While his friend Warren Haynes is often credited as the hardest working man in the jamband world, Eric Krasno definitely has his hands in the most diverse range of projects. In addition to his mainstay funk groups Soulive and Lettuce, Krasno is also a solo artist, respected hip-hop producer, label co-founder, festival curator and burgeoning live DJ. Sometimes his worlds feel very far apart and other times they consciously collide, especially during Soulive’s annual Bowlive run of shows at New York’s Brooklyn Bowl. In the coming months, Krasno has his fingerprints on a slew of new releases too, including a Soulive EP, a Lettuce studio effort, a Nigel Hall solo record and a London Souls album. Shortly after New Year’s Eve, Krasno gave us a state of the union on his myriad of projects, including Lettuce’s highly anticipated 20th anniversary recording.
You have several projects slated for release this spring. I was wondering if you could start by talking about Soulive’s upcoming studio EP. I heard it was actually dedicated to your friend Melvin Sparks, who recently passed away.
EK: We ended up deciding to dedicate the album to Melvin a little bit after the fact. We had planned on getting together with Karl [Denson] to do some shows, so we were like, “Why don’t we get in the studio? We might as well.” We just booked two dates in the studio because we kind of wanted to vibe out, and we got four songs done. So the idea is that we might do four songs on a piece of vinyl, and then we might do some bonus tracks and put out a CD. But the main focus was to put out a high quality vinyl EP where each side has two ten-minute songs. We were thinking about the old CTI recordings and Melvin came up in conversation, and when Melvin passed it was really close to when we were in the studio, so when we heard that we were like, “let’s write a song for him.” So we wrote the song “Spark” and then we ended up calling the album that and dedicating it to him. And if we do some bonus tracks I’m hoping that we actually do a cover—we didn’t actually end up covering any of his music but I’m hoping that when we do a volume two or an extended CD, we’ll do some of his tunes.
Where did you end up recording the album?
EK: We actually ended up doing it in Greenfield, Mass. in this guy Pierre’s studio—he works with the Rolling Stones and [Soulive drummer Alan Evans] met him when we were opening for the Stones. It turned out that his studio was down the street from Alan. Alan ended up moving his studio a few years ago mainly into his house, so he has this big old library that has all this old vintage gear, and we ended up just setting up live and pretty much cutting live. We did some overdubs by adding horns and some orchestration to it, but pretty much what you hear is us cutting it live. [Lettuce’s] Ryan Zoidis and a friend of Alan’s who is a trumpet player ended up adding some horns on some tracks.
Your other major studio project is Lettuce’s first album in almost 5 years. What is the status of that project?
EK: I’m hoping that we’re going to mix it in February, so it’ll probably be released a few months after that I suppose. With Lettuce, we talk about making a record for years before it actually happens because it’s hard to get everyone’s schedules to lineup. I’ve written a couple of songs but [drummer] Adam Deitch ended up writing the bulk of the album because he’s a night-owl—he’s always making beats and tracks that he brings to the table. But it was cool because it really was a collaborative thing—everyone wrote on this record: Ryan Zoidis wrote, Shmeeans [Adam Smirnoff] wrote and Erick Coomes added parts to songs, so once we got in the studio, it gelled. We ended up recording 18 tracks in four days and then we spent a few days doing overdubs.
We brought [Dave Matthews Band trumpeter/onetime Lettuce staple] Rashawn [Ross] and Cochmea [Gastelum] from the Dap Kings to fill out the horn section, as well as Brian Thomas. The great thing about it is that Adam [Deitch] and I have been building a space in this one studio. It’s called the Bunker, and it’s basically two studios connected. We’re kind of living in the “B room” now, and we recorded this in the “A room.” So as this was all coming together, we got to make this record and work with an amazing engineer—John Davis and Aaron Nevezie. I produced the Vieux Farka Toure album that came out last year, and I did it with them, and they did The Black Keys album the year prior so they’re just amazing. I’m glad we waited to record the Lettuce album because it’s the best thing we’ve ever done.
When was the last time Lettuce made a studio album?
EK: It was Rage, so it was 2005 or 2006 so it seems like Lettuce records every five years or so. This is our 20th year in existence—we started in 1992. At that point we didn’t really have gigs, we just knew each other and started playing together, but it is the same core members. In 1994 we really started gigging because that’s when we actually ended up going to school at Berklee College of Music. We had gone to a summer program for high school kids and that’s where we met, so it’s been a crazy evolution.
For readers who may not be familiar with how long Lettuce has been around, who’s still in the band from the original lineup?
EK: Ryan Zoidis, Adam Shmeeans, Deitch, Erick Coomes and myself are the original members. Then Sam Kininger’s kind of came in and out for years, and for the last few years [Soulive’s] Neal Evans has been playing with us as well. And then Nigel Hall is kind of an unofficial member—he’s always around—Rashawn Ross has been working with us for at least eight or nine years now.
How did you first meet Rashawn?
EK: He was playing with some friends of mine—he went to Berklee and there was a whole crew of us like Charles Haynes and Jeff Bhasker, who is the old keyboardist from Lettuce. They’re all in L.A. now doing production. Jeff Bhasker just did the Kanye/Jay-Z Throne tour and works with Bruno Mars and Alicia Keys—he’s huge doing that stuff now. So I guess I met him through Charles Haynes’ drummer—he was playing with another band called Yerba Buena, so he came out initially with Lettuce because we were going to Japan to do this live record, and we really wanted a trumpet player. He kind of came in at the last second, and we ended up booking his flight a couple of days before the trip. So we knew we wanted a trumpet player, and he came to one of the gigs and learned all the shit without even rehearsing—he just nailed it. He came out with Soulive for a few years when we had a horn section. It’s this crazy big family that everyone kind of moves in circles, and we catch up with each other at various different times. [laughter]
You mentioned that Jeff played with Kanye and Jay-Z, which is crazy because they’re two of the biggest names in music at this point and he was the first Lettuce keyboardist?
EK: He was pretty much original. That first summer in ‘92 we didn’t really have a keyboard player, so then when we started gigging in ‘94,’ 95, ‘96, and all the way up to 2002 he played with us. Then he moved to L.A. and Neil was around—Neil really helped a lot with the songwriting stuff—you can hear it on the new record. He’s got such a unique writing style, with a lot of the stuff on Rage and on the new record he brings a whole new different kind of creative vibe to the record. That’s when I think we really took a turn. That was a big turning point. He’s also a great bass player, so when him and Erick get on that vibe together they can go back and forth, it’s a cool dynamic.
Lettuce has an interesting place in the jamband scene. If you poll a lot of readers, I’d bet they say that Lettuce is a super group featuring members of Soulive, Break Science and Dave Matthews instead of your original project.
EK: It’s one of those things where I didn’t know what was going to happen. After Soulive started I always knew I wanted to play with those guys. The thing with that is, we’re such close friends that we all are hanging out, we’re all talking all the time. Like Adam and I write and produce together all the time, so it’s one of those things where it’s like “Ready? Do people have time? We want to do this and we want to do this.” And a lot of it is about demand—I think with the last album it caught a little bit of an underground following, where people heard it and then we get festival or booking offers and all of that reinvigorates the band. We’re like “Let’s get together and do this, and let’s do a few other shows.”
It’s funny man, it’s one of those things where we don’t think about it all that much—it’s a very natural thing. When it’s time to come together, it just happens. [Laughter.] We have a team and a great crew, like my brother Jeff [Krasno] and Morgan [Young]—we all facilitate to make it happen, there’s a lot of guys and a lot of schedules. Some of the guys are used to making a little more money than it is, but we have so much fun. That’s the thing about it that’s so great: it’s really all about the love of the music. No one is out there to make money, we’re all out here to play with each other, hang out with each other and make something we love. We never had a commercial angle—it was never about selling a million records. It was like, this is what we do, let’s set some mics up and press record.
It was literally your high school band.
EK: Really! We would listen to these tapes and steal them from each other. We would set up in the original jam room, which was at Berklee: they had this room in the basement of the dorm we all lived in, and we’d go in there and literally play all night ‘cause no one wanted to book the room after 11 PM. We’d take it over for the whole night and stay up all night and set up a tape recorder and do these crazy jams and then turn them into songs.
You should release some of those early jam sessions for the 20th anniversary celebration.
EK: I’ve been trying to hound Shmeeans—he has some of those old tapes from way back. There’s some floating around for sure. I have a friend who has a full on video of some shows: he used to videotape a lot of shows for us from ‘93 to ’95. That’d be a trip to check out now.
Outside the funk and jam worlds, you have also made a name for yourself as a hip-hop producer. When you are not on the road, do you find yourself in your studio working more of a 9-5 style production job—only with musician hours?
EK: Yeah, pretty much. And there’s a lot of stuff I do on the road as far as planning, and then listening and doing mixes. It was really hard for a while to figure out what to do. Now I try not to think so much, I let it all fall into place, which it generally does. Also, I’m spending a little less time on the road.
I’ve got concepts now as far as Royal Family stuff—we want to do bigger events where we do multiple nights at different places. We’re doing this thing called Snowlive which is just like Bowlive but in Colorado. We’re going to do a few nights there, a few nights in Lake Tahoe and then some Royal Family Ball-like events. Eventually, when it gets to the point where we can do a few nights in each city and have different members and guest artists cycle in and sit-in, kind of like a revue that they used to do back in the day. But it’s cool because I’d rather do that than tour all the time—we plan it all in advance, and it’s kind of like, “Ok, well now maybe it’ll work around that as far as the production stuff.” But yeah, there’s some really exciting projects coming up. It’s amazing, I get to work with so many cool people. At this point now I’m able to work with people that I believe in, people that I want to sign to our label. That’s the real idea: eventually, we can hear bands like the London Souls or Nigel and bring them into our camp and produce their record. I feel that the labels these days are so disjointed. Of course, we’ve got the Daptone label and a few out there. Our thing is probably a little more eclectic, you can be a rock band, you can be a soul singer, you could be a reggae artist for that matter, but if it’s good music then it’s worth it. [laughter] We want to create sort of a channel, whether it’s on the internet, or wherever, people know where to go to get some good quality, kind of soulful music.
Who are working with right now?
EK: The London Souls are the next thing that I’m doing.
Their second album?
EK: Yes, yes. And obviously Nigel’s record is finally getting close to done. And I’ve also been working with Alecia Chakour, her new album is coming out. A few things are still in the works.
Your third big live project is your KRAZ DJ sets. You have been performing under that alias more and more these days. How did you go from being a guitarist to a DJ?
EK: It started with the Fyre Department production thing, which is me and Adam. We had so many beats, and he started going in the Break Science direction. I was like, “what about all the hip-hop, funk and break-beat stuff?” because Break Science is more electronic. I always have my laptop—I’m always making beats and doing remixes of stuff, and my brother was like, “You got to start playing this live.” There’s no reason for me to promote them, they’re just for fun, but I used to sell a lot of beats. I’m still into that, I do beats for rappers, but now it’s turning into more mash-ups of classics and also these DJ sets gave me a chance to play a lot of my favorite music. I’m not really like a Pretty Lights or whatever where I play my own beats all night. I’ll just play a bunch of my favorite records and remix them, and then do a bunch of my exclusive beats. I kind of go in and out of stuff you might recognize and stuff you might not, and then some of our own remixes. I like to throw in a .45 that no one has heard, a total rare thing. The main thing is that it’s funky. If I play a hip-hop record, I’ll hint at the originals so you can hear where it comes from.
You’re definitely probably the only person who played the first Bonnaroo as a guitarist and the tenth one as a DJ.
EK: That’s funny, that’s funny. And I’m a huge fan of Ableton and all that. I’m really into the electronic thing, it’s just that like, I guess that my thing is I like the music to be organic, kind of use some of the technology to enhance certain things. The cool thing I can do with Ableton is that I can literally take a James Brown beat and put Marvin Gaye over it, or I can take one of our beats and mix it with a Jay-Z a cappella. The new technology is amazing with all that stuff. I’m not really a turntablist, I’m more like a mixologist.
From your perspective, is there a point where you think the jamband scene has accepted all that music?
EK: I’ve always been a huge fan of hip-hop, I think that people in our scene want to be able to believe in the message. And that’s how I am too—I love hip-hop but I’m also really into lyrics. I love so many MCs out there but I think commercial hip-hop went in the direction where I can’t really vouch for what they’re saying. [Laughter.]
I’m not saying I don’t respect them, it’s just not my thing. I think what’s happening now is that people are taking the musical elements of it—Skrillex or any of those guys will play in front of thousands of people, and it’s not people who care about his lyrics at all, it’s really just about the music. And it’s beyond hip-hop now because I think hip-hop now is more about the culture. People are taking the break-beats that were in it and are making this whole other thing. It’s a mixture of hip-hop, it’s electronic, it’s dubstep. To be honest, it’s so hard for me to keep up with the current name of what something is. To me, it’s either created on a laptop or by a band. Either way if it’s soulful and interesting, I’m going to enjoy it. I’m pretty open minded to everything.
But it’s been really interesting doing that because I get to meet a lot of other people and see how they DJ. I didn’t study someone else doing it, I just kind of went into it ‘cause I’m always making beats and doing all that other stuff. I was like “oh, I could do these mashups and start playing it out.” And then since I started doing it I started looking into how other guys do their sets. It’s interesting, people spend a lot of time putting it together, it’s really in-depth stuff. It’s not easy. There’s a very big difference between the guys that are amazing and the guys that just do it. But I definitely put time into it. I’m also into the selection and what goes into what and reading the crowd, seeing what they like to hear.
Speaking of mixing crowds, your Bowlive shows are coming up at Brooklyn Bowl in March. At this point, how involved are the three of you in choosing the bands who actually play the run of shows?
EK: Oh very, very. It’s pretty much us doing it. I’m normally the one reaching out to the people. We talk about who we want to get and I reach out initially before management discusses how it’s going to happen and the logistics and all that. Again, it’s another thing where, eventually, I want to be able to not only have artists with us that will draw in people, but also bring in artists that people haven’t heard of. Last year we brought in Van Hunt, a lot of people haven’t heard him and got turned onto him. He’s an amazing songwriter, singer and musician. This year we’re going to have this guy named Alan Stone. He’s brand new, he’s amazing. He’s a young singer/songwriter, and I want to do some different kind of weird, out of the box stuff, so I’m reaching out to all these people.
That’s the whole thing about it: on any given night it could be like Pharoahe Monch, and Derek Trucks and Talib [Kweli] There were nights where it would be Rahzel watching Warren Haynes and being like “Yeah!” and I’d be like “Whoah, this is cool.” And I remember watching them totally get down to Derek Trucks. I forgot which night it was, but the same crowd knew every word when Kweli came out for “Get By.” I think the scene here is really open minded. When we did Terminal 5, a lot of people didn’t know who Pharoahe Monch was, and he came out and did this amazing set with singers and a band, and we were realizing that certain artists aren’t the mainstream hip-hop that we hear all the time. There’s a lot of bands out there that don’t really get radio play. So I think these scenes coming together is cool.
I think having ?uestlove at the Bowl helps with that too, he brings his whole posse and they return.
EK: Yeah, that place has become a pretty awesome kind of meeting ground for a lot of music.
Final question, a few years ago you started to play with your solo group, Chapter 2. What is the status of that project and its new studio album?
EK: I plan to record one this year—once Lettuce is done and once I finish producing the other projects. I don’t know when I’m going to do it but definitely this year. Now that we have our new studio set up I’ve been writing a lot. I think it’s going to be more of a vocal record because I’ve been writing a lot of songs, and I’ve already actually recorded some stuff with different people collaborating. So I might do a record where I have a lot of guests helping me out and I’ll be penning the songs but with different singers or guest artists. I’m not sure if that’s going to be the concept yet, but I think that’s where I want to go with it. We make a lot of instrumental albums and I’ve written a lot of songs for other people, but I haven’t been able to put out my own record of my songwriting, so eventually I want to get that out there.
