G. Love marks 20 - and it's special

Of all musical birthdays worth celebrating (there aren't as many as you've been led to believe), one particularly quirky event has warm local value: the 20th anniversary of G. Love and Special Sauce's first album. South Street busker Garrett "G. Love" Dutton - laid-back singer, guitarist, harmonicist - hooked up with out-of-towners Jeff Clemens (drums) and Jim Prescott (upright bass) for a then-unique trio based as much in hucklebucking folk and blues as it was in hip-hop.

The group's sloppy, tangy tones quickly found their way to Okeh/Epic, and their eponymous album dropped in 1994, influencing the like-minded relaxed-fit Jack Johnson, whose success sadly surpassed theirs but led to a friendship and contract with his record label. (For context: another South Street-born hip-hop band, the Roots, didn't make its major-label debut until 1995).

G. and Special Sauce stopped, started, and, for 2014, reunited on a bristling album, Sugar (due in April), and tour that brought them home Saturday and Sunday at TLA, the scene of the original crime.

That Saturday's packed-to-the-rafters gig started with songs from their debut made sense. Love's loping, unfussy funk is this unit's stock in trade. That rope-a-dope vibe was true of the dozy "Baby's Got Sauce," with its gentle swing breaks (Clemens is a master of the brushes), and the bubbly "Shooting Hoops." But from the show's start, with G. seated stage center, this wasn't about mere nostalgia; it was about getting down and dirty. Prescott let loose with hard, aggressive bass play, and Love's bluesy guitar on songs like "Cold Beverage" had nasty jagged angles à la Keith Richards at his rangiest. Love's vocals too found grizzled corners - a change from his boyish first-blush sound. Then again, G's a 41-year-old man now, a fact that was apparent when his son Aiden joined on drums for the psychedelic-hop of "Can't Go Back to Jersey." Love's voice stayed tough on the trio's new songs from Sugar: the Chic-like title tune, the merrily melodic "Nothing Quite Like Home" with its crust-in-the-eyes cool, and "One Night Romance," in which big-voiced opening act Kristy Lee pushed G. into lover-man mode.

Toward the evening's close, Special Sauce not only unleashed a giddy "I-76," Love made nods to his past (recording at Studio 4 with then-young rap acts like the Roots and the Goats) and talked up his South Street roots, telling the crowd, "After the show, we're going to Lorenzo's."