Cool - some people have it, most people don’t, and G Love most definitely has it in abundance. He’s relaxed, self-assured without being arrogant, opinionated, yet softly spoken. If he was a few years older and a few pounds heavier, he would be Philadelphia’s answer to Jeff ‘The Dude’ Lebowski.

Pretty much all bands have two sides, the private and the public. For most bands, the confident, cool persona is the public face, to cover up awkward insecurity or some massive personality defect. G Love is the polar opposite to this, for whilst he is the epitome of laid-back style offstage, all leather jacket, dark glasses and Philly drawl, once he gets onstage he is your embarrassingly enthusiastic uncle with the ill-fitting suit and the bizarre dancing manner.

Live, G Love & Special Sauce are a spontaneous, improvised extravaganza, G Love’s vocals, blues guitar and harp cutting over the rock solid Special Sauce rhythm section. “A lot of stuff is improvised,” explains G Love, “but obviously when we’re plying our songs, we’re playing the songs. Maybe we’ll vamp on them at the end, all the solos are improvised, and the set is improvised- we haven’t written a set list all tour so far. There are a couple of songs each night which are always freestyle”. At times it verges on the self-indulgent, but you can forgive that six-minute drum solo just for the moment when everything comes back together, the riff comes back in and G Love gurns like an idiot.

The band’s eponymous debut and 1996’s ‘Coast To Coast Motel’ were close to this live spirit, recorded live with a minimum of studio trickery- just the band and their instruments, in a studio, doing what they do. The latest album, ‘Yeah, It’s That Easy’, is something of a departure for them, “I knew I could make a live record in the studio, because the first two were like that, and I wanted to try something new, you know? Utilise the tools of the studio, experimenting with overdubs and more background vocals”. The album also contains writing and production appearances from The All Fellas Band. “They’re just my boys from Philly. When I get home from being on tour with Special Sauce, the Fellas will be jamming in their basement a lot, and we got to writing some songs. The All Fellas could never get a record deal, but we’d recorded what I felt were a couple of hits and I wanted people to hear them, which is why I put them on the album”.

They have toured with extra musicians in the States, but have found it too expensive to bring them over here, so instead the support band Pimp join them for ‘This Ain’t Livin’’ and they haveanother guest appearance from “this dude I met in the street today who plays trumpet for the Royal Shakespeare Theatre”.

One of the most moving tracks on the album is ‘Slipped Away (The Ballad Of Lauretha Vaird)’. “That song is a true story, about a policewoman who was shot in the line of duty by two Philadelphian rappers, Steady B and Kool C in the middle of a bank robbery. It’s the first song I ever researched, I went to the library, read all the papers. It just really shocked me.”

The title of ‘Coast To Coast Motel’ seemed particularly apt for the perpetually touring Special Sauce, who seem to have been on the road since forever and they show no signs of letting up. Record companies work too slowly for G Love and Special Sauce, who already have their next album written before they’ve finished promoting this one. “We write a lot of songs. In order for us to keep our music fresh, to be able to keep playing our old song, we have to write new songs, because that keeps everything fresh. I can only play my music, but I got that down. This tour is just a long ride to the studio. in my mind I’m there already, sitting on my amp, with my guitar and a harmonica...”

Yeah, it’s that easy.

G Love was talking to Tim, in June 1998.