“Music is like food. … You gotta let it marinate.”
For G. Love & Special Sauce, condiments are the key to making good music. Taking a solid foundation and tossing in some flavorful additions produces a delicious and harmonious result for this hip-hop blues band.
Frontman of the group, Garrett Dutton – better known by his nickname “G. Love” – has been making music and picking guitar strings for as long as he can remember. On G. Love & Special Sauce’s most recent release, Fixin’ to Die, this musician returns to his Philadelphia roots, concocting an album that encourages kicking your feet up on a porch with a cold beverage.
“Honestly, this is like a second chance at a first record,” said G. Love in a recent interview with The Badger Herald. “Almost 20 years later, I can finally come back and make this. … Now I’m seasoned enough as a performer, and I can do it well, and do it authentically.”
Authenticity has never been a point of debate for this genuine talent. Given his origins as a Delta blues player, the idea of combining those tunes with hip-hop music was a pleasant surprise, even to G. Love himself. But for this musician, the familiar strains of the oldest blues tunes created a baseline beat, begging to be scattered with hip-hop lyrics.
“The hip-hop was always a part of growing up in Philadelphia,” G. Love said. “[It] wasn’t something that I thought I could do, because for one thing, I was white. And you didn’t think you could do it on a guitar, because no one was really doing that. But then I put two and two together. … I was doing it because that was where my heart was at.”
Most likely the first musician to layer an Eric B. & Rakim rap over the blues, G. Love had produced an undeniably original sound. Despite initial skepticism about how successful this undertaking might be, he gave it a shot and never looked back. With an exploding fan base and several international tours under his belt, this musician lives for the road, and writes for his audience.
“The songs people react to are the songs that everyone might not agree on,” G. Love said. “You might really put a lot of work into a song that you feel might save the world. But then you might spit out some funny shit about the everyday kind of quirky stuff. You need both kinds of songs to make it happen.”
Inspired by his fans – as well as the likes of Bob Dylan, The Beatles and Lou Reed – G. Love has discovered his musical recipe involves mixing equal parts humor and earnestness, in addition to a hearty serving of originality.
“If you listen to a Bob Dylan record,” G. Love said, “every single one of them has songs that make you laugh out loud, and songs that make you cry.”
Fixin’ to Die evokes this range of emotion, along with its fair share of hand-clapping and just plain fun. The record’s title track is lively enough to get even the toughest critic’s toes tapping. It can’t be denied that wherever there’s G. Love, there’s a smile on someone’s face. This good-humored performer is quick to acknowledge the irony of a young kid from Philly taking on classic blues tunes.
“Back in the day, you were just learning off the record,” G. Love said. “You really had to try and figure out what those [blues] musicians were doing. You had to try and make your 20-year-old white voice sound like a 60-year-old black man.”
Although G. Love remains just shy of achieving this goal, he has carved out his own place in history as a genre-blending musical pioneer. He’s blazed a trail through rap music, and has encouraged a revival of the blues in contemporary music that’s been mirrored in artists across the country. His work with friend and folk musician Jack Johnson has brought hip-hop flair to genres outside of the blues, and he’s not pumping the breaks just yet.
“For any musician coming up,” G. Love said, “if you can do one thing, just be original. … You should always keep a personality and sense of humor in your tunes. If you show a sense of humor, then that’s you. You’re real.”
