Soulive Bowlive – Live a the Brooklyn Bowl

DVD-MVD Visual 

BluesWax Rating: 8

Solid Live Set with Great Guests and More!What a great concept having this soul-funk band Soulive in residency for two weeks at the newly opened Brooklyn Bowl and bringing in a bevy of guests to sit in. Guests range from hip-hop stars Questlove (who’s excellent) and Rahzel, to more roots-oriented names like Derek Trucks with Susan Tedeschi, Warren Haynes, Ivan Neville, Oteil and Kofi Burbridge, plus Robert Randolph.Soulive is a rocking soul-jazz trio with Eric Krasno’s guitar and the two brothers Evans, Alan on drums and Neal on keyboards. Soulive has been around since the late 1990s and have ten albums credited to their name and five raw, live recordings that they released as well.The many highlighted guests include the very talented vocalist Nigel Hall, who nicely tackles James Brown’ “Soul Power” and “Give It Up Or Turn It Loose.” Hall stays on with Ivan Neville for a cool rendition of “Jesus Children of America” that prances to the mode of Sly Stone’s “If You Want Me To Stay.” The other brothers, Oteil and Kofi Burbridge, set a mesmerizing groove on Oteil’s “Butter Biscuit.” A glazed-eyed Robert Randolph talks back stage about the merits of Soulive, (but in one segment) is only given a short one-minute spot performing Stevie Ray Vaughan’s gorgeous “Lenny.” Tedeschi and Trucks solidly cover an extremely soulful take of King Curtis’ “Soul Serenade” with lyrics. Warren Haynes tears down the house a la Albert King on “Born Under a Bad Sign,” which by the way was authored by the Stax duo of William Bell and Booker T. Jones, where Albert cut it at Stax.All of the guests do not take away from the virtues of the core band Soulive; Alan Evans is a killer drummer, Krasno’s guitar is spot on throughout and shows how wide ranging his playing is, and Neal Evans is monstrous on various keyboards and handles the bass parts with ease and creativity.The overall production values of this DVD are good but could have been better in that the only audio offered is via Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo, but it does sound clear and punchy. The widescreen picture is sharp, and the cameraman also provided some interesting close-ups during most of the important and fascinating solos. This DVD also has an extremely nice feature in that it can be watched in two modes, “Play Movie (With Interviews)” and “Play Movie (Without Interviews).” DVD producers take note!Fans of soul, funk, jazz, and blues will enjoy this unique genre-stretching video. Kudos to those involved for making this DVD. They obviously put forward a lot of good effort getting all of the guests together, and none of it sounds like a train wreck! But there’s one piece missing; there’s no internal booklet, with the only informational notes on the outer box. No track listings either. What’s up with that?