G. Love He had a "nice guest list" on Lemonade.

The past couple of years have been busy ones for Garrett Dutton, known to the world at large as G. Love. The ball started rolling three years ago when Love opted out of his Sony contract and signed to old friend Jack Johnson's Brushfire label to release The Hustle, a return to the simple loose-limbed style that originally propelled his urban folk/hip-hop trio, G. Love and Special Sauce, into the public consciousness with its 1994 self-titled debut.

During the requisite touring cycle - and being tapped by blues/folk veteran John Hammond to produce his new album, Push Comes to Shove - Love began thinking about what he wanted to do with his next album. An interesting idea occurred to him while he and Special Sauce were traveling around Japan.

"When you tour Japan, you wake up at weird hours in the morning when you shouldn't be awake and you have all these thoughts," recalls Love. "I had this bright idea that whenever we're doing overdubs, instead of calling in the local Philadelphia gun who's good on that instrument, let's just get a name-brand person, someone that we know."

They returned home and set to work on their seventh album, inviting a colleague into a session to test out their guest concept. That simple act snowballed into the all-star line-up that eventually graced Love's 2006 album, Lemonade.

"[Drummer] Jeff [Clemens] started the ball rolling by inviting Leo Nocentelli from the Meters down on a track, but that track wound up not being on the record," says Love. "Leo was awesome and we said, "That was easy.' Basically, everyone was a phone call away; Leo was the only one we actually didn't know that well. Jeff called Ben Harper, who was swinging through town on some gig. We had a track for him and he banged it out. Then I called a bunch of my musical compadres and we had a nice guest list going."

Love's "nice guest list" encompassed Blackalicious, the Figgs' Pete Donnelly, Los Lobos' David Hidalgo, indie singer-songwriters Donavon Frankenreiter, Marc Broussard and Tristan Prettyman, and label honcho Jack Johnson, among others. But even as the studio filled with an array of talented support people, the sound of Lemonade remained uncluttered and simple, which had been Love's intention from the start.

"Basically the whole gist of it was to invite all our friends down - recording artists and touring musicians that have credibility - to help us finish our record, but let's make sure we don't lose the identity and the sound of the band," says Love. "That was the ultimate goal and I felt like we achieved that. We were able to bring our creative process up to the next level without losing our identity."

There were surprises to spare during the Lemonade sessions but none as big as the ones on "Let the Music Play," featuring the combined talents of Harper and Broussard. Nearly two years later, the track still astonishes Love.

"It was a surprise that Ben agreed to come to the studio and then actually showed up," he says. "He's big in the US, but he's a super-huge rock star overseas. He came in and had great energy. In a four-hour period he just really lit it up. Then the track was kind of sitting there; I wanted it to be really great because Ben was so great on it."

A month later, Broussard came through town with Bonnie Raitt (whom Harper had opened for the previous month), and Love connected with him to put the finishing vocal touches on "Let the Music Play." After a couple of failed attempts, Love called Broussard and told him it was "now or never," so Broussard caught a cab and made it to the studio. To Love's chagrin, Broussard had been drinking during most of his three-day break, and he was fairly smashed when he arrived.

"It was like he fell into a bath of Jack Daniels at 4:30 in the afternoon," says Love with a laugh. "Me and [producer] Chris [DiBenneditto] like to party and drink and everything, but we were like, "God damn!' I said, "Marc, we need you to do this harmony vocal, you want anything?' And he was like, "You got a shot of tequila?' We gave him a shot of tequila and a puff off a funny cigarette and I was like, "Man, are you gonna be able to do this shit?' and he was like [effecting Broussard's gravelly voice and New Orleans accent], "I didn't come in here to suck.'"

Having never heard the track, with Love's hastily written lyrics in hand, Broussard stepped up to the mic and delivered vocal magic.

"He started singing, and me and Chris were just floored," says Love. "It was the most awesome thing I'd ever seen go down in a studio. He killed it. He was cool."

With the release of Lemonade, Love set up his next project, which was to film the 2006 Lemonade tour specifically for a DVD. The results of that process came out last year as the combination CD/DVD package A Year and a Night, a glorious evocation of the G. Love and Special Sauce gift of groove.

"It was something we talked about doing for awhile," says Love. "We thought we should have a DVD, but we were going about it the wrong way. We had a good camera guy when we first started but we kind of drifted apart. We finally found a guy who was willing to do it and we all meshed, personality-wise, because he's basically living with you on the tour bus. His name's Steve Oritt. He'd come out for a week here, a week there. The best part about it for me is the backstage stuff and the stuff he shot with just the one camera. That's my favorite stuff."

Love, drummer Clemens and bassist Jimi "Jazz" Prescott, together in Special Sauce for 15 years now, are about to wrap up their new album, due later this year. In a reversal from Lemonade, Love and Special Sauce will be the only musicians on the new album, a return to the band's earliest musical methodology.

In fact, the last time I interviewed Love was 13 years ago, and he was in the midst of mixing the sophomore Special Sauce album, Coast to Coast Motel. Just 21 years old at the time, he said that he believed it was the evolution of everything he had learned to that point. When reminded of that statement, Love responds with a hearty laugh.

"That's funny, because I didn't really know shit then," says Love. "I just thought I knew something. Now I know that I think I know something and that I didn't know shit when we spoke last. I just took a guitar lesson from this great blues guitarist named Jeremy Lyons. He's a New Orleans guy that got relocated up here after the flood. He came over one night and really taught me how Robert Johnson played walking blues and breaking down, and I was like, "Fuck, that was easy.' That took me like a month to learn on the record. I can put on John Hammond's Country Blues record, and every time I revisit that record, I'm a better guitar player. It's like watching a movie or reading a book over and over again."

G. Love and Special Sauce, the Wood Brothers: 9 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 19, Agora Ballroom, 5000 Euclid Ave., 216.881.2221. Tickets: $22.50.