person’s life backed with a “Fixin’ to Die” blues beat perfectly captures the
sweat your funk out, soul searchin’, dust ridden road warriors G. Love and Special Sauce have come to embody.
“I’m in a real comfortable place musically and in my life; I’m cruisin right now and it feels good. So when I set out to make
this record, I wanted to take my sound, base it on the groove and really get into a deeper pocket. Lyrically, I wanted to talk
about what I always talk about finding love, making love, losing love, life and lemonade”
Yes indeed, what you hold in your hands is pure, fresh, organic, summer sound. So go ahead, scratch it, sniff it, squeeze it,
bite it until its juices slide down your elbows and leave you satisfied.
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