{"id":2455124,"date":"2020-02-27T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-27T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=321575"},"modified":"2020-02-27T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-27T23:00:00","slug":"g-love-special-sauce-bring-juice-tour-to-aspen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/g-love-special-sauce-bring-juice-tour-to-aspen\/","title":{"rendered":"G. Love & Special Sauce bring \u2018Juice\u2019 tour to Aspen"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When G. Love approached his friend and musical colleague Keb\u2019 Mo\u2019 about producing the album that became \u201cThe Juice,\u201d one of his goals was very straight-forward and ambitious.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe intention here is to win a contemporary blues Grammy,\u201d Love said in a late-December phone interview before the tour that will bring G. Love & Special Sauce to Belly Up Aspen on Sunday. \u201cSo then, what\u2019s my path to it? So then I said, well, I know Keb\u2019 Mo.\u2019 Keb\u2019 Mo\u2019 wins a Grammy every time with a record of stuff. He knows how to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Love (real name Garrett Dutton) had good reasons for wanting to try something new in his approach to writing and recording. His previous two albums, \u201cLove Saves the Day\u201d (2015) and \u201cSugar\u201d (2014) found Love and his band, Special Sauce, plugging in, going for a more rocking blend of blues, folk, rock and hip-hop and getting what they thought were great results in the process. But the albums, especially \u201cLove Saves the Day,\u201d didn\u2019t connect commercially.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt like \u2018Man, we sound f-ing great.\u2019 That\u2019s what we felt like,\u201d Love said, referring particularly to \u201cLove Saves the Day.\u201d \u201cWe really played it well. And then you put them out and no one really cares. So that was a little tough. And you\u2019re kind of like \u2018Well, what are we going to do?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The answers to that question are found on \u201cThe Juice,\u201d and they involved both taking a starkly different approach to how the album was produced and raising the bar on certain aspects of the songwriting.<\/p>\n

The first test from Keb\u2019 Mo\u2019 came before a note was recorded for \u201cThe Juice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe kind of said \u2018Hey, G, send me your five most sincere songs that you feel most connected to,\u2019\u201d Love said. \u201cAnd I said (to myself) well, that\u2019s kind of a weird thing to ask. I feel like I\u2019m connected to all of my songs and I feel like they\u2019re all sincere.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Love complied with the request. The verdict from Keb\u2019 Mo,\u2019 was that Love should work with a songwriter for \u201cThe Juice\u201d project.<\/p>\n

That response wouldn\u2019t play well with many artists, as it calls into question the strength of their songwriting chops. Love, though, took it in stride, and was soon in a Nashville studio with Keb\u2019 Mo\u2019 and his frequent songwriting collaborator, Grammy-winning writer Gary Nicholson, starting a three-way songwriting collaboration that generated many of the songs on \u201cThe Juice.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the biggest changes for Love was to embrace Keb\u2019 Mo\u2019s approach to recording and producing.<\/p>\n

\u201cKeb\u2019s like, \u2018I know you like to make like dirty-sounding, old, kind of lo-fi records,\u2019\u201d Love recalled. \u201c\u2018My thing is, why can\u2019t the blues sound like a Beyonce record?\u2019 He wants a blues record to sound (sonically) like a pop record, that\u2019s what his goal is, but still be a real blues record. I think it\u2019s really interesting, and obviously, he\u2019s had success.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the records I\u2019ve been putting out in the last 10 years are live-in-studio records, with as little overdubbing as possible, trying to capture performances,\u201d Love added. \u201cAnd this record was just the opposite. It was about having the material be so strong that you didn\u2019t have to worry about trying to like capture some kind of magical performance with a whole band. It was more like the song itself would lend itself to everybody who played on it giving a spirited, inspired performance, and the messages of the lyrics and the song would carry the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Love said he put his heart, his soul \u2014 as well as his head \u2014 into his songwriting for \u201cThe Juice,\u201d resulting in a group of songs that were both quite personal (\u201cShe\u2019s The Rock\u201d is about his wife, \u201cDiggin\u2019 Roots\u201d is about settling in with family and friends) as well as topical, especially with the title track, a call to action in these divisive times.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat to me is the greatest song I\u2019ve ever been involved in,\u201d he said. \u201cThat message \u2018We got the juice\/We got the love\/We got the dreams\/We won\u2019t give up\/We are the change\/We\u2019ve had enough\/We\u2019ve got the juice\/Time\u2019s up,\u2019\u201d Love said, reciting the chorus. \u201cI mean, what else can I ever say as great as that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Juice\u201d manages to sound modern and polished, while retaining an earthy quality. Part of that feel is a product of using plenty of guitars, drums and other organic instruments. And the strong presence of acoustic sounds gives \u201cThe Juice\u201d a similar aesthetic to key earlier Love albums such as his debut album and 2011\u2019s \u201cFixin\u2019 To Die.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the players on \u201cThe Juice\u201d were mostly musicians Keb\u2019 Mo\u2019 has used, Love will tour behind the album with his long-time Special Sauce bandmates Jim Prescott and Jeffrey Clemens.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor better or worse, I\u2019m not going to have the live show sound exactly like the record,\u201d Love said, noting that in addition to new songs, the show will include plenty of fan favorites and deep cuts from his catalog. \u201cTo me, it\u2019s always going to be an interpretation, whether it\u2019s the same players or not who played on the record. I\u2019m excited to see how these songs will kind of shape and grow with Jim and Jeff behind the wheel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the early 1990s, G. Love and his band have been regulars in Aspen, with gigs at the old Howling Wolf, then at Jazz Aspen festivals. Over the past 15 years, Belly Up has regularly hosted solo spots from G. Love and sets from the full band.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a great place,\u201d Love said during one visit. \u201cIt feels like home, it\u2019s a great crowd and Belly Up is an intimate room, a great room \u2014 a perfect room for us. People like to party there and we like to party there, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew Travers contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When G. Love approached his friend and musical colleague Keb\u2019 Mo\u2019 about producing the album that became \u201cThe Juice,\u201d one of his goals was very straight-forward and ambitious. \u201cThe intention here is to win a contemporary blues Grammy,\u201d Love said in a late-December phone interview before the tour that will bring G. Love & Special […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2455124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 13:20:50","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2455124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2455124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2455124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2455124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}