Set up by okayplayer.com, writer M. Steve Hammer talked to Soulive the day before their new LP became the first in decades to be released on Stax Records.

After eight years as one of the funkiest trios in music modern, Soulive has reemerged, vocalist in tow, as a four man crew ready to carry a torch that has been all but extinguished. "No Place Like Soul," the group's 6th studio LP, is the first new album to be released by Stax Records since the iconic label folded in 1975. On the eve of this record's debut, I spoke with drummer Alan Evans and singer Toussaint about their new label, life as a quartet, the recording process, and all the other basics. You know, like the influence of J Dilla, the perils of the internet, the ghost of Otis Redding, and why Wu-Tang needs to cut the bickering.

OKAYPLAYER: Let me ask man, Stax Records, how did that all come about?

ALAN EVANS: Well the parent label that we're with, Concord, who put out "Breakout," our last album, a few years ago they purchased all the rights, you know, the whole Stax catalog. And at first it looked like they were just gonna be reprinting old Stax albums, and then they decided to actually re-launch the label [and sign] new artists to put out under the Stax label. We just happened to be first in line. So yeah it was a pretty simple happening, but definitely, I'm psyched about it.

OKP: Congratulations.

ALAN: Oh, thanks man.

OKP: So how does it feel to not only to be on such a legendary label but to be the debut for the re-launch?

ALAN: Man for me it's- I can't even describe it. I guess I can start to TRY to describe it when I discuss how we went to Memphis, man. We went down there and they did like a revue with all the old school artists and the new school artists: Lalah Hathaway, N'Dambi, and some other people and us. And nobody knew who we were, it was so funny. Isaac Hayes was there. Mavis Staples was there. Eddie Floyd- and it was completely -- unbelievable. We got to see all them perform, and then we preformed. We had William Bell coming up to us saying "Boy ya'll bad!!" and I was like, dude are you for real?! So it's beautiful to be able to carry on, to pick up the torch and carry it and continue bringing real music.

OKP: That's crazy. When you look back on the classic Stax catalog, if you had to pick one artist or one album, which are you most humbled by to now be label mates with?

ALAN & TOUSSAINT: (Coincidentally answering in unison) Otis Redding.

ALAN: (cracking up) No doubt!

TOUSSAINT: He's literally, I mean, he's the man! He was 26 when he left this earth. 26 years old!! And look at the work that he did. He sounded like he was like, man he sounded seasoned. (laughs) He sounded like a vet, and he was 26, man. When we went to the Stax museum, I physically saw him. I saw him standing outside of the place having a cigarette. I lost my mind! I was like ‘what?' So I walked into the place man, we went there to take pictures for the cover of the record, and I actually, I physically saw him standing there smoking a cigarette.

OKP: Whoa, that's crazy. So Toussaint, how did you guys link up? Were you just kind of chosen as the singer, and was it an instant partnership, or...

TOUSSAINT: I've kind of known these guys for a while. My current manager introduced me to Kras (Soulive guitarist Eric Krasno) about four years ago, and me and Kras immediately made two tracks and we had good rapport. Then years passed by and Alan actually was playing drums with Sam Kininger in my own town at the time. I was living in North Hampton, Mass and I came to sit in and we had a magical night. It had been like 8 months since I had performed, ‘cause I took some time off - my daughter was born and I took some time off. I played with them and he called me a week later from Colorado asking me if I wanted to come out with Soulive, and I was like ‘Word! Up!'  and that's how it happened, man. We started. I went out in August of last year, toured like 10 dates and we good chemistry. We went into the studio and we had an album done by Christmas.

OKP: So were you in on the recording sessions for "No Place Like Soul" right from the get go, or did you come along a little [further] into the process?

ALAN: Nah, we had, I think maybe one meeting with our producer at the studio. Yeah I'd say we got together one time before Tous came down. And that was just, you know-- So yeah he was there from the very beginning.

OKP: Yeah that's kind of how Krasno got down, like one session late or whatever, right?

ALAN: (Laughing) Yeah, pretty much exactly.

OKP: So how long were you in the studio for this record?

ALAN: We basically started some where around July of last year, and I think I remember we were finished when we were on that John Mayer run, right dude?

TOUSSAINT: Yeah we got done in December.

ALAN: Right.

TOUSSAINT: It was right before Christmas

ALAN: Yup.

OKP: Is that different from [how long] your past records [have taken], or is that kind of keeping in stride?

ALAN: I mean most of our albums have always been real fast, and then "Breakout" was probably the longest just because we never set out to make an album. It was kind of like a compilation of tunes that we had recorded from the time we left Blue Note to basically the time when we signed with Concord. So that was like three years of material that we kinda put together for "Breakout." So that was definitely the longest, but I think "No Place Like Soul" was definitely the longest period of time where we actually were focused on, you know, all we were doing was making that album.

TOUSSAINT: And I think we've had a pretty cohesive thing because of it.

ALAN: Right.

TOUSSAINT: It's just really- it works, you know, it works. It's a beautiful thing.

OKP: I haven't heard the album yet, but it sounds like it's quite a departure. Did that account for it taking a little longer? Was it tough figuring out was the new sound was?

ALAN: You know, it's kind of funny man. I've just been starting to think about this stuff lately, but we've been doing these interviews and people are saying ‘oh, it's a departure' and this and that, but to me it's just another album. I'm not saying that in the negative way or anything, ‘cause I love this album, but none of our albums have ever been exactly the same. From the beginning, just how we are as artists, we don't want, and we've never wanted any of our albums to be the same. So, I mean, it's definitely different, [but] I think it's our best album, PERIOD. And we took our time, you know, we definitely took our time, and we crafted it. There are a lot of good songs, and the production is really good. There's just something about people saying ‘oh a departure' or this and that, that just kind of-- I mean, it's cool, people are gonna say whatever they want to say, but I just never liked being pinned down, and I don't think many artists like being pinned down, to ‘this is what Soulive is,' or ‘this is what so and so is.' But we gotta keep it moving, constantly.

OKP: Definitely, what's the point being stagnant.

ALAN: Yeah, but I'm really proud of it though.

OKP: Is it just the four of your guys? Do you have any guests? What can I expect?

ALAN: Nah, it's just the four of us. There was a lot of thought put into this album, and one major thing was that we wanted to do it as a band. In the past we've had ‘oh so and so' on this track, ‘so and so' on this track, and these cats backing up that tune. [But] we wanted straight focus on this album. That's why Tous is on the album. We knew that we wanted to do a vocal album; that's what we were all writing and feeling outside of Soulive, and yeah we just wanted to approach it like a band and not like just having us featuring a bunch of guest artists.

OKP: So now that your lyrics are your own, you know, it's a band member [singing], not a guest appearance. Did you feel any pressure, one way or another, when it comes to using your music as a platform to speak out? Does it seem like [you have] more of a responsibility or anything like that? ...Was that an issue?

ALAN: I'll start to answer this now and I'll let Tous definitely finish. The thing with us is it's always about quality. And also from the very beginnings of Soulive - I write tunes, Neal writes tunes, and Eric writes tunes. When we all bring them to the table, it's never a situation where I'm like ‘hey Eric, play the guitar part exactly how I wrote it' or ‘Neal, you play this.' Everybody has to throw their thing as individuals into the pot and that's where the music becomes alive, that's where it becomes a Soulive tune. So it's the same thing with Tous. When he came in, we weren't like: ‘I wrote this music here, but I'm thinking it should be these kinda lyrics on this thing.' Like literally, at least on my part, I can just speak for myself, but [with] the tunes I gave Tous, I was just saying: ‘hey, there you go. Do your thing. Say what you want.' And I never even said that, it was just unspoken. I was just like ‘here you go here's a tune.' And then there you go. There's a lot of trust there. I just knew that Tous - we all knew that Tous was gonna do what he does best.

OKP: Toussaint, what's it been like moving from sort of a reggae background, has that been--

TOUSSAINT: Yeah, you've done some research, huh? (laughing) Yeah, that's cool man. I kind of came into my own in Boston cutting my teeth with the reggae. I started with a hip hop group called Red Pill, and I would chant and rap and do all these different things, [but] that group fell apart. Then I was like, pretty much the reggae whore for a long time. (laughs) For every band that was a reggae band, I sang in front of, and that can be verified by any reggae player in Boston. (laughing)

ALAN: (laughing)

TOUSSAINT: (still laughing.) So I went and played all those [reggae] songs, and started really getting my song writing [going] and getting [out] the things that I wanted to get out. Reggae is a real good place for a spirit like mine that wants to be political at all times, (both laughing) and wants to be bringing fire all the time. It's beautiful because the thing about coming into [Soulive] was that I've always had a love for [soul music.] I grew up singing gospel and I grew up listening to, of course, all the soul greats. I couldn't listen to hip hop in my house ‘cause my dad's a minister and I had to sneak my records in. But I always wanted to make soul music. I've always wanted to write songs like the ones were we able to craft for this record, so I just saw it as a golden opportunity and I really stopped everything. I had [already] stopped singing for a while because my daughter was born and I was just daddy daycare. I stopped performing. I was turning down gigs. So when [Alan] called me for this, it was a big life decision. I had to rearrange everything. I just homed in on it. He gave me the music, and I would just sit for hours and hours and hours and just listen to the tunes, and then ‘bam!' they hit me. One after the other, they came and we knocked it out.

OKP: Alan I read in a different interview that you said this isn't like ‘Soulive featuring this guest singer' - that you guys are in some ways a new band. Can you speak to that at all, to this quartet?

ALAN: Yeah, well it's powerful man. For a long time, a lot of the reason why Soulive has been like a guest kind of situation is- I think subconsciously, we've been looking for [a singer]. I think Reggie (Reggie Watts of Maktub) was probably the closest thing that we had at that time to having someone in the band. But the thing was that, Reggie's a great singer, but we just didn't share a lot of the same experiences and influences that made us who we are now. So that was a little stumbling block for us a lot of times - like writing, recording, and whatever, (pauses) performing. The thing is, a lot of [us wanting to add a singer] was based on our experiences on "Breakout." I mean we had Chaka Khan on that album; we had Corey Glover, Ivan Neville. Reggie was on the album. So okay, cool, we've got all these tunes. Comes time to go on a tour, or you've got the publicist, or the record label and management trying to get you on TV shows and do all that kind of stuff; or just in general just at the shows you got tunes - people come up and be like ‘man I really dig that tune with Chaka' or with Corey or whoever. ‘Well... they're not here... because they're not in the band.' So we were limited as to what we could perform, and that's the thing. We felt that we had some good tunes but we couldn't perform them, and the last thing you want to feel as an artist is limited as to what you can do. So a lot of the reason behind really doing this as a band is so we can grow not just cut some tunes and then: ‘Okay, that was cool.' ‘That was great.' ‘Uh, what's- what's next?'

A lot of the tunes that we've been doing from the new album live are just so different from when we started playing them live, and a lot different than what's recorded, but the thing is we're having a lot of fun doing it. There's just a certain strength that I think a band has over cats who just have these guest appearances and compilation type albums. So yeah we're just having a lot of fun with it

OKP: That's great, and to kind of to speak to that, I just got back this morning from New York from the Rock the Bells festival, where I got to see Wu-Tang and Public Enemy. These are groups that have had a long history of in-fighting and not getting along. After eight years as Soulive, and Alan, with you and Neal having spent a lifetime together, how do you guys keep the dynamic where it needs to be?

ALAN: (slow to respond) I guess when you don't even have to think about stuff like that, that's probably good. That's literally just not even a part of my --- (starting over) Thinking about that, that's a hard question to answer because there's never a situation that comes up where that has to be addressed. So, that's really good. We just, I don't know, we just do what we do. And of course we have disagreements, arguments, or whatever, but I mean--

TOUSSAINT: I mean, everybody has the same goal.

ALAN: RIGHT!

TOUSSAINT: Everybody wants to make music, and do it for a living, and bring the message- everybody has different reasons- and for me I want to make music to uplift people, and I know that most of these guys want to do the same thing.

ALAN: Uh-huh!

TOUSSAINT: We all want to make music, so whatever it takes to do that, we're gonna do it. If anything, we've learned lessons from those that have come before us. You see that half the time you're fighting over bullshit and the music is much greater than that anyway.

The number of people that were affected just from the time that the Wu-Tang Clan and Public Enemy were all doing their damn thing: are you KIDDING ME? That's the foundation! Half of the shit that we hear in rap we wouldn't even know about - wouldn't even know how to deal with [without them]. When you think about that, you think about how could they let [fighting over bullshit] stop what they were doing?

OKP: Speaking of hip hop, and since this interview is for okayplayer... For those that don't know, can you give me a quick run down of some of the hip hop artists you've collaborated with?  

ALAN: Damn. (thinking where to start) Man we've done stuff with Black Thought, Talib, Hi Tek, and man there's probably-

TOUSSAINT: Breez Evahflowin.

OKP: Nice.

ALAN: Breez, yeah that's right! Yeah, this cat Shuman...

OKP: Out of Boston, right?

ALAN: Yeah he did our first remix actually for us back in the day. Yeah, that guy kinda got that ball rolling. Yeah, those are the ones I can just name off real quick.

OKP: You know, I saw on Krasno's myspace page that he had a track called "Song for Dilla." I don't know if he was impacted more or what, but can you guys speak to that at all. Was Dilla an influence on you either as fans, or as a band?

ALAN: Dilla had a huuuge influence on us as a band, I'll tell you that, man! ...and as me individually. That cat, (speechless) I don't even understand--
 
TOUSSAINT: (interrupting) That guy changed music, man- really- honestly. It's funny, but there was one dude in my home town - he was the only dread, you know what I'm saying? (laughing) And he was like 2 years above me; he was a senior, I was a sophomore. He had come out from New York and he always had all the banging East Coast mixes and everything, and he's the one that brought Slum Village to me, and I was just: ‘WHAT!!!!' - I LOST my mind dude! And hey man, I didn't discover until later that Dilla was all over everything else, (pauses) because I was in rinky-dink Indiana.

ALAN: Dilla, man, he's one of the rare cats that, and people are going to know about this years from now because that's the way things go -unfortunately he passed away and everything- but he transcended hip hop. That dude is going to be a huge-- So many people don't even know that they've been influenced by him, that's how heavy that cat was. He's beyond ‘hip hop producer' or whatever. He's just a sick artist that's going to have a profound effect on the way that people make music, period. Doesn't matter if it's hip hop, or rock, or whatever, people who don't even know who he is are going be affected, be influenced by him. That's (pauses), that's incredible. And not many people have that kind of effect on music.

OKP: Yeah seriously, and I'm curious to hear your take, as a drummer, on his programming.

ALAN: I mean dude, that cat (speechless, starts laughing). As a drummer he just makes you look at what you're playing and say: ‘well you know, I need to do THAT.' You know what I'm saying? Like, ‘I can approach drums that way.' But beyond that, man, beyond drums, his bass lines, everything that he put together, ANY musician can grab something from him.

TOUSSAINT: He was a genius.

ALAN: I mean, he was INCREDIBLE. Incredible.

OKP: Yeah... so getting back to the new album, you guys are known for your touring; I imagine you're touring in support. Is it the four of you on the road right now? What's the line up like for people who are looking forward to seeing you live?

ALAN: Yeah man, that's it. It's just the four of us. Straight up. That's all it needs to be.

OKP: Nice, nice. Well I'll ask you one more question, and let you guys get going. I see you all have myspace pages, and with the decline of record sales across the industry, in your opinion, does the internet outweigh the damage done by downloading?

ALAN: (After literally 40 seconds of thinking.) The internet is a great tool. It's been, and it's going to be, a great learning tool for a lot of people. Just this morning I was listening to this interview on Here & Now - something Neal and I did for Public Radio International. Right before our little segment, there were these cats out of Boston, who started this nonprofit organization called something like [One Laptop per Child]. (Note: visit laptop.org for more info.) Any way, these cats are developing these laptop computers for kids. These laptops are gonna cost $175 dollars and they're fully wireless, cameras, all this kinda crazy stuff. These dudes are going around the world to Africa, South America, Asia, and trying to get all these governments on board to buy the laptops for all the children in their countries. Then they have these kids who have the beta versions of these computers, like in Nigeria and Brazil. All this great stuff... came out of the internet age. You know, it's easy for a lot of cats to sit back in our industry and... complain about: ‘ah man, you know people are downloading our music, and its making it harder for me to make a living,' or ‘the record labels are falling apart because of it.' And whatever, that's cool, but in the end man, the internet's not killing the music industry. A lot of it is just the artists themselves killing the music industry by putting out WACK music.

TOUSSAINT: Yoooo!!! (too much laughing to understand anything else.)

ALAN: There's always been cats pointing the finger... Man, cats just need to shut up, and just let the internet do its thing. The internet's been good to me.

TOUSSAINT: If anything, it's bringing justice to the record industry that's been messed up for years and years.

ALAN: (Screeches in laughter) THERE YOU GO!! THERE YOU GO!

TOUSSAINT: All these record labels have been giving artists point three... point ZERO three, percent of their sales for too long.

ALAN: RIGHT! RIGHT!

TOUSSAINT: Of course, it's harder for an artist to be as big as 50 Cent. I read an article, 50 Cent was like ‘if it keeps going how it is, there will never be another 50 cent.' That may be true, but there's gonna be more opportunity for a lot of different artists to be heard that aren't just conforming to what radio wants to hear.

ALAN: Right exactly.

TOUSSAINT: But now it's just figuring out how to use it to our advantage more and more.

ALAN: Um-hmm!

TOUSSAINT: I think that it's helping certain things. A lot of artists are doing better on the road because of their stuff is getting out on the internet more. But it's obviously not helping record sales. 

ALAN: The thing is, there's a lot of people out there who are writing and recording great tunes, great music, who NEVER would have had success, never would have had the chance, EVER, period. But now since the internet, they throw themselves up on myspace, on youtube, and bam! they're having an effect on things, which is great.
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Many thanks to Soulive and remember to support good music: "No Place Like Soul" is in record stores now.

- M. Steve Hammer

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