The enigmatically smooth and uber-cool Garrett “G. Love” Dutton is one of Philadelphia’s funkiest performers of laid back, alternative hip-hop blues (a genre he helped define). As an insatiable musical omnivore, G. Love somehow manages to synthesize his iconic influences by shedding their layers to find that harmonic convergence where song and listener bare their souls to each other speaking nothing but the raw-boned truth. On their latest release, Fixin’ to Die, G. Love has done just that; he has mined the sonic ore of his heroes only to emerge with a fresh lode of precious stones. He explains, “It’s a nod back and a step forward. It’s a return to the roots of what made me G. Love in the first place. I fell in love with and learned music as a teenager, which is such a developmentally pivotal point in ones life. That point when you decide you wanna play guitar, right? I was 16 when I discovered folk music, the blues, and Bob Dylan and that was simply the backbone for everything that followed for me musically. I mean, this is my second decade as a recording and touring musician. I’m looking into the next phase of my career, and although at heart I’ve always been a roots musician I want to emphasis it more now. I want to carry on the tradition not in a nostalgic way, but by keeping it fresh, real and unexpected, and we did it with Fixin’ to Die.”