In a jam

Ho-Down with extra Lettuce

by Don Fluckinger

Summer's here, and maybe the weather will finally cooperate. It hasn't happened so far -- first we had the

Hoodoo Bash, with hard breezes cold enough to warrant wool sweaters. Then there was the Berkshire Mountain Music Fest, where many of the bands were rained out. Now comes the Ho-Down, a back-yard party that, in its third year, has grown into a 12-band weekend campout at Wendell State Forest.

The first Ho-Down took place in Leverett, at Lettuce guitarist Eric Krasne's home and featured fellow funkateers Schleigho (SHLAY-ho). The two-day festival represents the regional jam- and party-band scene well, with funk and jazz, ska and hip-hop, even "bar mitzvah music on acid," a phrase used to describe Hypnotic Clambake. The event concludes Sunday night with an all-star instrumental jam to cap Schleigho's set.

One of the groups definitely worth seeing is Lettuce, a Northampton band. There are two basic schools from which jam bands can evolve: the Grateful Dead rock-noodling side, and the James Brown groove side. Although several of the members of Lettuce might not want to admit it, they all went through their period of listening to the Dead. However, their primary influences come from the funk and jazz side: Tower of Power, Average White Band, Herbie Hancock.

Although Lettuce profess to be a funk band, the members have solid jazz backgrounds: drummer Adam Deitch and guitarist Adam Smirnoff are regulars at Wally's Jazz Club in Boston; New York-bred saxman Sam Kininger plays Maceo Parker-style jazz funk; bassist Erick Coomes and keyboardist Jeff Bhasker both went to Berklee; and Krasne continues his jazz-performance studies at Hampshire College with jazz master Yusef Lateef.

That would explain the exciting, upbeat streak that pervades Lettuce's music, giving them a little different sound than the local jam-band. Sure, they can kick out a middle section in a song where a player takes an extended solo, but it'll be in the groove. Chances are you're going to be dancing along rather than standing in place, hands in pocket, "appreciating" the expert fingerwork or whatever's going on under the stage lights.

"We all consider ourselves a funk band," Krasne says. "There's a lot more, we can go on for a couple sentences saying `We're kinda this and a little bit of that,' but we just try to make it short and say `funk.' Recently we've been stretching out even more. Usually we never go into other time signatures and stuff but our audience is being more accepting to `out there' stuff."

The members of Lettuce met while in high school, all at a Berklee summer music program. Krasne met each player one by one, hanging out in classes and bumping into like-minded musicians in the dorm. A lot of the kids who attended the classes, he says, were into the Dead, or other popular fare. Krasne and his friends were into long jams on funk grooves.

At first that's just what they'd do -- play for hours on one groove. Then came the cover tunes (you can hear Average White Band's "Person to Person" and Herbie Hancock's "Cantaloupe Island" on their Lettuce Live tape). Then the original material, and club gigs from the Iron Horse to the Middle East to the Wetlands.

Lettuce have experimented with different musical elements over the years. Krasne, for one, has taken some forays into hexatonic and Asian scales, as Lateef broadens the guitarist's musical horizons. Moreover, a couple rappers who've performed with the band, Professor and Radio, have spun off a band that includes Krasne, called True World Order. All taken together, the age-old principle of "practice makes perfect" holds true: the more Lettuce play, the tighter they get.

"We all know each other as friends and musicians," Krasne says. "Since we've been playing together for seven years, we know when someone has an idea and they're going to go that direction, and we can follow that."

Since their formation in 1991, Lettuce have never put out a CD; they've only recorded a couple of tapes for circulation around the local scene. But their new CD, Lettuce Kick (as in "Let us kick"), will be coming out soon, most likely late this summer. Right now, the band have 12 tunes in the hopper recorded at Full Tilt Studios in New York City.

Despite all their side projects and jazz gigs, Lettuce are a solid ensemble. They get along musically as well as personally, which bodes well for the long haul -- whether that long haul means playing together another seven years, or a half-hour jam on one a single groove at the Ho-Down show.

The line-up for the two-day festival includes, on Saturday, Boud Deun, the Miracle Orchestra, Hosemobile,the Elements, Peter Prince, Lettuce, Schleigho, and a late-night rave with DJ Slava and Noise Labs. On Sunday, Fully Celebrated Orchestra, Lake Trout, Conehead Buddha, Hypnotic Clambake, the Slip, and Schleigho are scheduled to play. Tickets are $25 at the gate and $10 on Sunday. Call (800) 843-8425.