Still Hustling, Still Hungry: G. Love proves it with a headlining Fillmore Philly show

G. Love and Special Sauce | Photo by Josh Pelta-Heller for WXPN | hellerhound.com

If you missed Garrett “G. Love” Dutton and Special Sauce Saturday night at their first-ever Fillmore appearance just because you figured you’d probably only enjoy a handful of their old hits from the mid-nineties – well you had a nice, lazy Spring Sunday today to think about the mistake you made. And if you went to the show anticipating that maybe you’d enjoy most that handful of hits, you’d have been pleasantly surprised.

Because okay, let’s be honest: it happens so often, as artists get a bit older, that they lose a little edge, or their line on the zeitgeist. They grow a little less relevant, less hungry. They may come through town every few years for a show, their old fans generally at best tolerating any new music with polite applause as they wait for the opening chords of the songs they recognize, the songs they came to see. And either those songs hold up, a couple decades on, for a best-case scenario, or they don’t, in which case you’re really there purely for the sake of nostalgia.

Here’s why Saturday night’s show wasn’t an example of that: somehow, Special Sauce has managed to renovate wholesale their sound and style.

They seem to have made a marked shift, somewhere amid their copious catalog, updating themselves from their live-band hip-hop fusions of the mid-nineties, to a freshly rejuvenated Delta blues sound, garnished with all the showy stage theatrics of its Chicago counterpart — a sound which in all probability better suits them now. Their energy and buoyancy — even as Dutton himself is seated through much of the set — galvanizes fans to some semblance of dance.

After an entire first set dedicated to that newer material to show off their latest record Love Saves The Day, Dutton and co. switched gears for their second set to accommodate longtime fans who made song requests via social media. Here, they came through with that aforementioned handful — old favorites like “Cold Beverage,” “Garbage Man,” “Rodeo Clowns,” “I-76,” and “Blues Music,” with its languid, dynamic upright bassline supporting Dutton’s hip-hop homage to his musical roots in blues, and his personal roots in the city of Philadelphia.

How often do you get the opportunity to watch a now-sort-of-iconic hometown hero, play great songs about your hometown, in your hometown? That said, it was arguably even better to get to watch G. Love still hustling, still honing, still hungry to grow, and create, and serve up something new and noteworthy.

As hard as G. Love and co. worked for their spot as headliners last night, a funk crew from Boston made a run at stealing the show. Ripe’s lead singer Robbie Wulfsohn coordinates all the many moving parts of his band with the intensity of an animated orchestral conductor, as a full section of bobbing brass on one side and more traditional rock instrumentation on the other all served in synchrony to support his sonorous vocals, a golden voice with hints of Sting and Bradley Nowell. It might be impossible not to have a smile on your face when that band is onstage. Ripe would return to the stage later to support G. Love as well.

New York-based solo bluesman The Bones of J.R. Jones set the tone early, percussion at his feet and a slide and steel-guitar in his hands. A cover of R.L. Burnside’s “Poor Black Mattie” was a set highlight.

Below, check out a photo gallery of the concert.