11/01/12 The Royal Family Ball featuring Soulive & Lettuce

The Royal Family is the evolution of the Soulive story and all its many chapters. It’s a community and movement of musicians and fans that have been growing together for over a decade.

Soulive is all about danceable, organ-driven instrumental groove-jazz. Their success is a result of fusing the soul-jazz of the past with a modern hip-hop feel. Krasno’s spidery yet very direct guitar lines recall Grant Green. The rhythmic concepts employed date back to those learned from artists such as James Brown, Stevie Wonder, and Sly Stone. Though originally from Vermont, Soulive is essentially Boston-based as well. The band toured with and opened for a number of notables (including John Scofield, Maceo Parker, Los Lobos, Derek Trucks, and Robben Ford) before headlining their own shows and releasing their introductory EP, Get Down, in 1999. Their debut full-length release, Turn It Out, followed the next year. Doin’ Something, featuring John Scofield, was issued in March 2001.

Lettuce is widely referred to in the jam and funk circles as the funkiest band alive. The all-star band of Berklee College Of Music graduates was formed in the late ‘90s as a pure-funk emergence was being felt through the jam band scene. Now fully bonded over a shared passion for the true funk roots – The Meters, Sly Stone, P Funk and James Brown – Lettuce brings a refined approach to the funk, not overly relying on too much guitar shredding or trading solos.