B-Side Guys

Adam Deitch needed something specific: a chill, hip-hop flavored joint. What emerged was “Breathe,” which Eric “Benny” Bloom calls his favorite track on the sextet’s upcoming Cook album—music for strutting through New York City on brisk October nights, contemplating futures that unfold when you stop overthinking and just exist. For a band built on James Brown’s blueprint and mentored by Tower of Power and Maceo Parker, this represents intentional deceleration, Lettuce trading their signature funk propulsion for something more suspended and contemplative.

The blissed-out quality here stems from restraint rather than embellishment. Lettuce’s all-organic, additive-free approach—the same philosophy that drives their Benny & Zoid Selections wine venture with Aquila Cellars—applies equally to production choices. No excess ornamentation, no unnecessary flourishes, just the essential ingredients allowed to breathe and expand. The retro hip-hop tinge colors the track without dominating it, Nigel Hall’s keyboards and Ryan “Zoid” Zoidis’ synth work creating atmospheric texture while Adam “Shmeeans” Smirnoff’s guitar and Erick “Jesus” Coomes’ bass maintain grounded groove.

Coomes frames the song philosophically: life viewed through childlike wonder, loving energy radiating outward and inevitably returning. That perspective informs the track’s meditative quality, an instrumental that resists urgency in favor of sustained contemplation. Coming off tours with GZA and Ziggy Marley, plus their live recording with the Colorado Symphony, Lettuce demonstrates their expanded palette without abandoning their funk foundation. Deitch describes Cook as more three-dimensional than previous efforts, exploring deeper production and arrangement territory, and “Breathe” exemplifies this evolution.

The band’s culinary metaphors extend beyond marketing—their insistence that wrong ingredients ruin both meals and music reflects genuine creative philosophy. “Breathe” applies this principle through careful curation: each element serves purpose, nothing included merely for decoration. The track creates space for actual breathing, sonic room where listeners can settle into the groove rather than chase it. Lettuce has spent decades perfecting their recipe, and here they prove that sometimes the most sophisticated approach involves knowing exactly when to pull back and let the fundamental ingredients speak for themselves.