Since 1999, the New York-based trio Soulive has been churning out heavy soulful grooves that blend funk and hip-hop rhythms with melodies and harmonies based within the jazz idiom.
Blue Note Records signed the group in 2000 and one year later the band - comprising guitarist Eric Krasno, keyboardist Neal Evans and drummer Alan Evans - recorded "Next," which is a musical sum of its vast and eclectic record collection.
Soulive's "Next" features a wide array of outside talent including guitarist/songwriter Dave Matthews, and hip-hop men Talib Kweli and Black Thought of The Roots. The album highlights Soulive's intriguing and diverse songwriting skills with 12 original tunes and a cover of Ani De Franco's "Joyful Girl," arranged by the trio and sung by Matthews.
Wy sat down with Krasno who talked about Soulive's sound; live vs. studio recordings; and his recent work as a producer with bands like Jurassic 5 as the co-founder of the production company, The Fire Department. Krasno established the company with longtime friend Adam Deitch who's also the drummer for guitarist John Scofield.
Wy: Just like The John Scofield Band, I think Soulive has been able to attract the jamband crowd. I think it's from intertwining many different musical styles such as rock, funk and jazz into the harmonic and melodic structures of your songs, but it also has a lot to do with the grooves of your songs.
Eric Krasno: Yeah, I guess it's a combination of different things. The one thing about our music is that we are always grooving, you can always dance to it. That's the kind of music that we listen to. We listen to a lot of old funk records; we listen to a lot of hip-hop and a little jazz, too, so we just kind of combine everything. But most of the way we combine it is by applying the melodic elements of jazz but as far as the rhythms, they are more like funk and hip-hop. That's why I think people can dig. It's because they can dance to it or sing to it.
Some think of jazz and hip-hop as musical genres that have evolved into cultures and philosophies. How would you define either one?
That's hard. Actually, I don't really say that we are jazz. There are definitely a lot of elements of it in our music, but jazz is so broad now that it's hard to really call it that. I guess when I think of jazz I think of music of the 1940s and 1950s, and people still play jazz now like swing and that kind of stuff, but I think the backbeats that we're doing is more funk-driven. But now all of this other music has been introduced to it like rock 'n' roll, hip-hop, drum and bass, and electronica. We are taking it into an instrumental space. We really want to include all of the different types of music that we listen to now and grew up on, and so that's why I guess it get pretty eclectic.
On 'Next's' liner notes, Soulive states, 'Musicians are the sum of our record collection. And the music on this record is the sum of how Soulive grew up, what they listened to and what's bumpin' in the bus now.' It seems like musicians may sometimes find it challenging to listen to a lot of different stuff while continuing to remain true to their own voice. Did you go through a period when you thought one minute you wanted to sound like this and the next minute you wanted to sound like that?
I guess it was pretty clear early on. I had a teacher and one of the things he always told me was to have my own sound by finding what makes me different and develop that. So as a guitarist, I think that I've always had my own sound in mind ever since then. As a band, we like to experiment with different things partly because we want to remain excited about what we are playing. I think it's actually a lot easier to stay in one sound. We like to keep it moving and trying different things all the time. It keeps it fresh for us as a band and we are touring so much we like to change it up. It makes it sometimes a little harder to follow for some people but for us it keeps it fresh and creative. When we play as a trio it's a little more open than what we are doing this tour by inviting Ivan Neville to sing on some songs and we'll also have a horn section. This tour is a little more structured. But when it's a trio, we allow for different things to happen, and sometimes we won't even write a set list and we'll just go play.
Josh Redman's latest album is a great example of what you can do with a trio. The songs on Redman's album, along with Soulive's music on 'Next' don't feel like they have sections. It feels like the improvisation and the composition blend together. What do you feel are some challenges and advantages to playing in a trio?
The only challenge is to keep it fresh sonically because you're dealing with fewer instruments. Ways we've dealt with this is that I have a lot of different sounds with my guitar whether it's how I'm playing it or with the different pedals I'm using. Neal has added another keyboard and a clavinet so he has different sounds to work with. But one of the great advantages of it is the communication between the three of us and being able to go to different places and improvise freely because you have less people to inform of what's going on. We know each other so well that we can just kind of move around so that if I take the lead, someone's going to follow or someone else takes the lead, I'm going to follow them.
Soulive covers the song 'Joyful Girl' by Ani De Franco, which is sung by Dave Matthews. People I know who don't normally dig the Dave Matthews Band or Matthews really dig this song. Did you have him in mind when the band thought of recording the tune?
Yeah, I've actually heard that too. Initially we thought of recording it instrumentally and then we thought, 'It would be cool if we could get someone to actually sing it.' We had just finished the tour with Dave Matthews and we called him up and asked him if he was down to sing it, and he wanted to do it. Dave then called Ani and told her about it, and she was cool with it.
From what I hear, Soulive finds its live album more appealing than its studio albums. Is this mostly due to the interaction the group has with the audience?
Yeah, it's this whole energy of when we're playing on stage. Just having an audience there at least for the improvised elements of what we are doing is much more exciting when you're in a live setting because you're moving with the crowd and its energy. Sometimes improvising in the studio can be cool for coming up with ideas, but we don't get that same energy as during a live show. I think it's all in our name and a live show is what we are most into. I like some of the studio records too, but I think a live record captures our sound.
As far as the recording process, are songs on the albums mostly written and developed through live jamming sessions?
Unfortunately, all of our studio records we've done we haven't had the time to do it that way and our time in the studio has always been so limited. Now, we have our own studio so the next album we do we'll be able to do that. Most of the stuff we've done in the past are songs we've written then played live a few times and once we've gotten it together, we've recorded in the studio.
Some musicians talk about their biggest musical ambitions. Some would like to be remembered for their technique or emotion or for their compositions. What do you feel is Soulive's biggest ambition?
I guess it would be really a combination of things. I'd like to say we'd be remembered for our live performances, our energy and our emotion. One of the criterions we've always had is that our music be soulful, that we're feeling it and that's usually how we try to come across on stage.
Do you think more musicians are including more and more styles of music in their work today yet maintaining a modern sensibility, particularly with jazz musicians?
Yeah, I think so because many so-called jazz artists don't want to be playing the same old stuff from the past. We have many artists who are pushing jazz forward and I hope that we would be included in that group of musicians. For a while, it felt like it had gone as far as it could go. People like Coltrane raised the bar so high, and then people began to emulate him and tried to see how good they could be at playing like him. But now there are so many new things and young people are growing up hearing different things, but at the same time appreciating jazz music and proficiency on an instrument. However, a lot of young people today, though, are strictly listening to hip-hop, which is great. I love hip-hop, and I'm a producer myself, making beats. But a lot of kids nowadays just learn the basics of making tracks and not too many people need to hire musicians because they can do so much with computers. It's tough now, but there are still people who appreciate that side of music and also the complexities of playing an instrument.
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