Thursday marks the opening night of Bowlive V. The Soulive trio of Eric Krasno, Alan Evans and Neal Evans will be joined by the Shady Horns and a variety of guests throughout the run, with many of the players announced and others likely to be game-time decisions. Speaking of game-time, the following conversation with Krasno began with a discussion of basketball and the “musicians games” that he’s played in over the years.

The guitarist explains, “I actually have a very serious basketball injury. When I was in high school I used to play and I got flipped over on my back and crushed my elbow. I have a metal reconstructed elbow; I have a huge scar on my elbow. I was actually pretty serious about it back then. Oddly enough that’s when I decided to pursue guitar. In the few months that I couldn’t play, I realized how much that affected me. When I started to play [guitar] it was actually really good physical therapy for me in my arm and in my hand. They were like, ‘You won’t be able to play for a while,’ but I forced myself to play. It turns out my physical therapist was amazed because I have full motion. I still have nerve issues and I have to work around that but I have full motion which they didn’t think I was gonna have. That’s pretty crazy. We used to play a lot on the Dave Matthews tours. They would set up a basketball net every day. So we were like, “Bring it on,” Soulive against them, because they would have like a hundred people on their crew, so we could keep it going for months.”

From here the conversation turned to Krasno’s experiences at all three of the Brooklyn Bowls, as he performed at Brooklyn Bowl London in January with Lettuce and Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas last week with Soulive. Then it was on to five years of Bowlive, Krasno’s stint with Tedeschi Trucks Band and what looks back be the final Allman Brothers Band Beacon Theatre run.

Bowlive continues through March 22 and includes a Bowlive for Kids show this coming Saturday afternoon.

So, you’ve been from Brooklyn Bowl to Brooklyn Bowl to Brooklyn Bowl.

Yes, I’ve done the holy trinity [laughs].

Indeed! What was your experience like going to London?

It was great, man. Lettuce booked Ronnie Scott’s [Jazz Club] for three or four nights right on top of the opening of the London Bowl. So it ended up being Antibalas guys and then Lettuce just showed up and we did a secret set, which was actually perfect because we got to hang out, have a few drinks and we got to see everybody. It was really strange because you walk in and it really does have the feeling of the Brooklyn Bowl. We were in London playing this show and then we hopped in this car and then all of a sudden we’re at the Brooklyn Bowl, where I had been a few days prior. It was strange, man, but it was very cool and you see a lot of familiar faces there – at least at that point because they were still setting up – but it’s great. It’s right at the O2 Arena so the kind of idea is to get a lot of after-parties going there.

Did you interact with locals over there? Do you have any takeaway as to what they think of it?

I don’t think it’s set in yet. In Vegas it was people in the jamband community coming out. It was more like, “Oh my God we finally have something now!” In London they don’t really know yet, at least not when I was there. It was the first night, so it was more invited guests and celebrities and people like that that I didn’t honestly recognize. So I didn’t really get a feel for what people thought, besides musicians who were psyched. I had some musician friends with me who were from London and they were like, “We’re super psyched to start playing here; all these events are going to be happening here.” From that perspective there seemed to be some excitement.

It’s a little far from town, so it’s definitely going to be a destination thing where people are going there to go to O2 and then hang out there, or specifically to go there for an event. It’s nice though; the floor is a little bit bigger and the backstage is way bigger in both places. I think that in both Vegas and in London they’ve taken the concept and blown in out which is what tends to happen when you have a good thing going. You go, “How can I take this to the next level?” In Vegas they took it way next level; it’s so much larger; it’s insane.

What was that experience like?

In Vegas, what blew me away was that they kept the vibe but, like I said, it’s massive. But the thing about it is that playing on that stage still feels intimate, because what they did is, there’s two tiers. There are all these other areas and two levels of bowling. On the top level of bowling when you get the lane you actually get your own VIP area where you can watch from the second tier. So It kind of caters to anybody. It’s kind of like the way Brooklyn Bowl is where anybody can go there and have a great time, but then the VIP people can get really pimped out [Laughs].

Staying on the subject of Brooklyn Bowl, it’s just amazing to me that you guys have been doing it for five years now.

Yeah, I couldn’t believe that it’s five years already. It’s funny because right now I’m actually looking at this Bowlive book from 2010. It’s crazy and I look at some of the pictures in this and it’s just funny watching the progression of some of the other bands— the London Souls look like kids in this thing [Laughs]. So it’s just cool to see the place grow and the concept grow. And I think every year it gets better. Every year is different so it’s hard to say which one is better, but we are more prepared year after year for what’s going to happen. Each year we went a little more like, “Okay this year we’ll try this differently,” but each year it gets a little bit easier. It’s really a hard week for us because we have to learn so much music on the fly and we pretty much spend all day and all night at the place, so it’s pretty intense.

My recollection of the first year is that there were a lot of TBA guests but now that aspect of the run is much more built out in advance. What do you remember of the first year in terms of scrambling to make that happen?

The first year I remember Pete Shapiro coming to us and saying, “I want you guys to come out and play ten nights; I’m building a bowling alley.” I was like, “What?” [Laughs] And I really have to give credit to him and my brother [Soulive manager Jeff Krasno] for seeing the vision. I was like, “Really? Are people really going to come just hoping that people show up?” And he was like, “Once it happens once or twice.” Their whole thing was, “Just call your friends. You know all these musicians, just call them up.” Everyone who knew Pete was curious about the club so it wasn’t like the hardest sell to get people down. Then people saw what was going on, whether it was Bernie Worrell playing with Questlove and doing the P-Funk thing, every night was just so different. I remember the first year we had Warren Haynes one night, then Talib Kweli the next night and then Raul Midon doing Latin soul the next night. It was so diverse but at the same time, you didn’t look out there and feel like people were puzzled by that.

It was amazing because one night we had John Scofield doing classics and then Talib Kweli’s songs, and the same people that bought the ticket for John Scofield were yelling Talib Kweli lyrics and he wasn’t even announced on the show. I was like, “Wow, that’s my era of people; they can recite Talihb Kweli and would go see John Scofield. There are people like me out there!” Sometimes we think you can’t combine those things but I think you can. I think that’s what Bowlive is trying to prove, that good music is good music, and it can be kind of soulful. Soul doesn’t mean “soul music,” it means there’s soul in it.

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