The Pursuit Of Music

The email that accompanies confirmation the interview with The Music is happening warns that the artist must be addressed as G Love, or more familiarly G, not Garrett Dutton. For all that, G Love, on the line on tour from Portland, Oregon, is as approachable and chatty as ever, chuffed with the latest album, Sugar, and overjoyed that the original Special Sauce double bassist, James Prescott, is back in the fold.

"I think it’s interesting to be with musicians like that, who surprise you and push you and do things you wouldn’t have thought of yourself."

“The band’s really playin’ great,” he explains, obviously pleased. “You know, something magical happens when Jim, Jeff [Clemens, drums] and I play. I mean of course I can play my songs solo acoustic, I can play ‘em with an orchestra, I can play ‘em with anybody and I’d just be doin’ my thing, but there is definitely somep’n really special about the three of us pulling it together and it’s hard to put a finger on it but we have a certain chemistry and it’s really great.”

The story’s well known but basically back in ’93, G had recently moved to Boston from his native Philadelphia when he scored a fill-in gig opening a night at an Irish pub his then girlfriend was working at and was spotted by Clemens there, who called up Prescott, and the blues/soul/hip hop hybrid G Love & Special Sauce were born. Fast forward seven albums to 2009 and Prescott opted out, but as of January last year, he was back and the trio headed into the studio. “When we went to make Sugar, we hadn’t played together in a few years, but man, it just came so naturally, Jim and Jeff in the pocket together. Jim has a really interesting way of making up bass lines and he’s a very unique musician. He’s a big part of the sound, the melodic bass lines that he comes up with. I think it’s interesting to be with musicians like that, who surprise you and push you and do things you wouldn’t have thought of yourself. That’s the whole point.”

Sugar began as something of a heartbreak album, but with the return of Prescott, it morphed into a celebration of being in a band through all these years and making it through. “I had kind of recorded half of the record and, yeah, it was, like, a lot of heartbreak songs and I’d recorded them all,” G chuckles, “and the label was like, ‘No, go do another session. We don’t think you’ve got a full record here.’ So I said, ‘Alright, lemme go and record this other group of songs,’ and it was the songs that we hadn’t recorded kind of because they had a whole different thing about ‘em and I thought, ‘Oh, this is way more refreshing to hear about than how I got my heart broken again,’” he admits, laughing out loud. “And actually, I didn’t even really think about it theme-wise. I was just thinkin’ about it song-wise and style-wise. And it happened to be about the pursuit of music.”