There is little point in introducing Alan Evans, Eric Krasno and Neal Evans again.  Soulive is one of the hottest bands out there, riding an explosive wave of funk and R & B sounds, of live soul groove, to new regions of instrumental ecstasy and to new legions of fans.  Just about this time last year I spoke with Alan about Soulive's roots and future.  At the time, Soulive was just 9 months old.  Since then the trio has had a month-long residency at the Wetlands and continued to develop wonderful musical relationships with the likes of John Scofield, Derek Trucks, and Oteil Burbridge, among others.  They won the Musicians' Award at The Jammys and played major time slots at a number of festivals that they had previously opened.  They traveled to Ghana and were signed to Blue Note, among other successes both more subtle and more sublime.  I had a chance to talk with the whole band at the beginning of a short tour with Project Logic.  The guys were as gracious as ever, and still lookin' toward the horizon.   

  Jambands.com  Let's start off with Blue Note.  We ran a piece by Lee Seelig two months ago about the process of getting signed- it had some comments from Kim [Evans, Al's wife and Soulive's manager].  But what does it mean to you guys?

Eric: I think it's a logical step in the right direction.  You know, at first we were freakin' out, 'cause it's Blue Note.  I mean all the records, all the records we've heard. It's definitely an honor to be a part of a company that has such a rich history and everything.

Alan: Yeah, it's real cool man, but it's funny.  Once you start getting into the whole process of putting the album together, it's one of those things.  The honeymoon's over and now it's just about workin' When you're so far in it. I don't know, I just forget sometimes that we're on Blue Note, but I know we have to put out this album. 

Eric: The process is the same no matter what label you're with.

Neal:  It's no different than Velour.  It's just another way of getting it out there. Alan: I think, though, the difference that we'll see is once it's out, or leading up to it.

Eric: Once it's out, we'll see what happens.  Right now, we're going through the process of putting the record together, and we're just gonna see how it goes.  I mean, I know there's gonna be a lot more promotion in this one than in the other ones we've made.  We'll have to see what happens with that.

Jambands.com:  What was the recording process like?  Your previous two albums, Get Down and Turn It Out were both recorded straight in a studio.

Neal: It was basically done the same way. 

Alan: This time though, we utilized the studio.  Whereas before we used the studio to capture the music, now we captured the music and then mixed it down, worked through the tracking...For instance, Neal played a piano, and a Wurlitzer.

Eric: We also have horns.

Jambands.com: Who's playing horns?

Eric: We have Fred Wesley. He also did one of the arrangements for the new songs.  We've got Jacques Schwarzbar and he plays with D'Angelo.  And we've got Jeremy Pelt and Sam Kininger, who's joined us a bunch, he's on Turn It Out.

  Jambands.com  What's on the disc, songs like "Bridge," "Shahied," "Evidence"?

Eric Yeah, "Cannonball".  And we redid "Doin' Something."

Jambands.com I wanted to ask you about that.  It was left off of the re-release of Turn It Out.

Alan At that point we knew that we were gonna recut it.

Eric I originally wrote that tune with horns in mind.  But we just kinda recorded it anyway when we did Turn It Out.  What it basically came down was we did two extra cuts with Scofield and we had to get rid of something or they wouldn't fit.  So we decided if we were gonna take a tune off there, it might as well be that one 'cause I knew I wanted to do it with horns.  

Jambands.com  You can listen to that studio cut and the evolution of it.

Eric Yeah, it's a lot different now.  When you hear it on the new album, it sounds like a different tune. I sent the version that we do to Fred [Wesley] and he completely changed it.  It's real funky.  He just added his horn magic to it and he arranged the horn lines, which makes it very different.

Jambands.com  What's the story behind "1 in 7"?  It's by Neal but when I first heard it I thought it was by Al- a little mood. Like "Evidence," a little heavy.

Neal Well the "Evidence" that we play on the album is exactly not how we play it live.  But ya know, it's kind of a fun joke, the beginning of the tune [1 in 7] is my dedication to the Euro-house trash.  But it's way funkier than that.  Actually I came up with that tune at Velour one day. The band Kudu, they were there and it was just a tune that I was singin' that I wanted to hit to them.  The way I was playin' it there with changes in seven.  I guess it was kinda influenced by James Hurt and all the stuff I was just hearin'.  I was hangin' around with him around that time.  That's kinda where it came from, if you heard it played like that, but we play it differently.  I wrote the rest of the tune. The beginning part, actually the melody, [sings a bit], that doesn't really change.  And I worked out different chords I was playing on it- it was more like a drum and bass thing.      

Jambands.com Tonight's the second night of a mid-west swing with Project Logic.  And Logic did a remix of Steppin'?

Eric Yes, for Velour.  I actually did the beats, I remixed it and he came in and played some turntable cuts on it.

Neal The actual remix is by Eric.

Jambands.com It's going to be in limited release?

Eric It's being distributed by Landspeed, so a bunch of hip-hop, vinyl places will have it.  You won't be able to get it in your everyday store.  For hip-hop fans who want to find vinyl, we're gonna have it. We'll have it at shows and on the web.  We're performing the song- Shuman's coming out on the road with us for this tour also.

Jambands.com You also just finished the Southern coast Blue Notes Presents tour with Charlie Hunter and JMP.  How was that?

Neal It was pretty good.  There were really good crowds that came out every night.  I had a lot of fun hanging out with Charlie.  Hanging out with him every night.

Eric Yeah Charlie Hunter was going really good.  It was cool.  We were playing first so it was an early night.  It kind of depended on where we were as far as how many people were there for our set.  But there definitely were a few shows that really went off good.  

Jambands.com Any cross-pollination going on?

Eric Not really.  I sat in once with JMP.  It kind of worked out like that.  The vibes were all different. Charlie Hunter's new group is more a Brazilian, percussion-based thing.  They sounded really good. And we were doing our thing, and JMP were doing their thing, and kinda left it like that. 

Jambands.com Well let's keeping going back chronologically. You were out on your first West Coast tour recently also.  Peter Costello wrote a piece for Jambands.com and said the crowds were "more a 'concert going' bunch than those of us who 'go to shows.'"

Alan That's a good way to put it.

Neal Yeah.  It was our first run out there with Robert Bradley's Blackwater Surprise.  That was a whole different type of musician.  He had an entirely different crowd. 

Eric It was good to play certain venues.  We got to play the Fillmore.  The run was long.  We did the West Coast, we did down south- Texas was really good.  New Orleans was great.  We hadn't been back there in a year.  We did really well.

Jambands.com I think that probably a lot of people don't know that you were in Ghana for a handful of dates in July.  How did that come about?

Neal  That came about through a promoter, a guy who has a business over there- it's a record/CD store. 

Alan  He does a lot of business.  He's opening up a club in Brooklyn.  He does a lot of business so he travels a lot.  So one night when he was over here, a friend of his that lives in the States here brought out him to one of our shows.  At that time he was planning a festival over there and he wanted to get us on it.  So that's pretty much how it happened.

Eric  Originally he was supposed to get Erykah Badu. He was talking to her and all these other people. That's why he was in New York.  And then he saw us and really dug the music and ended up bringing us over there.  He's brought a lot of things over there.  He brought Stevie Wonder over there.

Neal B.B. King.

Eric Yeah he's bringing B.B. King over there.  It was jazz clubs- we did one outdoor festival.  It was cool.  People really appreciated the music, but it was a more "concert going" vibe also, like people sitting down.  I mean they were really into it and very responsive.  They weren't talking over the music or anything.  They were packed shows and everyone was really diggin' it, but it wasn't like the Wetlands or stuff like that.  It was nothing like playing in the States.  It was a really interesting experience.

  Jambands.com  I have atpe from the July 30th show at Don's Place.

Eric That, I think, was one of the better shows for us because it was just relaxed.  That was the last gig.  There were a lot of technical difficulties with sound equipment, to say the least, but by that time we had kind of figured it out.  A lot of people we had met while we were there were there.  It was just a good vibe, a good, good way to end it. 

Jambands.com  The "Rudy's Way" and "Uncle Junior" from that show are both nice and smooth, jazzier.  Was it intentional or just feeling the vibe?

Neal It was an outdoor thing, we weren't really amplified, so it was a different vibe.

Alan We were also kinda tired.  It was the end of the trip.

Eric It was relaxed.  I remember it was a relaxed vibe.

Neal Yeah, it was cool man 'cause we knew the owner of the place, Don.  Eric and I had been chillin' out there just about every night.  It was just like playing for your boys.

Alan It wasn't like trying to put on a show or anything.  Like playing in the living room.

Eric It was like an organized rehearsal.  I'd say it's always a different vibe when people are jumping around and dancin' with their arms in the air versus people sitting down, clapping- it's definitely different.  I'm not saying one's better than the other, but it definitely effects the energy of what we're playin'.

Jambands.com  Do you guys get burnt out on the road?

Neal  A bit.  I'm looking forward to a break.  It was cool- we just had time off at Thanksgiving.  But after this we're basically off until February.  

Jambands.com  And that's when you're headed to Japan.

Alan Actually, before we jet to Japan, we're doing some more dates with Logic, like the first week in February.  Down in Virginia, Maryland and then we're doing a couple colleges in the Northeast, like Amherst, Bowdoin, stuff like that.  It's the same deal, like ten dates again.  Nine or ten dates and we've got a week or so off and then we go to Japan. That'll be a lot of fun.

Jambands.com  Talk a bit about the evolution of "Jesus Children." It started out pretty clean, the Lettuce arrangement.

Eric Kind of.  Originally I used to play it at Wally's [in Boston].  I guess you could say Lettuce- it's the same thing really. 

Neal It's changed a couple of times. 

Eric We just started changin' it up.  It all stated one time when I started playin' that Jimi Hendrix groove 'cause I listened to Band of Gypsies on the ride up to Maine- we were going to Maine.  And we started playing it over that groove.  And then I realized that I could play "Jesus Children" over that. And then we went to Africa.

Alan It really changed when we went to Africa.

Eric Then Neal, was it you who came up with that?

Neal Yeah.

Eric Neal came up with a new way of playin' it, the new bass-line for it.  And then we started going into "Who Knows."  And nowI don't know what's what. [laughter]

Eric Now we still play it like that.  We play it the way Neal kinda wrote in Africa.  I like it 'cause it's just different.  You can't recognize it till you hear the melody, as far as the original.  Sometimes I like that, sometimes I don't, ya know?  I like the way that groove kinda fits with it, but it will probably evolve more.

Jambands.com  When you played it the second night at the Bowery, Alan, you finished your drum solo digging in with one stick and playing with the other.  It sounded like a talking drum.

Eric I think he played the melody.

Jambands.com  Yeah, he played the melody and I almost fell over.

              Alan Yeah, ya know. that's just like an old jazz thing ya know.  Old jazz drummers, they'll just go [sings up a scale] and come out.  But it's really hard to play the melody, to get the different notes correct.  But as long as you can get as close as you can get to the intervals, then people can pick up on it, and it sounds pretty cool.  It's something fun to do.  I like doin' stuff like that also because of the instrument I play.  I mess around with other instruments, like guitar and sometimes keyboards, and that's what it is.  Ya know, you can play melodies and they're very distinguishable.  And on drums it's a lot harder, just because of the instrument.  So, as much as I can, I like to throw in a little melody and stuff like that.  Ya know, it's just fun.

Jambands.com  Speaking of instruments, Neal is anything special about your Hammond?

Neal Not really.  I just had the guts taken out of it and put into different casing.  That's basically it. I just had it modified a little bit.  I had wires that ran to the bass pedals, the draw-bars that go to the bass pedals, I just had the wires go into the lower register on it.  So instead of the pedals, I have my left hand.

Jambands.com  And Eric, at the Congress benefit at the Wetlands, you were out there playing bass.  Are you going to switch up instruments at all?

[laughter] Neal Yeah, actually I have a Rhodes that I'm gonna start bringing on the road.

Eric Yeah, we did one gig, I played bass, Neal played Rhodes.  I originally started out playin' bass.  I've haven't played bass in a while.

Neal You know most times we go out and have a jam session, I'm always playin' keys and Kraz is always grabbin' the bass.

Eric We'll probably start doing that more.  Neal plays drums and I'll play the guitar, maybe we'll get a power trio goin'! [laughs]  I play a little bit of keys too, just messing around.

Alan We talk about doin' it, ya know.  We do it at sound checks.

Eric I would say more realistically, I will play bass and Neal will play Rhodes in the future. 

Jambands.com   Let's talk about New Year's Eve. Your website says you're going on at 2 AM for the late show.

Alan  Well we go on at 7 or 8, or whenever it is, the Mace goes on after that.  And then the second show is the actual New Year's Eve celebration, so then Maceo goes on first for the second show.  And then we go after him.  Gonna be workin' that night.

     Eric  You might see some switchin' up on instruments that night. [laughter]

Jambands.com  OK, last question, have you heard the new Allman Brothers' disc? [editor's note Derek Trucks addresses this same topic in his interview this month- Trucks quotes Soulive a few times on Peaking at the Becaon,  for instance at the end of Every Hungry Woman]

Neal Naw, but I know what this is about.  Derek [Trucks] called me up one day down at Velour.  He was crackin' up.  He was like "Yeah, yeah we gotta talk." I still haven't talked to him- I gotta give him a call. But he was like, "We gotta figure something out, get you some money or something 'cause we play 'Rudy's Way' all over the entire disc."  That was probably the night I was there, 'cause one night I went and I was back stage and literally every couple minutes they were playin' it.   [laughter]