The Soul OF Stax
Soulive’s sixth album debuts on the legendary Memphis label
by Makkada B. Selah
With the buzz surrounding the relaunch of Memphis soul label Stax, the label’s first release from a newly signed act—Soulive’s sixth studio album, No Place Like Soul—is going to have a tough time getting out from under the roster’s long shadows.
For starters, classic Stax is echoed in every song on the album: “Yeah Yeah” is totally Bar-Kays. “Callin’ ” would be a Johnnie Taylor cut. “Waterfall” would be Ike and Tina Turner. (They weren’t Stax artists, but should have been, Tina being from Nutbush and all.) And the instrumental “Outrage” recalls Booker T. and the MGs, even though Soulive’s guitarist Eric Krasno goes all Johnny “Guitar” Watson on us. And the folkish “Mary” has The Staple Singers written all over it.
“All we like to focus on is doing our own thing and making music we really enjoy ourselves,” says Solive drummer Alan Evans. “It’s really nice to be a part of the whole Stax thing. But, uh, Stax died in ’75. And now some cats are relaunching it. But it’s not the same as it used to be. We’ll just see where it goes. But it is nice to have that name on the album. Yeah.”
Evans founded the group with his brother Neal, the group’s organist, in 1999, and despite the fact that the band is often categorized as jazz, Evans insists that Soulive makes soul music. “We’ve always described ourselves as soul music,” he says. “I wouldn’t call myself a jazz musician by any stretch of the imagination. We have jazz influences just as much as reggae or hip-hop or rock. We throw it all in the pot.”
Perhaps they got the jazz tag because Soulive used to be a trio that did mostly instrumental tunes. They’ve played Bonnaroo quite a few times and are also often called a jam band. But No Place Like Soul gets tagged as pop, too, perhaps due to the recent addition of full-time vocalist Toussaint, who’s made their trio a quartet.
“We kinda hit a ceiling with what we could do instrumentally,” Evans says. “We’ve known [Toussaint] for a long time and he just clicked.” Toussaint’s gospel and blues cadences inject flavor and energy into the songs, even if he doesn’t have much of a vocal range.
But the more Evans talks about soul, it becomes apparent that he’s not just talking about a music genre. “It’s on the same level as love,” he says. “You can’t exactly put it into words, but you know it when it’s right in front of you. It’s something that makes you feel really good. A lot of people are like, ‘Soul…Oh that’s like…,’ and they start naming off names like it’s a ‘black’ thing or whatever. But Paul McCartney or Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash—those cats have soul. There’s something so indescribable about it, but you know it when you hear it and you feel it. It’s something that you just put all of your heart into.”
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