Photo by Scott Harris
Back in the spring of 2010, when the Brooklyn Bowl was still in its adolescence, Soulive kicked off the inaugural performance of Bowlive, the annual one-band festival that has helped the venue become an institution of New York music scene. Fast forward to this week, and the organ trio, made up of brothers Neal and Alan Evans and guitarist Eric Krasno, are in the midst of their sixth year of Bowlive, while simultaneously celebrating their sixteenth year of the band.
Since they formed in 1999, Soulive have become known for both their jazzy funk and their funky jazz, but mostly for their energetic live shows that have steamed up music rooms around the globe. Always up for a collaboration, Soulive has regularly invited special guests to play with them during their annual two-week residency of Brooklyn Bowl, proving that these guys have the chops to jam with absolutely anyone.
Taking a rare break from shows and rehearsal, drummer Alan Evans takes some time to discuss the beginnings of Soulive and Bowlive and what they have both become, along with his most memorable special guest over the six-year run, hip-hop godfather Darryl “DMC” McDaniels.
How’s the run been going so far, about halfway through now? It looks like you guys are having a lot of fun up there.
You know, [this is] our sixth one, so I think we’ve finally really figured out how to do it. It’s definitely a lot of work, because we’re learning a bunch of new tunes and rehearsing every day for it before the show. I was telling my wife earlier when we were out walking, “Last night was the first night of good sleep I’ve gotten in a while.” The thing is, we wake up, we usually get the Bowl somewhere around like 2 o’clock in the afternoon and we rehearse. Then whoever’s the guest artist will show up like around 3 usually, then we run through tunes. But before Bowlive, we’re figuring out tunes for the entire run, like with every guest, so we start listening and, like I said, every day we rehearse all the stuff. So, you know, then you play the gig, and you get to bed, and you can’t stop hearing music. [Laughs] You sleep for a little bit, a few hours, then wake up, and you’re either dreaming about it or you’re just hearing music in your head. And you just gotta get up and do it all over again, you know?
Other than that, it’s been cool. Like I said, I think we’ve just kind of figured it out now. We’re just kind of relaxed about the whole thing, whereas the first year or two, we definitely put a lot more pressure on ourselves to have it perfect. Now it’s kind of like, you learn the tunes as best you can and everyone has to be open to—I wouldn’t say mistakes—but well, yeah mistakes. I mean, it’s just a lot to learn all those tunes, and of course maybe someone it gonna miss a hit or go to the bridge or chorus a little late or whatever.
So six years ago, how did this all start?
Well I’ve known Pete [Shapiro] for a really, really long time—you know, back in the Wetlands days. Then he was working on the Brooklyn Bowl, and he was talking with our manager at the time, Eric’s brother Jeff [Krasno]. And he was like, “I want to do something big to really set off Brooklyn Bowl. I want to do ten nights of Soulive.” Jeff told us his idea, and we thought he was crazy. I mean, the longest run we’d probably ever done in New York was like a three-night thing, you know?
*So how did you guys respond when he came up with ten nights? *
I don’t know, Pete makes it really hard to say no, you know? [Laughs] And I guess the idea was kind of cool. We were like, “Ten nights? How are we even gonna do that?” Then it was like, well he wants you to do it with guests, different guests every night. Then it starts to make a little bit more sense. We just said “Why not?” Like I said, Pete made it really hard to say no. He felt really confident that it was gonna work, and out of all these different cats I know, different promoters and venue owners and things like that, Pete usually makes it happen. And it did.
The first year was a success, and he was like, “Man, we’re gonna keep doing this.” The funny thing is, I remember one year we were hanging out backstage—it might’ve been during Bowlive’s last night—and Pete was like, “We’re gonna do this every year.” We’re like, “Yeah, yeah, cool.” “And then we’re gonna do it in Vegas.” And we’re like, “Yeah—what?” [Laughs] He was like “Yeah man, we’re gonna get a plane, we’re gonna fly out to Vegas and we’re gonna play there.” I was like, “Where in Vegas? What are you even talking about?” He says “Aw, man, I’ll tell you later.” And sure enough, a few years later, Brooklyn Bowl Vegas. He makes stuff happen, you know?
How do you choose the guests for Bowlive? Is it just people you know are going to be in the area at the time, or do they ever reach out to you?
Yeah, over the years it’s obviously become a little bit easier—people know about it now. The first year or two, honestly we were just reaching out to our friends. And then it’s kinda like we want to do something different each year, and that’s always been the biggest challenge. Yeah we can have Derek [Trucks] or Sco [John Scofield], but after a while, it’s like all right, we gotta flip it up. So then we just started reaching out to different people, and now people are hitting us up. It’s kind of funny, right around January or February, all of our phones start blowing up. [Laughs] People are like, “Oh, what’s up?” But yeah, now we’re just lucky in that. A few years ago, the New York Times did like a big feature on Bowlive, which was cool. A lot of people know about it now, so it’s definitely easier to get guests to jump on. And it’s been really fun—using Bowlive, we’ve been able to meet a lot of people we didn’t know. Like last year, we had DMC, which was incredible. Never met the cat before, but he came in and it was super tight. It definitely takes a considerable about of planning, though, to get all the guest locked in. So we usually start way, way in advance. We start talking about it almost six months before it. But it’s been happening.
I was very interested that Charles Bradley was a part of it this year, and the show was incredible. Did you guys know him before?
No. I think Kraz said he may have sat in with him at a festival or something like that, but our manager, Jason [Bau], has been trying to get him on for a couple of years now. He was like “If we could get Charles Bradley, that’s gonna be ridiculous.” And this year was the year, and man, that dude went crazy. [Laughs] He just went crazy.
And the crowd went crazy for him.
Oh yeah. The funniest thing is, I wish I had a camera myself to take some photos or video of people right up front, to see their reaction to him, you know? [Laughs] It was pretty hilarious to see these people. I mean, people’s mouths were just wide open like, “Whoa, what is going on?” This guy is laying it down. He’s just old school— old school—the entertainer/singer. And it’s all genuine, you know what I mean? He’s singing the stuff that he’s lived. It was pretty interesting just talking with him backstage. I mean, that cat is far out. Wow, man, he has lived. And you feel it, you know? When he’s out there, you just feel everything coming off of him, off the stage. It was pretty incredible—definitely one of the highlights for me, for sure.
It’s been sixteen years since you guys got together. Back then, did you imagine Soulive having this kind of popularity and longevity down the line?
I’m not surprised that we’ve been around this long but when you’re one year, two years in, you’re so far in it, just living and trying to make a living and playing music and just running around like crazy just trying to play any gig you can—you don’t really think. Really, the furthest you’re thinking ahead it is when the furthest gig ahead is, like six months or eight months out. And then, next thing you know you look back and it’s like wow, sixteen years have passed. It’s really incredible. It doesn’t feel like that long at all, not even close. Sometimes you just think about it, it seems like you just started the band. We’re just having a good time, you know?
When you started, was it you and Neal that wanted to start the trio and then you kind of brought Eric along?
Well Soulive was originally Neal, myself and this guy Nick Mancini. That was the original Soulive. And then Kraz came to see us in Boston, and sat in. And after the gig we were rapping, and he’s like “I really dig the band, dig what you guys are doing.” We had known Kraz before that, because Lettuce used to open up for Moon Boot Lover back in the day. So anyway, we were kicking out, and it just so happened that Nick, he was kind of an in-demand musician in New York City for the Broadway musicals, so he decided to do that. He let us know he was just gonna rock the Broadway thing. He didn’t want to be on the road. Neal and I decided we wanted a guitarist, so we were already actively looking around where we were living in the Woodstock area. When we saw Kraz, we’re like, we got all these gigs booked, and we’re looking for a guitarist, would you fill in on these gigs until we can find someone? And he was like, “Yeah, cool, no problem.” He was doing Lettuce and production stuff, kind of the same thing he’s doing now. So he came to our house where we had a studio. We were just showing him some tunes that we’d been playing, and he brought a tune, and then I just recorded it—because that’s what I do, I just record everything. And that just happened to be our first album. And we kept doing it.
You said at the concert, before you played “Uncle Junior,” that it was the first song written for Soulive.
Yeah, I wrote that tune when my wife and I were living in San Diego, because I was playing with Karl Denson. I guess I was the drummer of Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, and then I was also playing with the Greyboy Allstars—Zach [Najor] dipped out at that time. At that point, at the end of that little run, I was just writing tunes, and “Uncle Junior” and “Steppin’” were literally the first tunes that I wrote with Neal in mind, for a new band.
So you guys have been playing together for so long, what kind of stage communication goes on during the shows? Is everything kind of pre-structured, or do you take nods from each other on solos or changes and things like that?
We know the structures of the tunes, and obviously we’ll change things up depending on how we’re feeling that night or if we have different guests, like “Oh, who’s gonna solo on this?” We’ll flip that up. But mostly, the cues really come from our own playing. We’re just constantly listening to each other. Like, we all know, just from playing together so long. I know Kraz—the way he likes to build solos—and Neal as well. And then, obviously there will be visual cues, but usually nothing more than a nod. Like, Neal will look over, and you just know what it means, because we know the structure of the tune—we know where it could be going. It’s on autopilot, just like any band that’s been doing it that long. You have your different ways of communicating, but it usually comes down to just listening.
I know you guys are big into collaborations, with Bowlive especially. How does that communication work when you have a fourth up there—or fifth and sixth, if you’re talking about the Shady Horns?
Honestly, it doesn’t really ever feel like anything changes that much, you know? And that’s the thing, we’ve been rocking with [Ryan] Zoidis and now [Eric] Bloom for a while, so the cool thing is that Zoidis acts as the leader of the horn section. So as long as Zoidis is there, we can pretty much have any horn player come into the section, and we don’t even have to worry about it. They work out all the parts, he makes sure everyone is together, and then—especially when we’re just rocking live—you can see Zoidis back up from the mic, sing out a part, come up with a new horn to back Neal’s solo up, or Kraz’s solo. So we don’t even have to think about what they’re doing. Cool thing is, that’s something to play off of, though. All of a sudden, you’re playing and you hear this line come in, like bopbopbopbop-bop-badidda-bop, and you’re like whoa, okay. Then we start vibing off of that line. They see we’re caught on to that line, they’ll flip it up. It’s a constant, back and forth conversation. So we’re in good hands.
What does it mean to the band to have these kind of guests? Is there a lot of learning and conversation, musically, that goes on and helps you grow with your own music?
The one thing that especially Bowlive has done for me—and I’m not gonna speak for the other guys, but I’m sure they would say the same thing—it’s been a great learning experience in that I’m able to really learn tunes now quickly and precisely. Because you’re just constantly getting hit with new tunes. And it’s not like when you’re learning tunes to just go out and play—and I’m not trying to diss anyone here—but there’s a little more leniency when you’re just going out and learning tunes to just play some random night. It’s a little different when you have to learn that tune and play it with the actual person. So you really have to be on-point, because they know the tune. [Laughs] Like with Charles Bradley the other night. We were checking these tunes out—and anything that comes out of that camp, the Daptone camp, is awesome. All those cats can play. So we wanna make sure that Charles comes in—or any artist comes in—and it’s not like, “That’s pretty good, that’s almost it.” We want it to be just as good, if not better, than the original. And that’s one thing that this whole experience has helped me with, really digging in and listening. And that’s the thing with me—I’m playing the drums on the tunes, but I also play guitar. So I know these tunes. Because with Bowlive, you never know know who’s gonna show up to play. For me, if Questlove or whatever drummer shows up, well I’m gonna be ready to pick up a guitar and play that tune. This is the kind of stuff you can’t learn in school, you know? [Laughs] It’s like down in the trenches. You have to adapt quickly and learn quickly, and it’s been a pretty amazing experience.
This may not be a fair question to ask, but with all these collaboration in six years of Bowlive, do you have a favorite special guest, or one that stands out?
Wow, that is a really tough one. There’s so many that I love, you know, so many years, so many different cats have come up, and I’ve really had a great time with them, but the one I keep falling back on is the DMC night. And there’s a few reasons why I say this. First of all, I couldn’t even believe it was gonna happen when I heard about it. I just didn’t even get it. Two, once I knew it was happening and we were checking out the tunes, I wasn’t really sure what to expect of it, you know? And to be honest, the Soulive/hip-hop collaborations in general—they’re fun for me, but they’re not usually my favorite, personally. I don’t know if that’s because I’m just not into hip-hop as much as I used to be when I was younger. I mean, I’m gonna be 41 next week, so I came up in a different era of hip-hop—I came up before it was hip-hop, put it that way, it was rap. And I guess, musically, as a drummer, it’s cool, but I’d rather play with Oteil [Burbridge] and Scofield, you know? Not to say that I don’t put everything into it when I’m doing the gig—I’m not calling it in.
Anyway, we get to rehearsal, and I’m like, “Aw man, I’m meeting DMC,” so I’m definitely kinda bugging about that, because that’s from my era, you know? The nicest guy ever—the nicest cat. So we’re rocking with him. And it hit me at rehearsal, actually—he was rehearsing like there were ten thousand people in the room—and it hit me: this dude is a straight up legend. And the thing is, it was really interesting talking with him—and not reading it in a book or hearing his story or the Run DMC story, but actually talking with him. They came up in a time, like I said, before hip-hop. Their influences were, like, rock and roll and funk music. They basically were one of the founders of rap and hip-hop, in a way. Like, now people say, “Yeah, Jay-Z is my biggest influence,” and all these cats—back then there weren’t all those cats, you know? It was uncharted territory. And then, when you think about it, Run-DMC, at their height, they were rocking stadiums. Which is kind of mind-boggling in itself, because how many Jay-Z-plus-twenty-other-guests shows have you heard about that maybe happened, or some got cancelled because not enough people bought tickets? You’re talking about the biggest hip-hop artist of this time can’t sell a night at a big room.
So during the show, we’re playing and I’m thinking about all this while he’s standing right next to me, rocking. Out of all the Bowlives we’ve done, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the room go off like that. And it was really him. And the thing is, everyone knows those tunes, and how long ago was that? That’s the one that probably left the biggest impression on me. On top of being one of my favorites, but definitely left the biggest impression. Like, dude, we rocked with someone who’s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And this is the other thing—a lot of time with the hip-hop artists, they want you to learn the beat exactly as it was. It’s even hard to get some hip-hop artists to grasp the concept that there’s a band playing, because they’re used to having a track playing. So if it’s not exactly the same, they find it very hard to do their thing. But when we were rocking with Darryl, though, at rehearsal—again going back to our work ethic, we made sure we knew those joints—he came in, he was like, “Yeah man, cool, flip it up, do this, do your thing.” Like, aw man, you gotta be kidding me. He’s old school, man. Like I said, that definitely left the biggest impression on me. It was just a transcendent evening.
