Tribute albums are funny critters. They can be an absolute bundle of smiles with big love for the subject at hand coming from the strangest of places – or they can be a total train wreck, weirdly uncomfortable and coming off like a half-drunk Holiday Inn cover band on a Monday night.
There’s much to consider: how much of the band being paid tribute to does one leave in? And how much of itself does the band paying the tribute insert into the mix? When does an interesting spin on some familiar music turn into a case of two worlds colliding in a bad way?
Let’s ratchet up the potential for problems: say the band being covered is The Beatles, whose music is etched into the DNA of a good portion of the world’s population. You may not consider yourself a Beatles freak – or even a casual fan – but chances are in a pressure situation (a television game show, we’ll say) you could reel off more Beatle song titles than you might think. Let’s face it – those crazy mopheads really did a number on us all.
Over the years there have been a number of Beatles-themed projects. The bad are best forgotten; the good (including Booker T. & The M.G.’s McLemore Avenue – complete with an Abbey Road-knockoff cover) are worth remembering and few in number.
Add one more to the list of keepers: Rubber Soulive, 11 tracks of funky Beatleness that definitely nails the right combination of respect for the originals and flavorings of the host band (in this case, groove kings Soulive). No doubt, the formation of their own label – Royal Family Records – was key to the soul jazz trio being willing to take on such a project. With no one to answer to but themselves, brothers Neal and Alan Evans (keys/bass and drums, respectively) and Eric Krasno (guitar) holed up in the studio last year, burrowed into The Beatles’ sonic catalog, and let things evolve as they wanted to. The result is definitely Soulive, definitely Beatles, and definitely served up with love and respect.
Jambands.com had a chance to discuss the Rubber Soulive project with guitarist Eric Krasno recently – may the smiles come through the words.
BR: Right off the bat, it needs to be acknowledged that tackling The Beatles’ catalog could be considered a risky trip …
EK: Oh, yeah … (laughter)
BR: So my first question is, what inspired the three of you to do it?
EK: You know, we talked about it kind of casually for a long time – like, “It would be really cool to do a Beatles instrumental record someday” – and we messed around with some different songs now and then. When I did “Get Back” for my solo album Reminisce, that brought it all back up again – “Oh man, we should do this with the band.”
It finally came together when we ended up back at Alan’s studio in Hatfield, MA after a weekend of gigs last year. We were planning on unloading the equipment and driving home for a few days – and then coming back to load up again for the following weekend. We’d already decided to do a Beatles set for a couple of Halloween shows that were coming up, so we were definitely serious about it. We were in the middle of unloading the gear at Alan’s studio when we decided it was time: “You know what? Rather than driving home and then driving back in a few days, let’s stay right here and work on that Beatles idea.” It really was that spontaneous.
BR: It was time, right?
EK: Exactly. I actually went to a music store and got a bunch of the new re-mastered stuff. The first day in the studio, we just did a lot of listening – listening and talking about which tunes to do and how to do them. We wanted to do some stuff that already sounded like it was in our lane – the groovier, funkier stuff. But we also wanted to delve into other songs that were more open to our interpretation, you know? We ended up with a lot of pretty straightforward stuff where the melodies were easily recognizable, plus a couple that are more …
BR: Out there?
EK: Yeah! (laughter)
BR: So during that process – or prior to then – did you listen at all to McLemore Avenue, the album of Beatles instrumentals that Booker T. & The M.G.’s did back in 1970?
EK: (laughs) You know what? I knew about it, but I had never heard it. Which is insane, because I’ve listened to so much Booker T. and so much Stax stuff over the years. I think I knew that they had done that, but I’d honestly forgotten about it until after we’d recorded our album. Oddly enough, I was at Warren Haynes’ Christmas Jam last December and the Booker T. album was playing in the van that they had to take us around in. It was cool to hear it after we had gone in and done our thing.
I really think that they did their album in the same vein as we did ours; we didn’t spend a lot of time on complex arrangements – we just went in and played the stuff. And I think that’s what they did, too – only it sounds different because that’s them and this is us, you know? Same approach, but different feel.
BR: It’s cool that you didn’t listen to it until after you guys had recorded Rubber Soulive. I’d been wondering if you’d intentionally done certain songs – or not done certain songs – because of the Booker T. album.
EK: You know, I still don’t know exactly what they did for songs. Did we do the same tunes at all? Probably if we’d known, we would have avoided them. (laughs)
BR: Well, it’s a little bit different right off the bat because McLemore Avenue is made up of three long medleys. They did do “Something” as a standalone, which you guys cover on your album. But it really and truly is two different bands.
EK: In the end, what we wanted was an album that was easily recognized as Beatles tunes, but for people to say, “Hey, wait a minute – that sounds like Soulive!”
BR: Which it does.
EK: And you know what was cool? We originally didn’t know how far it was going to go – we’d talked about laying down a few tunes and doing an EP, you know? But once we got going, we were having so much fun with it that we just stayed in the studio and kept recording tunes, one after the other. It was a very organic process – not too overly thought out.
BR: That’s absolutely cool – to have the feeling that’s driving the process be “We’re enjoying this” and wanting to keep it going, rather than churning out more product simply to fill out an album.
EK: And that’s the whole thing about having our own label now – there’s no one telling us what to do. You know that if we do something, it’s because we wanted to – not because we had to. It really is a nice place to be, I have to say.
In this case, it was a matter of “Let’s record this many tunes and see how it goes.” By three in the morning, we were six tunes deep and ready to keep going. I think it ended up being four days straight of just recording and listening and recording some more.
BR: And this was all in Alan’s studio, right?
EK: Right – with just the three of us. Alan’s place was originally an old barn that he’s converted into a studio. It’s really nice – a big, open space that just feels good, you know? And Alan is a great engineer; he did all the recording and mixing on this album himself. It was a great experience to work in there – and Al has it dialed in perfectly.
BR: Well, we’ve talked about the process – want to talk about the music?
EK: Cool! (laughter)
BR: “Drive My Car” leads things off – that’s a good example of one of the cuts that sticks pretty close to the original groove. I like how the keys punch out the syllables to the melody while the guitar is there, tucking in all these little accents.
EK: That’s what we’d do on each song: go back and forth and each try the melody. Whatever felt the best is what we’d go with. On that one, Neal took the melody line, looking for that old school, breakbeat, boogaloo kind of feel.
BR: On this cut – and throughout the album – it sounds like you guys made a conscious effort to keep the solos reigned in for the most part.
EK: Definitely. In a live setting, you know, we’ll take it out and improvise, for sure. But on the album, we really wanted to keep it to that Beatles flavor of three- to four-minute tunes. Some of them go a little bit more …
BR: Oh, I’m gonna ask you about those …
EK: Yeah, we’ll get to that! (laughter)
BR: Now I don’t mean to be a wise guy here, but –
EK: (very serious) Okay.
BR: The next song, “Taxman”, is in the same key as “Drive My Car”, right?
EK: (laughing) Yeah, it is actually.
BR: Because I can see one jamming into the other …
EK: Absolutely – we’ve played them live that way.
BR: That’s another one where Neal drives home the melody – but then you do an interesting thing on your break later in the song where you modulate up and then back down to the original key.
EK: That’s neat you pointed that out. We were in the middle of recording “Taxman” and I thought, “You know, it might be really cool if we shifted this up.” It was just something we threw in to change it up and give the drums a cool little break to hit.
BR: Then we have “In My Life”. That’s one of those songs that you really don’t want to mess with a whole lot, isn’t it?
EK: That one could be my favorite, actually. I love playing that song live – the melody is just so strong.
“In My Life” is one of those Beatles tunes where you say, “Okay: compositionally, melodically, and harmonically, this is one of the greatest songs ever written.” Plus, you can read the lyrics without the music and they’re amazing all by themselves, too.
BR: It’s great poetry.
EK: It is – it really is. So that’s just one of the best songs ever. There are so many great Beatles tunes, but I just had to do that one: “Please, can we do ‘My Life’?” (laughs)
BR: Total sweetness – including that baroque-flavored organ break.
EK: Oh, listen – we learned so many interesting things while we were doing the album, because we were researching how they got all the sounds and how they were recording it, okay? And one of the things we learned was that George Martin played that keyboard line on the original and it was recorded at half speed.
BR: Their producer, George Martin?
EK: That’s what Neal told me.
BR: Oh well, then – if it’s wrong –
EK: We’ll blame it on Neal. (laughter) But, yeah, they slowed the tape halfway down, recorded it, and then sped it back up to regular speed. If you listen to the original, there’s a little part right at the very end (sings “diddleladiddleladum”) which is almost impossible to play live.
So on our version, you hear Neal not only playing that part with his right hand, but laying down the bass line at the same time with his left. I mean, I was watching him practice it for ten minutes before we recorded it and I was saying “It’s not possible – he can’t do it.” But he pulled it off, man – he killed it.
BR: Cool – great story. Let’s see here … next up is “Eleanor Rigby”, which feels like one of the riskier cuts on the album.
EK: Yeah, absolutely.
BR: Alan has that powerhouse start/stop drum thing going on that’s just totally challenging the melody line.
EK: It’s true – it’s true. And when we play it live, I’ve got Alan on one side of me going absolutely nuts and Neal on the other side doing the same – and the melody is just holding everything together by a string. (laughs)
BR: And then you do that wild-ass break at the end, with the only point of reference being Neal’s descending chords in the background … somebody’s always holding down the fort, but it’s right on the verge of going out into space at any moment.
EK: And when we play it live it does go out there. (laughs) I think of all the songs on the album, that’s the one that has morphed the most live – it’s like a whole beast on its own.
BR: When did you actually lay down these tracks in Alan’s studio? I’m wondering how long since then that things have had a chance to “morph.”
EK: It was almost a year ago now – last fall, actually. So we’ve been playing this stuff live since then … some of those tunes have become staples in our sets. Like “Eleanor Rigby” – we don’t play it every night, but I want to. (laughs) That one and “I Want You” are the ones I have the most fun playing.
BR: Nice segue into the next question, man. (laughter) You really nail that bite that George Harrison had going on “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” when he’s echoing the vocal with his guitar. Was that one of those things that you worked on?
EK: Yeah – that tune and its parts have such a classic sound that’s so crucial … I love what they did and wanted to play pretty close to what was there while putting my own vibe on it, too.
BR: Which you do – your wah pedal solo at the end is just elegant.
EK: Oh, thanks, man – thanks.
BR: “She’s So Heavy” also features the only human voices on the album – the off-mike choruses.
EK: Yeah, that was at the end of the thing when we decided, “We should just do it.” The three of us just put a mic in the middle of the room and went for it. Just kind of a last-minute add-on.
BR: You pull off another great wah solo on “Come Together”, but it’s a totally different feel and tone from what you do on “She’s So Heavy”. To my ears, the earlier one sounds like “Presence of the Lord”-style Clapton, while “Come Together” comes off more like a Jeff Beck-flavored workout.
EK: You know, I wasn’t thinking about it that specifically, but I’ve listened to so much of both of those guys and they’re influences, for real. I can’t always pinpoint it, but it’s there. It’s cool that you’re hearing the difference in the two breaks.
BR: As far as your arrangement of “Come Together” goes, you guys stay pretty close to the original pulse.
EK: We kept it pretty true. That’s an example of us saying, “Okay – how would we play this melody? How would we play this groove?” Pretty much our interpretation of their arrangement.
BR: The keyboard break at the end is another great example of Neal: his left hand is working that constant, slamming, pounding bass line – while his right hand is going absolutely ape, ripping off that crazy-ass solo … it’s like two different people.
EK: (laughs) I know!
BR: And it’s all happening live, right?
EK: Absolutely. I’ve been watching him do that kind of stuff for 12 years or whatever and I can tell you, man – it never gets old. I still freak out about it. (laughter) I know where it’s coming from, but I don’t understand how it’s happening … I really don’t. Both he and Alan are just amazing players.
BR: Well, you all are, to pull off what you do with just the three of you.
EK: Thanks, man.
BR: “Something” is another one of those tunes that’s just too sweet to mess with, isn’t it?
EK: You know, I keep saying this, but … (laughs) That’s another one of my favorite tunes, you know?
BR: Yeah, well, you and the rest of the world. (laughter)
EK: And it’s such a strong melody – such a crucial melody – that you don’t want to mess with it too much.
BR: And then there’s “Revolution”, where you’ve got the melody line going up against Neal’s big ol’ walloping chords on the keys.
EK: Exactly. And we went double-time with the beat on that one, as well. It was kind of funny: Neal just started playing that groove and we suddenly realized that “Revolution” worked with it. It was one of those times when we get to the studio in the morning and we just play; Neal just started playing and Al was bringing that beat – that’s one of his favorite beats to play – and I started doing the slow “dut-dut-dut-da-dut-da” over top of that and realized that it worked that way. The original was like a shuffle – we made it into a breakbeat kind of thing.
BR: That one takes you by surprise – for the first few moments, it’s not obvious what’s happening.
EK: That’s such a fun song to play live – people don’t realize what’s going on until you start playing the melody. Until then, they’re going, “What is this?”
BR: Now that you’ve “sung” “Help!” on the guitar, does it change how you hear the original?
EK: Definitely. That was one of the ones that we just tweaked the melody slightly to fit into our groove and it dropped right into the pocket.
BR: Made it a Soulive tune.
EK: Right, right.
BR: I think you could say that about the whole album – it sounds like Soulive, but you guys never lose your grip on the songs themselves. Even when you let it get a little wild, you remain true to the heart of the tunes.
EK: That was important to us – making sure that the tune was intact. We’re all huge Beatles fans; we came from that place and we wanted to respect them while putting our own take on things at the same time. They’re great songs, you know?
*BR: Absolutely. Take “Day Tripper”, for instance: the original is driven by that classic guitar riff – and you’re there on this version – but it’s that monster bass in the foreground that drives the thing. *
EK: It’s great. (laughs) It’s not what you’re expecting.
BR: Exactly. The guitar doesn’t really step up until later in the song when you let loose on the solo.
EK: That was definitely one where I felt like taking it out there a little bit. A cool thing about the record is we didn’t overdub very much at all. There were a couple of solos that I wanted to do again, but I didn’t. There are a couple times when I added a harmony part; gave something a little extra flavor. Other than that, we wanted it to be as live as possible. If we’d overproduced the thing, it wouldn’t have sounded like us. Part of what makes us us is that energy among the three of us in a live setting … the interaction. So whenever I’d say, “Oh, I didn’t hit that one note,” it would be Al who’d say, “It’s cool, it’s cool – don’t change it.”
It’s meant to sound like you’ve walked into a bar and there’s an organ trio playing Beatles songs, doing the best they can. (laughs)
BR: “She’s So Heavy” would’ve been the natural – almost clichéd – closing track, but you guys chose “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, which works really well.
EK: Really cool chord progression, great melody – another one that’s fun to play live and go out on for a while.
*BR: The jam on the album sounds like it could still be going on now … * (laughter)
EK: That arrangement had a great groove to it. We went back and forth with the beat from a double-time to more of a half-time thing and it worked.
BR: How did you guys choose the sequence of the tracks on the album – was “Guitar Gently Weeps” one of the last things you did?
EK: It really was pretty much in the order that we recorded things. A few songs got switched around, but we didn’t mess around with it a lot. I think the order pretty much matched up with the Halloween shows we did.
BR: Cool. So, looking ahead, what’s coming up for Soulive?
EK: Well, we’re getting ready to do a big tour this fall –
BR: A good chance for folks to hear some of these Beatles tunes jammed out …
EK: Exactly – we’re not locking in to the three-minute thing when we’re live. (laughter) Plus, we’ve got new stuff coming out on our Royal Family Records label. We’ve been working on Nigel Hall’s new album – did you know he’s got roots up your way, up in Maine?
BR: No, I didn’t. I’ll have to check him out.
EK: Absolutely. So we’ve got Nigel’s album on the way and Neal’s got a solo album coming out in the next few months, as well.
BR: And how about your own world outside of Soulive? You keep pretty busy.
EK: I try. (laughs) My solo album, Reminisce, came out back in April, so we’re working on getting that out there. I just finished a little tour with Chapter 2, where we did a bunch of my material and a bunch of Nigel’s. And Lettuce is going to be doing a record in the next few months. The whole Royal Family has got a lot going on. (laughs)
