While the group’s founding members are still in their 30s, Lettuce has been an active entity since 1992. The funk-soul collective first came together when its core players met at a Berklee College of Music summer program while they were still in high school. They later reconvened at Berklee for college and have maintained their association, despite the musicians’ involvement in many other projects. Their current lineup features guitarist Adam “Shmeeans” Smirnoff, drummer Adam Deitch, bassist Erick “Jesus” Coomes, alto/tenor/ baritone saxophonist Ryan Zoidis, keyboardist Neal Evans and Eric Bloom on trumpet. Co-founding guitarist Eric Krasno is still a member of the group, although he has eased up on road duty as of late.

Looking back over two decades of personal and professional association, Smirnoff explains: “It’s been a real trip and it’s been a long journey, and I consider these guys to be my best friends in the whole world, and they’ve been those people for a long time now. As friends, we really support each other in both our personal and musical growth. A lot of us, from college on, have felt the need to accomplish certain things on an individual basis—whether it meant that Deitch was playing for Wyclef, John Scofield or the Average White Band, or Jesus was the house bass player for Dr. Dre, or whether it meant Ryan Zoidis getting the Rustic Overtones signed years ago and recording an album that had David Bowie on it. I ended up playing the opening of the Grammys as a sideman with Elton John and being a guitar player for Lady Gaga. I was also on the road for years with Robert Randolph.

“We all had to do all these things to become the musicians that we are today and to be able to be comfortable enough to say, ‘Hey, let’s do this together. Let’s have our own project and have something that’s ours that we can build together as a family.’ I really think that when we made that decision together, we became so much stronger, and the fact that we let each other grow as individuals and do our own thing for so many years was beneficial. Life tends to come full circle and work itself out.”

The group’s new album is Crush. (Say “Lettuce Crush” out loud and you’ll hear their intentions.) Lettuce self-produced the album, which was recorded and mixed by Joel Hamilton at Brooklyn’s Studio G. Smirnoff explains that the songs on the new record were informed by the band’s intensive touring schedule.

“A couple of years ago, it was a new thing for this band to tour so much. When you are on the road for most of the year, you start running into, ‘Man, we need to play something different tomorrow, we need to play something different tonight.’ So people started to come in with new songs just to keep it exciting and fun. We started playing through all these new tunes and we started letting them grow as far as their arrangements on the road, and then we went into the studio and got to record them. We’ve been playing them since then and they’ve grown even more since the studio. But the initial idea is that we wanted to capture a lot of our live essence within a studio compound. I think we succeeded greatly on this record as far as getting into those improvisational moments in the studio and capturing them. That’s what was part of the goal of this record, and I’m very happy with how we accomplished it.”

THE FORCE
This is the hard-hitting intro. I believe it’s written by Adam Deitch, and there’s something powerful in it—especially when you hear the first three notes. It kind of says, “We’re here, we’re back.”

GET GREASY
That’s the greasy funk, getting back to some of our more original roots. To me, it could almost be a throwback to “Reunion” on our first record, as far as having that laid-back tempo, yet having energy and being exciting at the same time. It’s more of a mature funk.

CHIEF
The original “Chief” groove that I made on a demo was inspired by a Neal Evans groove that he played as a bassline when Jesus missed a gig once in Canada. I remember I went home after that and made that groove and, eventually, Deitch came over and joined me. I feel like this is the first big guitar solo I recorded on a Lettuce record.

Eric and I have always had something really special going on. He was actually the first of the Lettuce guys that I met. We met when we were 13 or 14 years old, prior to the Berklee five-week music program that we all eventually connected at. I first met Krasno at the National Guitar Summer Workshop in Connecticut, and when we met again at Berklee, it was kind of like, “Oh, man. I know you!” The first thing that I can remember was being really blown away by his musicianship and his tone and his approach. When we played together, we found great ways to lock—that’s the only good way to really describe it. We get in a rhythmic lock immediately. And sometimes there are guitar players who enjoy playing parts and building something for the greater good, for the whole of the band. I really feel that we’ve always had that.

He’s an incredible writer and producer, and I’d say when we first started, we just fell into these roles where I would be playing mostly just rhythm at times. I’m not just a rhythm guitar player, but that’s just what I felt the band needed during that time. As it progressed and as the years went by, of late, Eric hasn’t wanted to tour, so he hasn’t been coming out with us as much. So I’ve been having all the guitar duties for myself, and it’s been fun to play both parts at the same time and flip between the two. People are getting a chance to really hear me as a soloist, which maybe they didn’t have the chance to do when Eric was there. And then when he gets back, it’s like riding a bicycle, playing with your best friend again. So we’re able to just switch in and out of these roles easily now.

PHYLLIS
I believe this was the first piece of music that was brought to the band by Deitch, where he said, “Here we go. We’re going to start a new record. This is the beginning—this is the first song. Let’s all come in with other songs.” “Phyllis” is a reference to Phyllis Diller, the continuation of “Mr. Yancey” from the Rage! record.

SOUNDS LIKE A PARTY
The title speaks for itself. It sounds like a party. We brought [vocalist] Nigel Hall back—I think this is the third record that he’s been on with us now. I love this tune. It has great energy. It’s got a chorus that everyone can remember and you can dance to it. I hope that people vibe with this one and have fun and put it on at a party.

THE LOBBYIST
“The Lobbyist” is, to me, one of Erick Coomes’ genius works of melody. It’s almost the ultimate sports intro. It’s just so epically powerful. Jesus writes great melodies and great horn parts and he nailed it with this tune. TRILLOGY “Trillogy” might be my favorite track on the record, in terms of the way that it came out sonically. It’s something that we couldn’t have done on a record 15 or 20 years ago. It’s just an instrumental hip-hop jam with three different parts. So if you’re an MC out there, and if you want to practice rhyming, put it on and try rhyming—see how it goes.

The commonality for us— within hip-hop, jazz and funk— is swinging, whether that’s a swung beat in jazz, a swung groove in hip-hop on the hi-hat or feeling of a bounce groove over some funk. Aside from that, you can have improvisation over all three. They all come from the same place to me, which is soul music, blues, and rhythm and blues. They’re all derivations of that in some way and they’ve developed.

Jazz existed first, and then, at some point in time within jazz, you started having Miles Davis experimenting with fusion and putting funkier beats behind improvisation. At one point, you had James Brown, who turned soul music into funk music as we know it today. Then you have funk musicians today who have been influenced by the hip-hop era and still respect jazz and improvisation, and you can kind of put all three under the same umbrella at times, depending on who’s playing it.

POCKET CHANGE
“Pocket Change” is that funkjazz hybrid kind of tune. This might be my favorite solo from Ryan Zoidis on saxophone; it’s so funky. It’s perhaps our first Lettuce-y boogaloo tune. But I think at times it really touches on the direction that we did with “Squadlive” and “Sam Huff’s Flying Raging Machine” from our older records.

THE NEW REEL
“The New Reel” is the cinematic movie score genius of Neal Evans.

HE MADE A WOMAN OUT OF ME
This is a cover song that Alecia Chakour brought in for us to do and we rearranged it. It’s originally a country tune. [Bobbie Gentry first recorded it in 1970.] I really love the soulfulness and the arrangement that we came up with for that, and I love the background vocals that come in toward the end.

I just feel lucky and blessed to have both Nigel and Alecia as the singers who come into this band. We are with such cool, talented artists who have their own ideas and their own direction, and I’m proud to have them up in front of us. We are very lucky to get these special people who can touch the audience on an emotional level.

SILVERDOME
“Silverdome” is named after the Silverdome in Detroit, where Led Zeppelin had one of their huge concerts. We used to call the tune “Lett Zeppelin,” but we changed the name to “Silverdome” to be a little bit more sneaky. The fact that we were calling it “Lett Zeppelin” meant that this is our rock-funk anthem, touching on the mix between funk and rock and psychedelia, which is very influenced by groups like Funkadelic. It really gets psychedelic toward the end.