When it comes to their Salt Peanuts, these boys don’t play.

Melting jazz with hip hop, latin with R&B, and funk with soul, the members of Liquid Soul have created a Chicago-based sound not to be trifled with.

Consisting of a core group of eight members, Liquid Soul is led by tenor/alto/soprano saxophone player Mars Williams. The group brings improvisation to a new level while maintaining a stability that would catch the ear of any radio listener.

With the band’s third album set to be released in February and a jumble of tour dates in between, Liquid Soul is far from fading.

What does the name Liquid Soul symbolize?

It kinda describes our music. It’s like a flowing fluid mix of all different musical styles, served with a twist. It describes the sound.

How many members does Liquid Soul currently have?

It varies, but right now we’re doing it eight-piece, plus our sound engineer, who plays an important part.

How did you all meet?

Well, we started out here in Chicago. Actually, I had another band that was doing jazz/funk/rock kind of stuff. The original guitarist of Liquid Soul was in that band, and bass player Rick Schowalter was in the group with me. Dan Leali, our drummer, was also in that group at times.

So the musicians from that group merged with a DJ and we started a Sunday night freestyle/acid jazz night in the Elbow Room in Chicago. This was like over five years ago.

At that time it was only a five-piece. Then we gradually would have people sit in and we were doing some of the tunes that I had already written for my other band. Through the freestyle we started coming up with new ideas, and I started writing specifically for Liquid Soul. But we still did a lot of freestyles and we would always open the stage for different rappers, musicians, and poets.

How did the freestyles go over?

The night got pretty popular. Because of the popularity of the night, and all of the people that would come and support us, it kind of encouraged us to keep developing the band.

When you see people digging it, it’s like, “Wow, maybe we got something.” So we started developing the sound more, and people would keep on sitting in. Some people would really stand out like Ron Haynes, our trumpet player now. He sat in one time, and I was spoiled. He was so powerful, and I loved playing with him, so I added him to the group. That’s also the way we got our trombone player.

The night kept growing until we outgrew the Elbow Room.

Who are some of Liquid Soul’s major musical influences?

First of all, I would say that the main influences of Liquid Soul are every musician in the band. They all have a certain musical identity and musical personality that I don’t want to stifle. I still like to have them play the way they play over whatever song I write. Now, other members are getting involved in the writing process with me, which is nice.

How would you personally describe Liquid Soul’s sound?

Liquid Soul is about taking all different musical styles and layering them on top of each other. I don’t like to set boundaries in music and call music a certain style.

I don’t even like to call us acid jazz. I don’t know what we are — we play music. We play groove music, or you know, whatever. Yes, we’re acid jazz sometimes, because we play hip hop layered on top of jazz. But we go beyond that and add some Latin influences, some avant garde-free improvisational influences, mid-eastern, and even African at times.

That’s why Liquid Soul is such a cool band, because we touch on so many different styles. It’s good for us because we’re able to experiment with new ideas and try different things. It keeps it fresh for us.

How often do your band members play around?

I still encourage everyone to go play with different people, although we don’t have much time since we’re on the road so much.

We are taking a month off in October. Our trumpet player, Ron, is going to a jazz festival in Saudi Arabia to play with a five-piece group of his own, along with our drummer Dan. I’m going to the Berlin Jazz Festival in Sweden, and another festival.

It’s great whenever everybody goes out and plays with different people because when they come back, they’re bringing something new to the table.

How big of a role does improvisation play in your live shows?

Within every song, there are still solos by horn players and stuff. So there’s improvisation there. But throughout the night we always try to throw in at least two freestyles. Our rapper always freestyles. He will never rap the same lyrics that are on the record. So, he’ll maybe look out into the audience and see two people arguing and he’ll start rapping about that.

What was it like working with Kurt Elling on the song “Salt Peanuts?”

Oh man, he smoked it. We had been wanting to work together on some things for a while, and he said he’d love to come in and do it. So he came into the studio and it was like “Bam, Bam, Bam.” We did three takes, and they were all smokin.’

Originally, we had trumpet and trombone solos at the beginning. So we had already recorded it that way. We were gonna have Kurt do a solo and then the trumpet and trombone.

After listening to it, though, I was just like “You know what? Fuck it. Kurt’s gonna do the whole thing.” And he completely smoked it.

How would you compare your upcoming album to “Make Some Noise” and “Make Some Noise” to your previous self-titled project?

I think the difference between the first record and “Make Some Noise” is you can hear a growth and maturity in the band.

There’s more use of the layering of different styles within each song on the second one. The first record has a lot more freestyles on it, which is kinda cool.

Our next record, which is tentatively titled “Here’s the Deal,” we kind of experiment a little bit more.

In the writing style, it’s still the layering of different styles. There are some tunes that have a little bit more edge to them. There are a few tunes with different atonal tonalities over sort of a funk groove.

The album is very experimental. There’s gonna be more stuff that’s, I hate to say it, radio acceptable; and there will be bigger extremes on this record.

What’s the craziest thing that’s ever happened to you on the road?

I guess I’ll tell you the most recent thing — there are too many. We played in Austin, Texas, and this guy took us out to dinner before our show. The same guy also owned a strip club downtown. So we’re playing our set and these girls that he brought jumped up on stage all wearing Liquid Soul T-shirts. They were like dancing around and stuff got kind of crazy.

Do you guys still play at the Double Door every weekend in Chicago?

Yes. We only missed about eight shows all last year. This week for instance, we did five shows in Colorado, flew in Sunday afternoon, played Sunday night, and drove to Detroit the next day for the Detroit Jazz Festival. We’re pretty dedicated, and our fans still support us here.

Would you say that Liquid Soul is a good representative of the diversity found musically in Chicago?

Yes. I really think there is a lot of open-mindedness in Chicago to a lot of different styles. It’s sort of a melting pot for musical styles. There’s a big Latin community here, a great jazz community here, and a whole big underground avant garde scene here that’s being recognized now world wide. A lot of European artists are coming to Chicago to play and the audiences are very receptive to it.

Does the band have any other big future plans?

The only future plans are to just keep touring and doing what we’re doing; to keep coming up with music and keeping it fresh. Who knows where the music will go? The good thing about Liquid Soul is that you can’t really pinpoint our style, so that no matter what we do in the future, it’s still gonna be Liquid Soul.

Salty Peanuts, or chocolate covered?

What, you mean my preference?

Yup.

Definitely chocolate covered.