Bouncing And Bouncing

After An Extended Slump, G. Love Gets His Groove Back By Continuing To Fuse Hip-Hop to the Blues

originally published March 5, 2008

Last summer, G. Love and his band Special Sauce got the chance to do their first tour as bona fide amphitheater headliners. Love couldn't be blamed if he felt the opportunity was long overdue. "I'm not angry, but I'm not satisfied, for sure," says G. Love. "This [was] something that we, my band and I, have been working diligently toward for the last 13 years."

When G. Love (real name Garrett Dutton III) and Special Sauce broke onto the scene out of their home town of Philadelphia, it looked like the opportunity to headline the venues that hosted last year's Summer Haze tour (most of which are outdoor amphitheaters) might be just around the corner.

The group's 1994 self-titled debut album sold more than 500,000 copies and spawned a minor hit with the song "Cold Beverage." Love looked to have the kind of buzz going that meant an even bigger commercial breakthrough was well within his reach. It didn't happen.

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Instead, the second G. Love and Special Sauce album, Coast To Coast Motel - which Love says was rushed in an effort to capitalize on the group's momentum - flopped. Then came a series of setbacks that forced Love to rebuild his career almost from the ground up.

Tensions between Love and bandmates bassist Jim "Jimi Jazz" Prescott and drummer Jeffrey "The Houseman" Clemens flared, and after the final show on the Coast To Coast Motel tour, the group broke up. The split, though, turned out to be temporary. After assembling other musicians to record the third album Yeah, It's That Easy, Love brought back Prescott and then Clemens and the group was back together. What proved more lasting were the floundering album sales, as neither Yeah, It's That Easy nor the 1999 release Philadelphonic caught on.

Then the group hit a low point with 2001's Electric Mile, a release that spelled the end of G. Love & Special Sauce's tenure on the Sony-owned label Epic Records. The slumping album sales, though, can't be blamed entirely on indifferent promotion by Epic. Even Love admits he got away from some of the strengths of his first album, and made music that lacked the live-in-the-studio feel of the debut and took stylistic detours from his original sound.

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With his 2004 CD, The Hustle, though, Love took steps to put his career back on track. He signed with Brushfire Records, the label owned by popular singer-songwriter Jack Johnson, and for The Hustle, Love returned to the more stripped-down blend of acoustic blues and hip-hop that defined the first album. The Hustle may not have been a huge seller, but it got Love's career moving forward. Love's momentum continued to build behind his latest album Lemonade, which was released on Brushfire Records in 2006. On that album, Love says, he consciously tried to create some continuity with the music on The Hustle.

"To me, it was The Hustle Part 2," says Love. "I wanted to ride that energy off of The Hustle, which was great. I felt like The Hustle yielded a lot of really cool live hits for us. We really got everything happening again with The Hustle, and it's been a really positive upswing of everything since then. The record label situation is great on Brushfire, and the band is getting along good, and it just seems real positive most of the time."

Love and Special Sauce are starting another round of headlining dates, this time in clubs and theaters. Love says the group, which has now expanded to a quartet with the addition of keyboardist Mark Boyce, have quite a few new songs written for an upcoming album that could start showing up in the live set.

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"I think I've got some great stuff," Love says. "I want [the next album to] be a lot more progressive than Lemonade was, and a lot more down and dirty as well. Lemonade has been a really great experience for us… but creatively, I purposely wanted to play it pretty safe," he says. "I wanted it to be medium-tempo hip-hop stuff that was just easy to have on and listen to, and I wanted it to be a summer-time grooving record, which is what it was… And this [next] record, I want the blues to be a lot more bluesy and the hip-hop to be a lot harder, and even [have] a little more rock and roll in there, like a Stones kind of vibe. I'm really feeling it right now."

Love says his band has reached a new musical peak with Boyce joining the lineup, and he feels primed to build on the momentum generated by The Hustle and Lemonade.

"We've always had some keys on every record we've done, and we've always just performed as a trio," Love says. "I think [adding Boyce] has been awesome for our sound. The band's vibing and sounding great. Mark's really brought musically everybody up to their toes."

Alan Sculley

WHO: G. Love & Special Sauce, Tristan Prettyman
WHERE: Georgia Theatre
WHEN: Thursday, March 6
HOW MUCH: $20