G. Love & Special Sauce @ Madison Live! 4/22/16

By: Derek Jung

G. Love & Special Sauce at Madison Live! on April 22, 2016

As festival season approaches, I always look to free up my schedule of potential festival conflicts by seeing artists in advance. G. Love & Special Sauce is playing Bunbury Music Festival in June, which both Joseph and I are attending. Usually, major festivals have radius clauses for bands that are scheduled to play, meaning they cannot play another show within a determined number of miles and within a certain span of time around the festival. Because of this, I was surprised to see G. Love on the bill of a birthday party scheduled at Madison Live!, which is located right across the river from where Bunbury will be happening in a mere month and a half. The show was advertised as "Kurt's First Annual Birthday Bash" rather than G. Love & Special Sauce, and it was not listed on G. Love's website, which may have been a clever loophole if there was a radius clause in their contract, but I certainly wasn't complaining either way. The way I saw it, I was seeing them in a much more intimate venue, seeing a much longer set than I would see at Bunbury, and if I didn't like them, I could easily skip their set in June. I had nothing to lose.

The trio of G. Love (lead singer, guitarist, harmonica), Jeff Clemens (drums), and Jim Prescott (upright bass), have been at it for most of the past two decades. Their self-titled debut, released in 1994, is to this day their most popular album. Their newest album, Love Saves The Day, was released last year on Jack Johnson's Brushfire Records. I'll admit to being completely unfamiliar with the vast majority of their discography outside of their self-titled, so I went into their set mostly blind. For some artists it can lead to a show filled with sonic surprises, and for others you'll regret not "getting it". For me, my first G. Love experience was somewhere in the middle.  

Considering this was a glorified birthday party, I was curious as to how many of the attendees were actually fans of G. Love. The band has an almost cult-like following in many areas, especially here in the Midwest. For the most part, I'd say Kurt's friends either already liked G. Love or became fans during their two set, nearly three hour performance. Or maybe they were all drunk, high, or both - who's to judge?

There's a comfort level that comes with playing your hits over the years like G. Love & Special Sauce has, and there's a fine line to walk between comfort and staleness. For the few songs that I was familiar with from the self-titled album, I think they nailed the sweet spot with an additional dose of charm and suavity. Jim Prescott is a downright monster on the upright bass and I think he'd be spinning that sucker around if he had just a little more room on the small Madison Live! stage. G. Love's smooth lyrical delivery and gritty harmonica playing were a nice juxtaposition, and the bluesier songs on the set were a welcome change of pace to the rest of the set and something that I did not expect at all. I wish they had played more in that style, but what they did play was great. All in all, it was a very enjoyable set.

Now comes the tough decision of whether or not I'll check out their set at Bunbury. Oh festival season...

Happy birthday Kurt! Can't wait to see who you bring for The 2nd Annual Kurt's Birthday Bash.

Check out a full set video of G. Love at the 2015 Pleasantville Music Festival.