Galactic: Taking It ‘Deep’
The thousands of fans beneath the Electric Forest’s Jubilee Tent are overcome with anticipation as Galactic and Macy Gray step out for the night’s final number. The unapologetically psychedelic backdrop of the festival’s newest shed—a light-up jellyfish here, a few glowing orbs there—is a far cry from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival’s main stage, where the Crescent City’s reigning house band (well, one of them anyway) and their latest muse collaborated just a few months earlier. The buzz is also more palpable here than it was in NOLA, a fact that could be chalked up to the cooler climate or, perhaps, the chemically enhanced nature of a festival crowd on the other side of midnight.
“You’re probably wondering, ‘What are Macy Gray and Galactic doing at the Electric Forest Festival?’” declares the chart-topping R&B singer, building up anticipation before the night’s inevitable “I Try” encore. Gray’s backing band—though it’s more than unfair to call them that—is all smiles as she musters up something of an explanation. Everyone within earshot is at her command, her once-in-doubt diva status reaffirmed with each step and, when the long-awaited hit finally comes, with each note.
Still, it’s a fair question. What are Macy Gray and Galactic doing at Electric Forest? In fact, what are they doing together anywhere?
“We met her at her show in October at Tipitina’s here in New Orleans and just really hit it off,” recalls Galactic bassist Robert Mercurio. “[Galactic saxophonist Ben Ellman] and I went to her show and talked to her afterward. We went out on the town and thought she’d be a great guest vocalist, so we approached her about it.”
“There had been some back-and-forth,” adds Ellman. “Then, when she came to New Orleans, we got to hang out with her and talk about the possibility of doing some work together. We just got really fortunate that we already had this song that we figured she would be perfect for.”
That song turned out to be “Into The Deep”—a slow-burning groove that proved to be an excellent conduit for Gray’s laid-back style and signature rasp. The track was originally crafted by Galactic, Revivalists’ frontman David Shaw and longtime collaborator Jim Greer (who helped the band pen 2010’s scorcher “Heart Of Steel”), though Gray tweaked things a bit to make it her own.
Eventually, “Into The Deep” ended up on Galactic’s newest album, where it now holds the distinction of being the LP’s title track. Recorded over the course of about a year at the band’s New Orleans studio, Into The Deep is a guest-heavy affair that—in typical Galactic fashion—showcases talent from all sides of the name recognition scale. Whether they’re longtime friends of the band, respected veterans of the business, relative newcomers or even 21st- century YouTube sensations, Galactic has found a way to pull them into the fold.
“As a band, to the core, we’re kind of a rhythm section. We’re an R&B/funk band, sort of in the style of The Meters, who have always been our heroes,” explains Ellman. “The Meters were this band that backed other people. They were like a house band for Allen Toussaint and a backing band for so many great artists. For us, that’s always been a goal.”
Galactic should have considered one of their original missions accomplished five years ago when they teamed up with Toussaint himself for “Bacchus,” a number on their 2010 album Ya-Ka-May. That record, along with 2007’s hip-hop-centric From the Corner to the Block and 2012’s Carnival-themed Carnivale Electricos, moved away from the raw sound that defines Galactic’s live shows and earlier records, in favor of a more produced, effects-augmented approach. Those releases—and their subsequent tours—also featured a variety of rotating vocalists, a trend that began following the departure of longtime Galactic singer Theryl “Houseman” DeClouet in 2004.
Into The Deep finds the band straddling the line between those two approaches. The album makes use of a variety of guest vocalists, but it also relies less on the production techniques that permeated their previous three studio efforts.
“We all felt like it was time to record in a way that allows you to hear what we sound like playing together a little bit more,” notes drummer Stanton Moore. “Not to take away from what we did with the heavier production—that was all fun and exciting—but how much further could we go with that? It’s kind of a return to form in a way, without going completely back to square one. We still retained some of what we’ve learned and developed over the last three records, but we wanted some of the more organic elements to come through, too.”
That shift is particularly noticeable on Into The Deep’s four instrumental tracks, which harken back to the groove-driven sound of earlier albums like 2003’s Ruckus or the Vintage Reserve compilation that came out the same year. However—as was the case on their most recent LPs— the various guests helped bring the whole thing to life through their contributions to seven of the record’s 11 tracks.
While festival sets with Macy Gray have brought a lot of attention to that collaboration, the enigmatic singer is far from the only noteworthy contributor to Galactic’s latest collection of tunes. Mavis Staples, for instance, is an inspiration on “Does It Really Make a Difference,” a low- key soul number in which the band’s core members take a backseat to her soothing vocals and some understated horn work from Naugthy Professor’s Nick Ellman (alto sax), John Culbreth (trumpet) and Ian Bowman (tenor sax).
“The song was written with somebody like her in mind,” recalls Mercurio. “It was written by a local songwriter, [TYSSON’s] John Michael Rouchell, with the intention of doing it with an older soul vocalist. Then the idea that it should be Mavis popped up—she’s somebody that we have known for a little while—and it was just an instant click. So Ben and I flew up to Chicago to record it with her, and she really knocked it out of the park.”
Other longtime friends appear on Into The Deep, including JJ Grey, Ryan Montbleau, David Shaw and Maggie Koerner. Grey’s contribution to “Higher And Higher,” in particular, was many years in the making.
“JJ has been a friend of the band for almost 20 years and we’ve been touring with him off and on for some time,” explains Ellman. “There are just a lot of connections that we have with him and we had never done a song together, so it was really an overdue thing that needed to happen. There were a lot of songs on this record where we were sort of like, ‘Who would be awesome for this one?’ We were lucky enough to already have all these connections with people to just make them happen. JJ, for sure, was one of those. We sent him the track, then he wrote all of the lyrics and recorded it pretty much on his own and sent it back.”
“Ryan is someone we have strong connections with too,” adds Mercurio. “He’s toured with us a bunch—he’s sat in with the band a bunch. Ben produced his last two albums. We’ve gone to him for songwriting stuff before, and he’s just a great singer-songwriter, so he’s someone we’ve wanted to collaborate with for a while. He was originally writing [“Domino”] for someone else, but he did such a good job producing the demo that we left it to him.”
Of course, creating a collaborative record isn’t just about filling out the tracklist with recognizable names, as worthy as they may be. It’s also a nice way to bring new talent to the forefront, especially when you’ve got a rich musical proving ground like New Orleans at your disposal. Into The Deep is no exception, with appearances by relative unknowns like Ms. Charm Taylor (“Right On”) and Jamaican Internet star—seriously, check this guy out on YouTube—Brushy One String (“Chicken in the Corn”).
“Charm is probably the most unknown vocalist on the album,” explains Mercurio. “She’s from a small New Orleans band called The Honorable South, and they’ve been just bubbling up down here. We had this demo and we thought that her voice and her attitude would work well, so we invited her to the studio and co-wrote the song with her.
“Brushy One String is the wild card,” he continues. “He has millions of views on YouTube because he’s a one-string guitar player from Ocho Rios, Jamaica that has this amazing voice. [New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival promoter] Quint Davis always brings some unknown person to Jazz Fest that you should definitely check out and, one year, it was him. So we checked him out and met him and invited him over to our studio to work and see what we could create together. He ended up opening our last national tour in 2014, so we became really good friends. He was singing with us every night.”
Despite their advances in the studio, Galactic are still truly defined by their live shows—and the collaborations and extended jams that come with them. Though they’ve made sure to stay current with new studio material every two or three years, the ensemble’s appeal has always been on the stage. They have hardly even altered their touring regimen to support Into The Deep, which is especially impressive considering that they’ve toured relentlessly for the better part of two decades.
“We’ve got it down to a science,” says keyboardist Rich Vogel. “In the early days, we were playing 150 shows a year, making laps across the country. You can’t do that forever. Now we play 90, maybe 100, shows every year. That has allowed us to make it this far, where we can still be a band and all have families and other commitments that we didn’t have 20 years ago.”
“It’s kind of this joke now,” Mercurio adds with a laugh. “On one of our first tour posters, the record label put ‘Nonstop National Tour’ and I thought, ‘Ha, that’s funny.’ But now, 20 years later, I realize that was right.”
The sporadic dates with Macy Gray are slated to slow down after the summer, but that doesn’t mean Galactic won’t hit the road in full force afterward. A slew of tour dates with New Orleans’ own Erica Falls—a dynamic former backup singer whose résumé includes stints with John Fogerty, Irma Thomas and Sting—are already scheduled for the fall, despite the fact that she doesn’t even appear on Into The Deep.
The live experience is so integral to Galactic’s identity that they’ve partnered with yet another New Orleans institution, Tipitina’s, to organize The Landing, a brand new festival that will make its debut along the shores of Lake Pontchartrain this September.
“We play a lot of festivals,” notes Ellman. “So I think that we have a little something to bring to the table. Hopefully, we can use our experience, the things we liked, to bring the best of that into this festival and make it a really fun two days.”
Galactic’s impressive résumé now includes regular runs at clubs like New York’s Brooklyn Bowl and they have added Rebirth Brass Band’s Corey Henry to their horn section. And, despite being two decades into their career, the members of the group believe they are only now hitting their stride in the studio.
“I think this is my favorite record that we’ve done so far,” says Moore. “It has the strongest songs, the strongest collaborations. I feel like it’s one of our strongest efforts yet. We’re just doing a few dates here and there for the rest of the year, but we’ll really pick up the touring at the beginning of next year.
So the record will be out for a while, and hopefully people get a chance to hear it and want to come check it out live. We’re excited about all that.”
