The year: 2004
This writer: A baby-faced 19-year-old with a microcassette recorder, ready to do my biggest in-person interview to date with G. Love at the now-closed Tower City Amphitheater after his set (opening for Jack Johnson).
The result: A perplexed tour manager taking one look at me (and microcassette recorder) and quickly swinging the backstage gate closed.
Fast forward 22 years….I’ve got G. Love on my interview hotline. (Take that, Mr. Meany-facedTour Manager!)
G. Love (real name: Garrett Dutton) is scheduled to perform in Kent, Ohio this coming Saturday, January 17! He’s on the road celebrating the 20th anniversary of his signature album, ‘Lemonade,’ as well as playing tunes from his most recent release, ‘Ode to R.L.,’ a collaborative album in honor of the late Hill Country Blues legend, R.L. Boyce.
Dutton spent 27 minutes on the phone, dishing about his current trek, his upcoming show in Kent, professional relationship with Jack Johnson, his new album, some funny stories from the recording sessions of ‘Lemonade,’ his “Pre-show pop off” VIP experiences, and how Jason Mraz stole his girlfriend.
RIP, R.L.
For someone who has dedicated the past 20 years to covering music, this interviewer tends to lean more towards ignorance than expert. When preparing for chat with G. Love, I saw the name R.L. Boyce for the first time. The man is a blues legend. (My bad!)
Way back in 2025 (I remember it like it was two weeks ago), Dutton released his most recent album, ‘Ode to R,L,’ a salute to the legacy of Mr. Boyce, who joined Heaven’s house band in 2023. After a wild post-COVID jam night, the two recorded some music. Boyce is featured on his own tribute album. Pretty damn cool.
“During COVID, our first gig took us to Jackson, Mississippi, and I reached out to Luther Dickinson from the North Mississippi All Stars, whose father produced my second record. A lot of great people came through, including R.L Boyce. It was just a really amazing night of music for me,” Dutton recalls. “We cut R.L. on a couple songs for the record, and then we ended up playing a whole set. He was playing his set and I was playing the harmonica. It was just an epic night, man!“
So many good stories start with consumable mind altering vices:
“We drank a bunch of whiskey and smoked a blunt. It was just the coolest night to get to play blues with this old timer.” he continued. “It was the real deal for me, a student of the blues, to get to share a full night of just jamming with this guy, this legend, was about the coolest musical thing that ever happened to me. He was so fun to be around and his music speaks for itself. We tried to piece together a live record, and with the whiskey, it was not really feeling like an option.”
Boyce never got to hear the final product.
“It was a bummer, because during that time, R.L. had passed away, and so there was a real kind of poignant sense to finish the record,” Dutton said. “It was a really pure process, because we just started making it. It just kind of made itself, and in the sense that we had no expectation that we were making a record, we ended up making a record. In that sense, it was a purely creative endeavor, which I am especially fond of the way that it came together. I think he would dig it, man. When he came in and cut on the songs, especially this one called ‘Mississippi,’ he crushed it. He just had a real sense of it and he freestyled his lyrics. I think he would have really dug this record, man. And you know, like I can’t say that I knew him very well. I could just say that we shared this epic jam night At the end of that night we had a moment we exchanged hats when I was wasted. “
“I like cold beverages.”
While Dutton is performing two or three songs from ‘Ode to R.L.’ each night on his current tour, the main focus is celebrating the 20th anniversary of ‘Lemonade,’ his most commercially successful album, which dropped in 2006 (after he was dropped from his record label).
Any album that is strong enough to hit the two-decade milestone and draw interest from fans to come see a tour celebrating those songs is beyond impressive. ‘Lemonade’ featured many collaborations (with some of this interviewer’s favorite artists) and did well with that support of FM radio (which reigned supreme at the time) nor the backing of a major label.
Dutton was asked if he had any idea that this record would, in fact, stand the test of time?
“No,” he answered. “It was an interesting record, because the previous record, ‘The Hustle’, was the one that I thought was going to be life changing. It sold 150,000 or 200,000 copies, but we got dropped from Universal, so that was a real hard pill to swallow for me, emotionally. I went from thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to buy a new house’ to getting dropped. We started making the ‘Lemonade’ record, and, I don’t know, man, it ended up being a very collaborative record, and when we finished it, I had a sense of being like, ‘Well, this is cool!’ It wasn’t like ‘The Hustle’ where I thought, ‘This is going to be it!’ But fuck, dude, that record dropped and it went to #2 on iTunes, and it was my only record to ever crack the Top 40. It went to number #39 on the Billboard top 200. I made it, bro. Tell Casey Kasem, ‘G. Love is back!’”
“My biggest song, according to Spotify, is ‘Rainbow’ from ‘Lemonade,’ which I get to thank Jack {Johnson] for. Not only is he the featured artist on that track, but that was just a little ditty for me. I never probably would have put it on the record if Jack wasn’t so adamant about him really loving that track and that we put it on his ‘Thicker than Water’ surf film soundtrack, and it was a single from that. And then I said, ‘Well, shit, man, let me cut it for my record.’ And, it’s my number one song. You never know what’s going to connect and hang around.”
Teamwork makes the dream work
‘Lemonade’ is G. Love’s record, but he had a little (err…a lot) of help from his friends. When your circle of friends consists of huge talents like Jack Johnson, Marc Broussard, Ben Harper, and Tristan Prettyman, why the hell not?
I’ve had the privilege of interviewing countless rockstars and comedians. Most, when pressed for a good behind the stories, return blank stares and boring answers. Not G. Love!
“Well, yeah, that album in particular was wild,” he said excitedly.
“Ben Harper and I have been crossing paths since we first dropped in 1994. We had done some touring and we had a kind of a weird relationship, and so I never knew really what to make of that, but you never know with Ben, because we reached out to him, and he happened to be in Atlantic City doing a show with Bonnie Raitt,” Dutton said. “Well, he fucking came from Atlantic City to Philadelphia, which is like an hour, and brought a whole fucking truckload of fucking gear to our studio, and just like came in and wrote a song. He brought in all these amps. The sound of his slide guitar was through one of those little beer can amplifiers, if you know what I’m talking about? Ben wrote this amazing verse on the spot and of course he sang it and it was just like, ‘Holy shit, that was dope!’ He was very gracious to come in and just crushed it. He’s fucking Ben Harper!“
The track he speaks of is “Let the Music Play.” Harper isn’t the only talent featured on that song. Marc Broussard, who possesses one of the greatest voices in the biz, also contributed vocals!
“Marc came by the studio and he was wasted! He saw we had a bottle of tequila, so he started drinking more tequila and then the producer gave him a big bong hit and he was lit, bro,” Dutton said with a laugh. “I go to Marc, I was like, ‘Marc, man, you cool? You going to be able to do this? ”
He looked at me, he goes, ‘What you think, man? You think I came in here to suck?’
And bro, he went into the vocal booth and again, remember, Ben Harper’s already on this track, who’s arguably one of the greatest vocalists and guitar players of a generation. Marc came in the fucking vocal booth and I was fucking floored. He started singing and it was unfucking believable. You hear it on the record. So the track went from like zero to hero with those two guys on it and two of my favorite vocalists and just two profound artists on the same track. It was just a stunning performance out of both those guys.”
G. Love’s musical talent might be surpassed by his talent of corrupting a wholesome, Christian man like Broussard. I couldn’t help but chuckle on the other end of the phone line, trying to hold it in as to not drown out Dutton’s voice and miss quotes for this story.
THAT TIME THAT JASON MRAZ STOLE G. LOVE’S GIRLFRIEND
“I got another fun story,” Dutton exclaimed. “Tristan Prettyman had come on the road with us and everyone was saying, ‘Oh, she’s the female version of Jack Johnson.’ She’s like a surfer girl. She showed up at the gig at the Newport Music Hall in Columbus, Ohio and everybody was like Roger Rabbit the first time they saw Jessica Rabbit. I mean, she was gorgeous! Her and I just kind of fell for each other quickly. I think it might have even been that first night. She had this riff and this verse for that song ‘Beautiful,’ then we just wrote that song right away and we kind of really kind of fell for each other, had this thing, then the tour was over and she went home and I went home, and I had a kid at the time, and it just wasn’t a time for us to kind of continue the relationship, but she did sign to my management company and got a record deal for Virgin Records. She got a big deal. So then we said, ‘Well, hey man, let’s put that song on the record.’
There was one hiccup with going back into the studio together.
She said, ‘Hey, G,, I’m going out with Jason Mraz right now. I can’t sing that song.’ I remember that,” he said. “We were like, ‘What the fuck? It’s just a song.’ So we kind of leaned on her and then eventually she said, ‘Okay.’ I came out to San Diego to do the track and I come into the studio, I walk in the cutting room and Tristan’s there, a big hug and I feel like someone’s watching us. I look in the control room, and there’s Jason Mraz, sitting there, wearing my hat. He was there chaperoning us and so we didn’t really get the take. It didn’t go on her record. I always felt so strong about the track. When it was time to make ‘Lemonade,’ I asked Tristan to come to Philly, and she did. I had my girlfriend stay at home. We got the track, and good thing we did, because that ended up being like the hit single off that record, as far as a radio single.”
Mraz not only took G. Love’s girlfriend; he took his hat! Boycott time.
Pre-show Pop Off
I’ve been fortunate enough to attend many VIP meet & greets and soundchecks at concerts. Most of them remind me of Disney World. No, not in a magical sense. More like meeting Mickey Mouse…Stand in line, wait anxiously, say ‘hello’ and get verbal response, snap a quick photo, and quickly get whisked away so the person behind me can get their photo. G. Love takes a different approach!
“I’ve been doing this for about 10 years. It’s so much fun! It’s a happy hour kind of all-request hang,” he explains. “I mean, it’s the best! I’m just going to say, because I see what a lot of my peers do, that this is the best VIP experience that you could go to because this is a whole extra show and it’s a really intimate show where I do a storyteller set and break down different things about the songs. That’s where I tell great stories. I have a lot of great stories! If people ask the right questions, I’ve got some great fucking stories. We do a fun thing where if I can’t play some of the requested songs, they get a free t-shirt, because we have so many songs in the catalog. But every once in a while, I get stumped. I love to do it because it keeps me on my toes.”
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