….For years the Ft. Worth, TX-based performer did the moonlight hustle as a marketing professional by day who jammed different joints and genres by night. After that grind wore him down, Letteri “ditched the desk” and went full-on pro on the ax, establishing his rep as a go-to stage and session musician long before joining forces with another Texas-grown Grammy-Award-winning jazz, funk and soul music collective, Snarky Puppy.
In a chat taking place merely weeks after their big win, the affable and informative Letteri broke it down about that viral video, when fans can expect to feast on that next helping of Family Dinner and how all of those band members share the golden prize.

Knowshi: All of you sound amazing together on that track, how did the collaboration happen and how did it go so viral so fast?

Mark: “I think ‘Sput’ (Snarky Puppy drummer Robert Seawright) played on one of [Lalah’s] records, and Mike (bassist Mike League) may have reached out to her that way, something like that. As far as the video goes, while we were touring last fall, driving through the West Coast, one of us had logged on and noticed that our video was suddenly at a million views. We found out that the link had been picked up by Reddit and fell under the title of something like, ‘Woman Sing 3 Notes At The Same Time.’ A lot of the people who clicked on it likely had no idea who Lalah Hathaway was, much less Snarky Puppy, but the headline made them feel as if they were going to find something outrageous, so they watched it anyway and it took off from there.
Even though the internet had made it something into something kind of gimmicky, like she was some random woman on a subway or something, it was really about full band arranging a song with a great artist, so what I think what was cool is that the link actually turned people on to some great music.”

Knowshi: Can you share who will be on the next installment? Any favorites you all would like to record with?

Mark: “The plan is definitely to do another Family Dinner record, it was called ‘Volume One’ for a reason and we’ll do the follow-up by the end of this year. As far as who’s going to be involved on it this time around, who knows? We’re always joking about what the dream partnerships would be, like Sting, Bjork, D’Angelo, people like that. Maybe they’ll read this and call us! (cracks up)”

Knowshi: How do you choose who to collaborate with performance-wise versus who not to?

Mark: “We try to get people who are well-known within their genres without being ‘superstars,’ so to speak, established ones like Lalah and N’Dambi who are ‘under the radar,’ so to speak, but still have big fan bases. It wouldn’t work…(click here for the full Mark Letteri Q&A at knowshi.com)