The Greyboy Allstars Create An Expansive, Exuberant ‘Grab Bag’

“We’ve been talking about putting out a B-side thing forever,” explains Greyboy Allstars keyboard player Robert Walter. “Every record we do, we end up with songs that get cut for time because you want the thing to fit on a vinyl. There have also been a few instances where a song will feel weird in the flow, so it doesn’t make the album. But we’ve always had these tapes or files floating around where we’ve said, ‘Oh, that’s a great one. I like that one even better than the stuff that’s on the album’. So we’ve been trying to put this together for a while, and then we finally had some time to go back into the archive and mix things.”

As Walter suggests, the group’s new album doesn’t feel like an odds and sods type of offering. In many instances, these songs were cut from the final record because they had some element in common with another tune already selected for that release. As a result, Grab Bag: 2007-2023 sounds akin to its predecessors, with a range of tones and styles.

The new album also includes two songs that originated during recent studio sessions from the quintet, which also features Elgin Park aka Mike Andrews (guitar), Karl Denson (saxophone, flute), Chris Stillwell (bass) and Aaron Redfield (drums).

Park observes, “The truth is that everybody in this band is fairly busy with different things. So we had started a new album and we were like 12 cuts into it. As always, we begin with a free palette and a free mind. We come in and make stuff that’s often outside of the realm of what might end up being on the album, but we’re like, ‘Why don’t we try something new?’ So we expand our palette at the beginning and say, ‘What if we did a record with all synthesizers?’ or ‘What if we did a record that was more loop-oriented?’ or ‘What if we did a record that was more rock or fusion?’

“So we bring some songs in and we do some stuff, and they’re often musical wins. However, we had a couple from the record we’re currently working on that we knew were probably not going on the final record. Then, after we did those sessions, everybody got busy again. I got a movie. Robert was on tour with Roger Waters. Karl was doing The Rolling Stones. So it was kind of impossible to get back together and we still haven’t, honestly. But there were these tracks from our past few albums that, for one reason or another, didn’t make it onto those records. [Those albums include: 2007’s What Happened to Television?, 2013’s Inland Emperor and 2020’s Como De Allstars.] So we were like, ‘Until we can get back in and finish this new record, let’s just put this stuff out.’ As we listened back, we realized that these songs warranted it.”

Slip the Grip

ELGIN PARK: Robert and I wrote this. I think we had done it with a couple different tempos. I feel like these Boogaloo songs sometimes just slip out of me and, in my opinion, that ties into the intention of those classic boogaloo records. These guys would get together at Rudy Van Gelder’s and they’d take two or three days to make a whole record. Often it would be a Donovan cover, a standard, and then four or five really awesome funky Boogaloo tunes that were basically blues with a head and an opportunity to play some solos and have a good time. When we write, it’s with that same spirit. These aren’t sonatas, these are funk jams.

I remember when we first started playing on the East Coast, people thought we wrote all these jams that were Grant Green or Boogaloo Joe Jones. So had to tell people: “Hey, we didn’t write this stuff. We’re spreading the gospel of this music. We are not claiming to own it.”

That was an incredibly uncommercial version of playing music. It’s kind of a trip to even think about it. We’d play these clubs, like the original House of Blues in Harvard Square, and it would be totally packed and sweaty and amazing. Then that was it. We never toured with merch. There was no video. There was no way to get a record. So people had to show up and experience it.

ROBERT WALTER: That tune was one of the first ones we wrote during an earlier time when we got back together to do a new record. I also believe that was the first time we recorded with Aaron. I made up the bassline and then I sat at the piano with Elgin and he made up the melody.

We used to open with “Slip the Grip” all the time. It’s a cool kind of slow-burn thing to start with. But then we stopped playing it because it wasn’t on a record. We’ve brought it back, though, and we’ve been playing it a lot lately.

Watch Out Gail

EP: That’s one of Karl’s funk jams. Karl is always in hot pursuit of a James Brown jam. We approach it sort of cockeyed. He’ll hum the bass and guitar parts, then play some stuff on the keyboard, and we all kind of put together a funk jam out of it.

I think this was recorded for Inland Emperor, which is one of my favorite records we’ve ever done. In the end, I think we didn’t want to have something that sounded too similar to something else that was already on there, so we went with “Bomb Pop.”

RW: That’s one of Karl’s tunes and I think it’s a switcher, where Chris plays guitar and Elgin plays bass. It’s a kind of tune that we’ve been doing throughout our career, like “Toys R Us.” They will switch instruments and play sort of a James Brown-y funky tune. It’s a good up-tempo thing with some rototoms in it and stuff like that.

Speed Freak

RW: “Speed Freak” is one of mine. It’s my tribute to progressive rock or early fusion. I grew up loving Yes and Rush and stuff like that. Later, I got a little bit into Mahavishnu and Weather Report—I really loved their early, raw stuff. So this is my version of that or a jazz-rock thing. In the early ‘70s, a lot of bands were experimenting with that and I always liked that kind of music. It sort of sits outside of our normal realm, but I think it works with this band.

I also really love Emergency! by Tony Williams, which has John McLaughlin and Larry Young. That’s probably closer to what this tune’s trying to be, where it’s this sort of searching thing and the harmony is open. I love that it feels like discovery.

EP: When we originally recorded it, we might have thought, “We’re not ready to go that fuzzed out and hard on this record.” So it stuck out as an outlier because it didn’t feel like it fit anywhere. In the sequence of things, it just felt a little too fusioned out. But listening back to it, I was like, “Damn, this is cool. We’ve got to put this out.”

Boxes

RW: “Boxes” is another part of my jazz-influence bag. It’s trying to be a Wayne Shorter song with a long chord progression, a long form, and you play over that form. A lot of times, when you’re in these sort of jazz-funk bands, you play a lot of vamps and then you go to the IV chord for the bridge that you call, and that’s the structure. In our sets, we’ve always tried to mix it up between vamp tunes like that, some different kinds of blues tunes and then some tune tunes. This is one of the tune tunes where it’s really a form, everybody plays over the form, and you always keep the form. It’s sort of a long, cyclical thing with interesting harmonies.

EP: “Boxes” is great. It was part of the session where we went really pretty far out, and it was originally a jazz song that was sort of a synth-space jam as well. So we started playing it on piano, upright bass, guitar, drums and f lute or sax. Then we put an entire swath of synthesizers over it.

Another song that happened at that time was “Rudolph’s Lament,” which was the jam we put out for Christmas a few years ago. Then there were a couple of other outliers that were too far out for even this album. We mostly took the synths off of it, and it revealed itself to be quite a beautiful composition. So we were really excited about putting that on the record. It’s a great tune to play because it feels wide open for us. It’s more jazzy than we usually go, and Robert’s a great composer.

San Diegogo

EP: That’s a Chris tune, and it was part of this weird sort of thing, where we were embracing yachtness. It has that acoustic guitar on it, and it has a little bit of fusion. I think that might’ve been in the same session with “Speed Freak”—if you dig into it, it has similar harmonic elements. We were definitely having fun and poking a little bit of fun at a genre with that one.

RW: We used to call this, jokingly, our local news theme when we were working on it. I love ‘70s things—TV show themes, old commercials. Everything was a little funky back in the ‘70s. The cartoon theme songs were even funky. One time I was at DJ Greyboy’s house, and he had Scooby Doo on in the background, which had the funkiest background track while they were walking in a graveyard. Those things happened all the time.

It’s kind of our ode to a local news theme, and then it got weirder from there.

There’s also a tongue-in cheek nod to the breeziness of San Diego. The funky bands from New Orleans have a certain flavor, the funky bands from the East Coast tend to be a little more aggressive, and we’ve always had this breezy, mellow thing. It’s like a West Coast identification and this song is sort of playing with those ideas.

LLL

EP: Although I’m singing “LLL,” it was originally written for this older R&B woman to sing in a movie I worked on. She was a gospel queen, but it was in a weird key and, when she came over to sing on it, she wasn’t really getting it in the way that I wanted it to go.

I had my demo, and I was starting to live with it. I began to think, “I’m not Michael McDonald, but it’s still pretty good, so why don’t we just use it?” So that was the track but then we had “Old Crow” on the record [Inland Emperor], which is basically the same genre. We were like, “Well, we don’t want to have two ‘70s AOR tracks on the same record. Let’s just use one of ‘em.” So we used that other one, which is kind of how this happens. Then, when you go through a series of records over time, you end up with another record full of stuff.

Lyrically, it’s about this moment when we were playing in San Francisco and I thought, “Man, it’s really changed up here.” Not to be retro or not embracing the present moment, but I was thinking, “We’ve got to remember why we gather together to hang out, listen to music and play.” That song is pretty earnest, which was one of the other reasons why we never put it on an album. I felt like I was a little exposed out there and I was like, “I don’t know if I can be that earnest with the Greyboy Allstars.” But then I thought, “Fuck it, I’m going to put it out there. I’m going to be sensitive on a Greyboy Allstars record.” I mean, anybody who listens to any of my solo albums knows that I go there. So maybe people begrudge me for that, but I don’t care. I’m part of this band, so I get to do what I want, too.” [Laughs.]

RW: We used to call it our Doobie Brothers tune because it’s got a ‘70s FM radio thing about it. That one came out beautifully. There’s a bunch of synth overdubs and a lot of what Elgin’s playing are little orchestrations. I love that because it reminds me of Seals & Crofts or something similar.

Suadela

RW: “Suedela” was recorded recently. We were talking about doing something where it wasn’t just everybody playing a solo, where it’s a mood piece. So that one’s all about sonics and vibe. We’ve been messing with tunes like that throughout our career. We used to do this cover of “Loran’s Dance,” which was on an Idris Muhammad record with Grover Washington [Power of Soul]. We recorded that for West Coast Boogaloo and then it just didn’t make it. So we’ve always had these kind of chill-out, beautiful things, but this latest version has got some fancy synthesizer action on it, too. I also love how you can hear Karl’s breath because he’s playing real quiet on a great mic.

EP: One of the things we were trying to work through with the new record is having tunes where people aren’t just blowing solos the whole time. It’s more of a chill play, almost like a Roy Ayers track—something that’s not really trying to impress. It’s not all flexing.

I wrote that song mostly on piano, which is something I haven’t done much with the Greyboy Allstars. So maybe that’s why it sounds harmonically a little different than some of the stuff we’ve done before.

I feel that going into an interior, introspective space on some stuff is valuable. So I think we’ll probably do more of that, although I don’t know exactly how it will manifest itself. Maybe we’ll do more stuff that feels like that psychologically, but not musically.

The Way You Make Me Feel

RW: That one we’ve been covering for years. It’s been kind of a live favorite. “The Way You Make Me Feel” is a shuffle on the record, but we play it as more of a boogaloo thing. It’s basically a blues, but it’s got a lot of sense memory. I grew up loving Michael Jackson’s music.

Pixie Stick

RW: This was also from the latest session and it’s a Chris Stillwell thing. Chris is probably the biggest record collector in the band. Everybody loves records, but he loves these sort of pitchy exotica records and high fidelity Enoch Light records and easy-listening stuff. When he brought it in, he was like, “I’ve got this Lawrence Welk kind of thing” and we were like, “Oh, that’s cool.”

Everybody loves those beautifully crafted, well recorded late ‘50s records— mid-century, hi-fi music. That’s kind of our version of it. I’m trying to play a little bit like Walter Wanderley, a great Brazilian organ player who has a more open sound with reverb and stuff.

EP: “Pixie Stick” is yet another amazing composition from the mind of Chris Stillwell. Chris is a very unique writer, and he has a specific sensibility. Chris is a soundtrack collector, he loves guitar, and he does a lot of guitar playing and writing on his own. This is just one of his jams, and they’re always a treat to put into the mix. It was a little quirky for us, so we thought, “Let’s put it on this record where it can live and breathe and be appreciated.” I love that song. Chris is always writing very cool tunes.

So those are all the jams. It’s another Greyboy Allstars record and we’re all happy about it. Then there’s another one almost in the can. So we’ve got more coming.