Lettuce at The Anthem in D.C. during their Elevate Tour with Ghost-Note and Antibalas was such a blast. I had shot their show in Philadelphia not too long before this, so I knew them all already and Ryan [Zoidis] was kind enough to leave me a photo pass and a couple tickets to the show and after-party at the VIP entrance. The Anthem was HUGE. I think that was the largest stage I’d ever shot on, it was very cool. When I first got in, Ryan was super cool and texted me to make sure I was all set and he came out to say hey before the Antibalas opened up, so I went back with him up to the dressing rooms. This place was like a maze backstage, I mean, there were multiple staircases (3 floors?) to get to the dressing rooms and I am not ashamed to say that I most definitely got lost back there a few times throughout that night. The energy was really fun and I think everyone was feeling good and excited because Lettuce had just recently been nominated for a 2020 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Instrumentalist (hence the Grammy cake…), and I can’t think of another band more deserving! These guys are super cool and down-to-earth, not to mention seriously skilled musicians. I had always thought that they were more of a “jam band,” solely because I remember seeing them on lineups (circa 2009/2010 probably) that were primarily made up of that new-age jamband/ electronic scene, but they are so much more than that… I mean, they are seriously FUNKY! They are also not like the notoriously douche-y, egocentric jamband-y type guys, either, which I personally respected about them a lot. They’re all just sweet, down-to-earth guys who I truly enjoyed hanging with!
Then there’s Ghost-Note, an equally amazing band/ musical collective, which is made up of a really talented cast of characters, such as Sput (Robert Searight), Nate Werth, Jelani Brooks, Pete Knudsen, Xavier Taplin, MonoNeon (Dwayne Thomas) - who I have, for some reason, developed some sort of strange beef with. Or possibly… not actual beef, but some weird form of sarcastic banter that goes too far because neither of us know when to quit? Well, I digress. Ghost-Note is a band that’s comprised of incredibly talent artists (also super cool guys) and I was amazed by the group’s collective amount of extraordinary musicianship on this tour.
