G. Love & Special Sauce to play at the Iowa State Fair Aug. 16

In 1990, when Garrett Dutton was 17 years old, he made a decision that was both a short-term challenge and a longer-term commitment that continues to shape his life today, some three decades later.

“When I look back on that time, that was just such a classic time in my life,” said Dutton, who is better known by his stage name G. Love, in a recent phone interview. “I had this kind of dream as a young person to pursue my dream of playing music. And it was the full passion. So for me, a big part of it was my kind of idolization of both John Hammond and Bob Dylan because of the fact that both of those guys had recorded their debut records when they were 20 years old. When I was about 17, I had this notion I have about three years to prepare and make this happen. So yeah, I definitely started kind of putting all my focus into that.”

G. Love & Special Sauce will be opening for The Avett Brothers Friday, Aug. 16, 2024, at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines.

Early on, Love stumbled onto a signature sound that combined his two favorite styles of music — a somewhat laid-back brand of blues and hip-hop (complete with rapped vocals) as he was busking one night in his hometown of Philadelphia.

He hit on a blues groove he liked and it prompted him to start performing a rap from one of his favorite songs, Eric B. and Rakim’s “Paid in Full,” over that groove. Love knew immediately he was onto something unique and special.

“It really was a huge epiphany,” Love said. “I mean, I was having a great night. I made 60 bucks, two beers and two cigarettes, and that was about the most, the grand total of my best financial and musical night on the street. It was just like a fun night and I was just having a great time and then I started rapping and I just realized ‘Oh, wow, I can do that.’ Then you know, man, I swear to God like, that next day I wrote my first rap, which was over a slide riff I played on my dobro.”

Soon Love moved to Boston, where he felt he had a better opportunity to further his career. The next big step came just as unexpectedly as Love’s discovery of how to blend hip-hop and blues. A fellow street musician called him one day looking for someone to open a club show for his band after the planned opener canceled. Love jumped at the chance to do the gig.

“I performed for the band I was opening for, the sound guy, the bartender, the waitress and some strange guy at the bar,” said Love, who was unfazed by the empty room. “Because of the fact that I was a street performer, to me I was just ready to perform. I didn’t know about playing in front of a big crowd. I didn’t know about performing in front of any crowd. I just knew about performing. I would just jump in and do my thing the best I could.”

The strange guy at the bar turned out to be Jeffrey Clemens, also known as the Houseman. After Love’s set, he complimented Love on his performance. And when Clemens said he was a drummer, that really got Love’s attention.

They stayed at the bar talking well into the night and agreed to get together for a rehearsal. Love and Clemens played a few gigs as a duo and a short time later added bassist Jim Prescott (aka Jimi Jazz) to complete the lineup of the newly christened G. Love & Special Sauce.

Things took off quickly from there as G. Love & Special Sauce gained quite the following in Boston. They started work on the first album and got signed by Epic Records.

“It was basically nine months from our first gig, which would have been like halfway through January of 1993 until, I think, I penned the Epic Records deal shortly after my 21st birthday in October,” Love said. “However, I did succeed in my goal because most of the first record was done by the time we signed that deal. Then we did go back in December of ‘93 and we had a solid like two- or three-week session where we cut the rest of the songs and just finished the album. Then it dropped, I think, in April or May of 1994.”

Love, Clemens and Prescott started touring, and eventually the song “Cold Beverage” caught on with radio. When all was said and done, the first album had gone gold.

Ironically, when recording of the first album was finished, Love was far from enamored with the results. G. Love & Special Sauce had become a must-see band on the local club scene, but the album didn’t feel like the shows.

“The shows were lined up down the block and it was just unbelievable. And people would just be dancing and everybody was just owning it. It was really great,” Love said. “It was a little different because we’re just the three of us (in a studio). It was a struggle. So I felt like at the time, wow, we really fell short because our live show is just so much more happening than the record.”

Over time, though, Love came to realize the first album was anything but a failure, and it was pretty much exactly the album the trio needed to make at the time.

“I think what really happened is we captured magic, and we captured just enough lightning in the bottle to make the music jump off of the tape, but not so much of, it was more subdued than the live shows,” Love said. “But that was good for the sake of recording. So that being said, it really was kind of a perfect storm.”

The first album essentially gave Love a music career. The three decades since have seen Love release 12 more studio albums, build a solid following that should enable him to record and tour for as long as he wants, and his 2021 album, “The Juice,” even earned him a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues album.

Love, Prescott and drummer Chuck Treece (who replaced Clemens, who retired from touring) have been celebrating the 30th anniversary of the first album on tour this year, playing shows that have been centered on the songs from that first album, as well as something special and unpredictable near the end of the set.

“We do a little hip-hop, we call it ‘Hip-Hop 50,’ celebrating the 50th anniversary of hip-hop,” Love said. “So then at that point we do a little kind of groove and I do a little freestyle.

“It’s a classic show and it really paces well and celebrates that body of work and that vibe,” he said. “It’s all good.”