“We’re in Athens, Georgia tonight playing at the Georgia Theatre for over a 1000 people,” he says, “and eight years ago we played a free, unofficial after party for a Galactic concert across the street, and four people came. We couldn’t even get half the number of people in the audience as there were onstage. So in the same town, on the same block, suddenly there’s about a 1000 people who are respectful and open minded to our art. To me that’s basically just because we began in a natural organic way, fan by fan.”
This unaffected approach comes across in League’s demeanour as well – relaxed, yet obviously committed and hard working. Since meeting at the University of North Texas in the early 2000s, the band have built themselves a career, clocking in over 1200 shows in that time.
“It’s going to be 13 years of playing together next month actually,” says League. “Over all those years we have developed our vocabulary and found together a concept. I think that our goal at any point in time is to continue evolving and to challenge ourselves to push that concept in new ways.”
The band specialise in groove-based instrumentals that touch upon jazz, funk and fusion. Their music draws a very conscientious type of listener, part of an ongoing conversation that happens between the stage and floor.
“They’re generally very quiet during the performances but also very responsive in the moment that’s called for. They want us to challenge ourselves and challenge them and that creates a dialogue that’s surprising and spontaneous.
“What I really love the most about them is that they try to hold us accountable as a band. If things aren’t going great onstage we don’t have the kind of thoughtless compliance from the audience,” League says. “You really feel like they’re listening. They know when you’re not at your best and that makes you have to play better. The accountability thing is huge. If we were in a band that made our first record on a huge label and got loads of marketing and publicity and roped people into a kind of frenzy thing, I don’t know that the fanbase would be like that.”
The Snarky Puppy lineup consists of eight core players, with an extended family of up to 40. “The rotation thing happened out of necessity, because I was saying yes to every gig and some guys couldn’t make it,” League says. “So we’d have to get another guy to play trumpet or play keyboards or whatever. And then we noticed that it injected new life into the music and it just became like a collective.”
While League is the band’s chief composer, over the course of their 11 albums, he’s welcomed the input of other band members. “Along the way we discovered that when people chip in ideas they play better in the part,” he says, “but it’s not like a jazz thing; it’s much more like a pop thing. Everybody in the group is song obsessed.”
Although keeping a pop song mentality to their music, improvisation is encouraged, both in the studio and onstage. “One of the coolest things about the band is not just that it’s separate soloists but that we’re constantly rearranging. Someone might play one little thing that changes the way that we play the whole song for the rest of the time. We try to create a very unique experience each evening.”
The band feed off their audience so much that almost all of their albums have been made in front of a crowd. Family Dinner 2, released in February, went to the extreme of having listeners scattered around the players in the recording studio, with headphones on and eyes wide open.
“Having people around you makes it feel like a show, which makes you play with a different kind of empathy and spontaneity. It makes you communicate the music in a different way, because you have that immediate dialogue that puts things into a better perspective I think.”
For their latest album – the second for this year – the band decided to take this learned wisdom and head in the opposite direction. Cultcha Vulcha, released last month, is an expansive studio album full of overdubs that allowed the band to approach the new songs in a new way.
“We had been hungry to do an old-school studio record for a while, so it allowed us to be more articulate with our sonic power and also to be able to fine tune things, not just to be like, ‘Alright that was sick, thanks for your help.’ ”
BY ALEX WATTS
