Interview: G. Love & Special Sauce Celebrate Anniversary of Debut Album at City Winery
There’s a case to be made that G. Love & Special Sauce were ahead of their time when they released their self-titled debut album back in 1994. Led by the moniker of Garrett Dutton, the band blended golden era hip hop with delta blues during a time when the music sphere was dealing with a post-grunge hangover. This year marks that album’s 30th anniversary, so the band are playing a string of shows to honor its existence. This includes back-to-back bangers at City Winery on 80 Beverly Street in Boston on January 24 & 25. Both shows start at 8pm and they’re already sold out, but folks are welcome to put themselves on a waitlist via the venue’s website in case any tickets become available.
G. Love and I had a talk ahead of the upcoming festivities about the album being rereleased with some bonus material, his history with performing in the Boston area and what he has in store for 2024.
As part of its 30th anniversary, G. Love & Special Sauce’s debut album got remastered and expanded with some new tracks on it, including a live recording of “Cold Beverage” from a show at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn back in 1994. What was it like doing a reissue of this record? Did you have to go into the vault to find some old recordings from that time period?
It was really cool. Basically, we had reconnected with Sony Music because the record had come out on Okeh Records which is under their umbrella. Our new management team got in touch with them and was able to get into some of the archives they had. One thing they got was the live recording from the Knitting Factory, we did two shows in one night there with Keb’ Mo’ being the opener. That was a little room, it must have held between 200 and 300 people, and we had two awesome shows that were multitrack recorded.
It was great to listen back to those two shows and pick some of my favorite live takes from them to put on this reissue. We’re actually going to be releasing 10 songs from those shows as a live record, but we did a hand pick a couple of them to go on the remastered album. We also added a couple outtakes, including a fast version of “Blues Music” and a song called “Fresh Lila”. I think that’s the one that either got us signed or got the attention of a producer, but never made it on the record. The original repertoire was really cool and there was easily a whole other album’s worth of material that got recorded but didn’t get released.
Because we had artistically moved on to a more blues-focused direction, a lot of that original hip hop material that didn’t make the record never got put out. We’re really happy to finally get to drop some of that stuff, it’s been a lot of fun.
That’s awesome. Even though you and the band are from Philadelphia, Boston and the surrounding areas are vital when it comes to G. Love & Special Sauce cutting their teeth, even at one point you guys were the house band at The Plough and Stars in Cambridge. What initially gravitated you to coming to Boston rather than just sticking to Philly when you were first starting out?
I was originally a street performer in Philadelphia and I wanted to go to a new city where I didn’t know anybody and I had no distractions with my family, friends and even my dog. I just wanted to focus completely on music, so I chose Boston because for one thing, you could get a street performer’s license that would legally allow you to busk on the T and on the street. In Philadelphia, you couldn’t get that and it was technically illegal to perform in the street there. Every once in a while the cops would chase you off, but not often. The other thing was that a friend of a friend needed a roommate and they had a room available in Jamaica Plain in Boston, so those are the two things that brought me there.
I moved up to Boston during the summer of 1992 and then I was busking in Harvard Square and by the T station, which I continued doing until the fall. Then I met Jeff “Houseman” Clemens and we had our first Special Sauce gigs during the beginning of 1993 as a duo. Jeff is from Boston and Jim [“Jimi Jazz” Prescott] had been living there for a while, so I was the only one who came up from Philadelphia. Jeff was already quite established in the local music scene, so I was able to use his reputation as a great drummer to get a lot of our first shows at venues like T.T. The Bear’s, The Middle East and places like that. As a street performer, I was able to get a couple of my first solo gigs at The Middle East’s bakery and at The Rathskeller in Kenmore Square, so I was plugging away trying to get off the street and into clubs.
With Jeff’s help and him being in the band, everything sped up. The last thing I’ll say is that year in 1993 we really lit up Boston and by the end of that year we were one of the biggest up and coming local bands. We got signed to Epic Records within nine months of our first gig and it was a lot of hustle leading up to that point, but when shit happened it happened really quick for us and it was cool.
It sounds like it was cool. Speaking of Boston, you and Donovan Frankenreiter just released a live album from a show you both did together at the Paradise Rock Club, so how did this all come about? Did you both decide beforehand that you wanted to record the show or did it happen in a more spontaneous way?
To tell you the truth, we had a couple places we were looking at to do a live record and we wanted to do it at a sold out show. The one at the Paradise was sold out and we were also looking to do one at The Saint in Asbury Park, New Jersey because it’s a famous venue down there. That was sold out as well, but they wanted to charge and arm and a leg for us to record and release an album with their name on it. On the other hand, the Paradise was super cool about it and I had a guy named Alan Venitosh from Connecticut come up to do the audio recording. We caught a great show and I was really happy with how everything went.
Once we got on a tour last year with Donovan, we knew the set was hot and we knew that we had to make a record. The set contained a lot of our hits and some newer material as well, so it was just a great opportunity for us to release it.
What are your thoughts on playing these back-to-back shows at City Winery? I know City Winery has a few different locations, but is this going to be your first time playing at the one in Boston?
I’m really excited about it. This is going to be my first time stepping foot into City Winery in Boston and of course I have played in many of the other locations, but New York is where it started and I’ve played there a number of times. We’re playing a bunch of City Wineries on this tour, we’re going to be playing some smaller rooms and a lot of the shows are selling out. It’s very exciting because we’ve been on the road for literally 30 years and from 1994 to about 2008, it seemed like every one of our shows was sold out or at least many of them were. There’s so much more competition now, our fan base has grown up with us and some of them have kids so it’s not easy to go out.
We still have a lot of sell outs even though it’s not like it used to be, but it’s fun to see this tour with a lot of sell outs on it. It’s really exciting for us, as musicians and as creative people we’re continuously pushing forward but it’s fun to just pump the breaks, take a look back and celebrate 30 years.
I think it’s great that you have such a positive reaction to these tickets selling for you guys. After this run of shows, what are your plans for the next few months? Can we expect a new album?
For us right now, I’m going to be working on a new solo record that should come out at some point next year. I’ve already started working on it, I think (laughs). Other than that, we don’t know what our plans are for the summer yet but the last two summers have been great. We toured with Dispatch and O.A.R. two years ago and last summer we toured with the Dirty Heads, Yelawolf and Tropidelic, so we’re looking to hop on a big tour again this summer and we’ll keep our fingers crossed for that type of situation. We’re definitely going to be playing a bunch of shows in the region, we’ve brought back our Outermost Roots & Blues Festival and it’s going to be happening on October 12 in Orleans, Massachusetts where I live on Nauset Beach.
Tickets are going to be on sale for that soon, so that’s exciting. A couple of other things I wanted to mention about the tour that I’m really stoked about is our support act, Jakobs Castle. Jakob Nowell, who is the son of Bradley Nowell from Sublime, it’s his band. Between him joining our tour and the tour actually happening, they just announced that Jakob is going to be the new frontman for Sublime so Sublime with Rome is going to be on a permanent hiatus. It’s pretty cool that Jakob is going to be doing this smaller tour with us and by next summer he’s going to be out headlining amphitheaters, which is exciting for everybody who is going to be coming to one of our shows. Another cool thing that we are offering at our shows is our “Pre-Show Pop Off”, which is a unique VIP experience.
It’s an all-request storytelling acoustic set before the main show, so anybody who wants to come early and is dying to here some songs they might not have heard at our shows are more than welcome to come and request some of them during that time.
In order to make Culture Beat’s content available to everyone, we decided to stop utilizing a paywall. With this being said, we are utilizing the crowdfunding service Buy Me A Coffee in order to have our readers support our endeavors, which they can do so right here.
