Thee Sacred Souls

Thee Sacred Souls are a retro-soul group from San Diego, California, whose sound is inspired by threads of various R&B traditions, from Latin R&B to Northern and Southern soul. Founded by drummer Alex Garcia, bassist Sal Samano, and singer and songwriter Josh Lane, the trio is appended by guitars, keyboards, and backing singers live. Following several charting indie singles, their self-titled debut album appeared on Daptone in 2022.
Garcia and Samano grew up in Chula Vista. Their neighborhood experience was drenched in Chicano and Motown soul, bugalu, and lowrider culture. The two began playing together by forming an oldies group in 2018; they also started composing R&B instrumentals. Without the talent to write lyrics, however, let alone a vocalist, they stalled, unsure of how to proceed. The pair discovered Josh Lane — and his smooth, silky, tenor voice and crystalline falsetto — on Instagram. Lane, a City Heights resident, had moved from Sacramento in 2017 after a lifetime of singing in church and later pursuing classical voice music studies in college, singing everything from French arias to Italian opera. He had planned on becoming a solo artist, with a style that skewed more toward dream pop and chillwave than old-school soul. Lane had been writing songs for many years, but he had yet to establish himself on SoCal’s scene. After some messaging with Samano, they set up a date to jam as a trio with Garcia. Lane added a new, energetic, and capable dynamic; he wrote lyrics to some of their instrumentals on the spot — including the words for “Can I Call You Rose?,” which eventually became their first single.
Woodshedding to prepare new material and rehearse choice covers, the group chose Thee Sacred Souls as a name in April 2019. Based on a demo, they were able to book small gigs as a septet in Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Diego with guitar, keys, and backing vocals. Daptone’s Gabriel Roth caught one of these early gigs in Fullerton and liked what he heard — a lot. Less than a month later, after the band had been playing live for only a month, he signed them.
The group wrote, rehearsed, and even recorded (socially distanced) across the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Their first single, “Can I Call You Rose?” b/w “Weak for Your Love,” arrived in March 2020 just as the pandemic bit down hard. They recorded the poignant, moving “Give Us Justice,” an anti-violence anthem written in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis three weeks earlier. “Will I See You Again?” b/w “It’s Our Love” arrived in January 2021. By spring, the band were playing out again, albeit sparingly, and as the year went on, they played larger shows and wrote more music.
In February 2022, Thee Sacred Souls released the digital single “Trade of Hearts.” Recording at Daptone’s Riverside studio with Roth (aka Bosco Mann) producing, their self-titled debut long-player appeared in August. It showcased the trio with the Daptone Horns, studio aces, and singers on a 12-song set that included some of their early singles. ~ Thom Jurek