Preview: Lettuce at Empire Live on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026
The seven-months since Lettuce played the Saratoga Jazz Festival and their Empire Live show on Wednesday may feel like just an extra-long set break. But since then, the funk-jazz juggernaut toured Europe and everywhere else – sometimes with the Wu-Tang Clan or Ziggy Marley – released a symphony-backed live album, then the new studio album, “Cook” – which they do. They even launched a wine brand and scholarships to Berklee where they met.
I reviewed their SPAC set here, contrasting “a deliciously relentless funk-fest by Lettuce” with the mellower soul-jazz baritone vocals of Gregory Porter who preceded them onstage – where they lifted off in an unusual, seamless way.
“The Boston sextet jammed in soundcheck, ’til we get it right,’ then flowed straight into their set. Festival producer Danny Melnick went to the mic to introduce them, smiled and waved them on. In an earth-shaking riff explosion, Eric Coomes’s seismic bass hit like the thunderstorm that mercifully never happened Saturday. Groove melted into groove, like a P-Funk show; storming from sonic overwhelm to simmering at less heat, and surprising late with Tears For Fears’ pop hit ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World.’”
Talk about range: They jazz-rocked like Miles’ Bitches Brew band and rummaged through the funk traditions of James Brown and P-Funk, spicing things with soul fervor and emphatic hip-hop beat force. For a Boston band originally, they often sounded very New York. They echoed every uptown jam adventure since the bebop age to hyper-energetic downtown experimentation. And they wound up with one of the tastiest pop melodies of recent decades in full melodic flight; funky, too.
Lettuce at SPAC on June 28, 2025; from left: Eric “Benny” Bloom, trumpet; Ryan “Zoid” Zoidis, saxophone; Adam “Shmeaans” Smirnoff, guitar: Erick “Maverick” Coomes, bass; and Adam Dietch, drums. Keyboardist/singer Nigel Hall is obscured behind the horns at stage right.
Fun and fierce, they played with a happy relentless drive that easily engaged the crowd, even at their spikiest or most complex.
Lettuce’s website lists drummer Adam Deitch first; maybe because he’s the wheels on the bus carrying guitarist Adam “Shmeaans” Smirnoff, saxophonist and keyboard player Ryan “Zoid” Zoidis, trumpeter Eric “Benny” Bloom and keyboardist/singer Nigel Hall – while bassist Erick “Maverick” Coomes is the engine. At SPAC, Coomes reminded me of funk-powered and -powering bassists Bootsy Collins, Rocco Prestia (RIP) and (current) Marc van Waginen with Tower of Power and our own Tony Markellis (also, RIP).
As Deitch told R.J. DeLuke in a fine Times-Union interview piece last Thursday, “…the time feel, the collective rhythm that we have as a band, is unique. And that’s our calling card. That’s who we are.”
Streams of past live shows are available on their website: http://www.lettucefunk.com.
Expect some of the 16 tracks from “Cook” Wednesday; the vinyl version of the new album offers favorite recipes by each band member.
- Great
- Clav it Your Way
- Sesshins 1
- 7 Tribes
- Rising to the Top
- Sesshins 2
- Gold Tooth
- Breathe
- The Matador
- Sesshins 3
- Cook
- Storm Coming
- Keep On
- Sesshins 4
- The Mac
- Ghosts of Yest
Adam “Shmeaans” Smirnoff, guitar: Erick “Maverick” Coomes, bass
“Clav” is short for the clavinet, an electric keyboard instrument.
Bloom has explained they wrote the title track at a party in Denver, adopted home of half the band. He called it, and I quote from their website, “a hip little banger of a song to put a stank face on.”
Lettuce plays Wednesday at Empire Live (93 N. Pearl St., Albany). 8 p.m. doors 7. 16 and up, photo ID required. $45.15 general admission. 518-900-5900 www.empirelivealbany.com
Hoke's Jukebox 