event Soulive: The Art Of Being A Band On Stage And Off The Stage

Not long ago, funk trio Soulive would get onstage and kill: The structural foundations of the venue would be compromised by the band’s heaviness. Then came the inevitable and always sketchy descent into guest vocalists and radio aspirations, with the band’s dirty, mean funk playing second fiddle to a mature, overproduced R&B sound. The heaviest watering-down came in 2007, when Soulive became a quartet with the addition of generic vocalist Toussaint Yeshua on the Stax-released album No Place Like Soul. Fortunately, the band recaptured some of its swagger on both 2009’s Up Here, thanks to the brass balls of horn section The Shady Horns and energetic soul singer Nigel Hall, and Rubber Soulive, an album of the band’s newish takes on classic Beatles tracks. 

Not long ago, funk trio Soulive would get onstage and kill: The structural foundations of the venue would be compromised by the band’s heaviness. Then came the inevitable and always sketchy descent into guest vocalists and radio aspirations, with the band’s dirty, mean funk playing second fiddle to a mature, overproduced R&B sound. The heaviest watering-down came in 2007, when Soulive became a quartet with the addition of generic vocalist Toussaint Yeshua on the Stax-released album No Place Like Soul. Fortunately, the band recaptured some of its swagger on both 2009’s Up Here, thanks to the brass balls of horn section The Shady Horns and energetic soul singer Nigel Hall, and Rubber Soulive, an album of the band’s newish takes on classic Beatles tracks.