The funk is alive and well. With its influence felt across the musical spectrum, from pop to hip hop to myriad varieties of dance music, funk remains a vital component of the 21st century musical palette. As is the case with any influential style, however, the music needs torch-bearers to keep it alive and thriving as time goes on. In the funk world in 2025, there’s nobody doing that better than Lettuce. Pairing rare proficiency and deep funk roots with a forward-thinking sensibility, Lettuce truly offers something for every variety of funk fan.
In 2025, Lettuce is white-hot, both in the studio and on stage. In December, the sextet will release Cook, their latest studio album. If the first two singles (the original “Gold Tooth” and a cover of Keni Burke’s 1982 gem “Risin’ to the top”), are any indication, the band sounds as dialed in as ever. Other recent highlights include a live record with the Colorado symphony, and collaborations with hip-hop legends RZA, GZA, and Styles P.
At the center of the Lettuce operation is drummer Adam Deitch. A true keeper of the funk flame, Deitch is an exceptional musician. While a simple reading of a resume doesn’t convey the depth of his playing or artistry, it does give a glimpse at his talent and versatility. In addition to his time propelling Lettuce, Deitch has toured with fusion pioneer John Scofield, Electro-funk giant Pretty Lights, and even put in a stint as the drummer for funk legends The Average White Band. For the last decade plus, Deitch Has operated as one-half of Break Science, a project blending Funk and Hip-Hop influences with EDM. The list of Credits and Accolades goes on and on and paints a clear picture of a master musician and producer.
With Deitch manning the drums and steering the ship behind their dynamic improvisational live show, Lettuce returns to First Avenue on Wednesday August 20th. Fans can expect a bit of old, a bit new and, according to Deitch, possibly even some nods to the city they’ll be playing in. To see Lettuce in a club is always a unique experience-no two shows are the same-and if past shows and current recordings are to be believed, it will be a night to remember.
Below Is an Interview with Adam Deitch. The following has been edited for Consistency.
Music in Minnesota: I know the roots of lettuce go way back, thirty-plus years. One of the things I’ve really admired about you guys is that you’re always staying highly creative, pushing things forward and evolving, which not every band does. What pushes you guys forward as a creative entity?
Adam Deitch: We feel like a young band, like a brand new band. We’ve been playing together for thirty years, but I feel like in the last ten we’ve really tightened it up. We’ve been studying other bands, studying not only what makes bands great but what makes bands break up. We’re into the art of being in a band and what It means for how we can all get better as businessmen, collaborating, writing, mixing, running a record label, playing the live show. All of those things are very important to us.
MIM: I want to follow up on something you said there, about studying other bands and what makes them click. Is there a band that you look at as a north star or inspiration, musically or in a broader sense?
AD: If you study the art of bands, there’s different wonderful gems about each great band that we love. It might be the music choice, it might be the community they created. For music choice, I’d say early Kool & The Gang, early Tower of Power, Maceo Parker, those are our musical giants. We appreciate what the Grateful Dead and Phish have done for community building and live touring. We appreciate acts like Primus who bring funk into the modern landscape. We really appreciate different bands for different reasons. Every band has their own gems.
MIM: You guys have a record coming out later this year, Cook. Can you speak a little bit to the record? You had that great Trilogy of records, what can we expect from the new record?
AD: Cook is just another example of us getting better at recording records, studying the art of record making. Us getting more mature as composers and players and as a band. I think it represents all of those things. We all love to cook, we all love to make food on tour. There’s that zeitgeist saying of “Let ‘em cook, let those guys cook.” We just felt that cook was the right vibe, and we’re excited for people to hear it.
MIM: I’m curious, how has your process of making records changed over time?
AD: It’s getting more and more dialed in. We have tunes that we either bring in when we’ve had a divine writing experience on our own or we get together and come up with ideas and see what goes down. There’s no one particular formula, but this one is definitely a synopsis of all of our different writing formulas.
MIM: On a different note, I did want to as about a few of your recent collaborations. Firstly, the record with the symphony. I know you’ve done symphonic gigs over the years. How did you get into that? Was that something you guys always wanted to do?
AD: Yeah that was something we always wanted to do. We love certain hip-hop records we grew up with, whether it’s Wu-Tang or Dr. Dre or Gang Starr. They always had strings with Hard drum beats. The whole idea of bringing together a string section, or a symphony with a sort of hip-hop funk aesthetic underneath that, that began with us listening to a lot of hip-hop records. We felt like that’s a very under discovered area of classical music. It’s another hybrid combining live funk and hip-hop beats and grooves with string arrangements and melodies. So we took our songs that had the most hip-hop vibes, and we mixed it up with some amazing string arrangements, and that’s what came out. We love doing that.
MIM: Even if there are parts of that that aren’t a departure from what you do in a ‘normal’ show, some of it seems like it would be. Was there a biggest challenge in recording, writing, or playing with the symphony?
AD: Just remembering that with the symphony, instead of cueing five people out of the bridge of, say, Ryan Zoidis’ Solo, I have to cue ninety people. So that’s the biggest challenge, actually connecting with the conductor. We’ve had some great conductors. By me cueing him and him cueing the symphony, we have a good synergy of how to get that together and we’ve avoided any train wrecks so far. That’s probably the biggest challenge of it all.
MIM: Another Collaboration I wanted to ask about was the Show with RZA and GZA. I know you’re a huge hip-hop head, that you guys were inspired by hip-hop, and that you guys had crossed paths before. Can you talk about that experience? The energy in that room looked insane.
AD: It’s amazing. We’re just of that generation. When we were thirteen or fourteen hip-hop was coming into play in the late eighties and early nineties. We were blessed to really feel a part of that and become a part of that by working with GZA years ago on a bunch of stuff. To have GZA with us, and to go on tour with him was amazing, and he’s sort of a leader in the Wu-Tang group. He’s been introducing us to all of the guys one by one. He brought The RZA up, the great producer behind the sound of Wu-Tang. It was RZA’s birthday and RZA had a great time. We love all eras of funky beats, and we include hip-hop into that.
MIM: It does show in your sound. You guys integrate hip-hop in a way that’s very organic. You can tell that you know the music, play the music, and love the music.
AD: Thank you. We studied the history of the music. Underneath hip hop is a lot of great psychedelic, funk, and soul records that got sampled. We know those records from digging into the past and trying to find many rare funk and soul recordings. So we understand the legacy of hip-hop and how it shined a light on a lot of very rare records that were lost to time. Then, the RZA would sample it and reintroduce it. We love it all.
MIM: Even in a band where genre-crossing is a norm, so to speak, your resume is very eclectic. It’s hard to imagine there are many other players who played with AWB, Pretty Lights, and John Scofield. How does working in so many styles and genres inspire you as a player?
AD: We’ve been very fortunate to work with some of our heroes. Some of our heroes we got to work with thirty years after we became fans of them. Some of our heroes we got to work with quicker. It always depends on timing and that sort of thing. So jumping around, working with different types of artists, it widens the scope of the band. It makes it harder for people to pigeonhole us in to “they just play hard funk” when we do a lot more than that. There are all types of subgenres under ‘soul music.’ Hip-hop, go-go, all different kinds of funk from like up-tempo disco funk to slow greasy New Orleans funk. There are so many subgenres under what people categorize as ‘soul music.’ We love to play it all, and it widens our scope.
MIM: You guys recorded that song “Keep that Funk Alive” with Bootsy several years ago. I think that’s a good synopsis of what you guys do, almost as a mantra. Do you see yourselves as ambassadors for funk music?
AD: We appreciate you calling us ambassadors to the funk, I think that’s for others to decide. What I do know is that we’ve had blessing from so many of our funk heroes from Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley, and the George Clinton Camp. I’ve gotten to meet Earth Wind and Fire, We’ve gotten to hang with Tower of Power. They kind of gave us a vote of confidence for carrying this music forward. We feel comfortable continuing on this path because we’ve gotten so much love from our heroes. The Bootsy thing was just a dream to work with him. Our obvious point of that song was to keep the music going, that great funk legacy. Maybe one day the Grammy’s will even have a funk category one day. I’m campaigning for it.
