The Greyboy Allstars

The Greyboy Allstars wanted to do something they had never done before. That was the only rule. Through a career now spanning over three decades, the quintet — Karl Denson (saxophone/flute), Michael Andrews AKA Elgin Park (guitar, bass), Robert Walter (piano, synth, organ), Chris Stillwell (bass, guitar), and Aaron Redfield (drums) — have made a name for themselves colliding genres and pushing the limits of their virtuosic musicality. Yet even after thirty-plus years of shape-shifting, their restless creativity meant that when they gathered for their first studio album in seven years, they were still asking: Where to next? Seeking new horizons yielded one of their most dynamic yet cohesive albums yet, an album bursting with new ideas and fittingly titled Flair.

“We all have so much music in us,” Park says. “For Flair, we wanted to lean into all the experience and hard work we have in different forms and say: Let’s just make music.”

The Greyboy Allstars’ story goes back to the early ‘90s, when the group cohered as a backing band for DJ Greyboy. Each had already made their name in the San Diego scene, and their landmark early releases — including their 1994 debut West Coast Boogaloo and 1997’s A Town Called Earth — helped define the West Coast acid jazz revival. A hybrid from the beginning, the Greyboy Allstars constantly reinvented themselves, trafficking in jazz both classic and cosmic, funk, hip-hop, and more esoteric forms of beat music. Following 2020’s Como De Allstars, the band continued to explore its deep roots in jazz, soul, and funk with 2022’s Get A Job: Music From The Original Broadcast Series Soul Dream, a collection of ten previously unreleased covers recorded live in the studio during the band's Soul Dream livestream series. In 2024, a compilation of rarities and outtakes called Grab Bag: 2007-2023 drew a line. That summed up everywhere the Allstars had been. Whatever happened next would build on their history, but upend expectations.

The Allstars’ reintroduction is well-timed. Given the ecosystem of the ‘90s, the Greyboy Allstars were often associated with the jam band circuit, grouped alongside similarly free-spirited musicians. But in today’s context, the Greyboy Allstars can also be seen as progenitors for the revitalized, adventurous jazz scenes thriving from London to Los Angeles and the generations of crate-diggers who have fueled evolution after evolution in beat-making and DJ culture. For Flair, the quintet challenged themselves to think outside of genre or influence as much as possible. Free-form jams, jazz scales, electronic textures — none of it mattered, and all of it was fair game. “We decided not to worry about what it is or who it sounds like,” Park says. “We let the album be defined by the act of doing it, just being there and seeing what music came out of us.”

“In the past, we were often paying tribute to albums we love,” Walter adds. “Even then, we were always trying to avoid cliches. But with Flair, we were thinking more about getting away from that, being more honest and less imitative.”

The parameters for each Greyboy Allstars album are always a bit different — whether they arrive with completed material, concoct it in the studio, what instruments are on hand. “We can make music together so fast, we found it can actually be a bit of a hindrance,” Denson explains. “For this record we decided to really spend some more time together putting some thought into the feel of the album and polishing the tunes.” Elements of the band’s core ethos remained intact: Forever looking for the groove, these songs had to be danceable. They also had to be interesting harmonically, with structures that kept each player excited and on their toes. Even taking their time, the Allstars had enough material for an album in only five days spent in Park’s Los Angeles studio, built from a foundation of new material brought in by Park and Walter, plus a whole day of pure improvisation that birthed several of the album’s remaining tracks. All of it was overseen by Park and DJ Greyboy, the quintet’s old associate rejoining them for the first time in years. Cumulatively, Flair has a spirit of full circle nods and newness alike.

The title Flair comes from the album’s opening track and manifesto: one of the improvised tracks, “Flair” symbolized the mixture of sonic exploration and the band tightening their solos into punchy song structures. The album comes to life with an unrelenting rhythm from Redfield, Stillwell, and Park, with Denson’s saxophones and Walter’s keys swirling together. The band settled on a kind of homophone double entendre — a “flare” for making art with urgency in precarious times, or “flair” for the array of colors they were wielding.

Flair is a kaleidoscopic record, each song pulling on a different thread yet flowing together seamlessly across the album’s arc. “First Breath” subverts the nature of an old-school Allstars song, working off a blues yet building it into space-age synths and bold hooks from a layered horn section. After a bracing opening salvo, the album exhales in its middle passage with “Pelican Formation,” a cinematic piece driven by aqueous guitars and piano, and a reading of Terry Callier’s cult classic “What Color Is Love” — featuring the Bird And The Bee’s Inara Goerge, Park’s longtime collaborator, on vocals. From there, Flair makes room for everything from quintessentially visceral Allstars grooves in “Hoops” and “Victory Lap,” to the psychedelic vistas of “Brisa Pacifica” and “Crystal Cottage.” “The record gets heavier and heavier the deeper you get into it,” Walter describes. “It gets more cerebral, harmonically crazy, but with a lot of ear candy.”

Flair never forgets the Greyboy Allstars’ history. In every note, you can hear the interplay of musicians who have known and trusted each other for decades, yet have not lost their love of playing together. For each member, the album is an uncynical, pure embrace of the joy in chasing music’s outer frontiers. “It all came down to what made us laugh, dance, and have fun in the studio,” Park says. “It’s as simple as that really.” All those years of shared experience means freedom — for the Greyboy Allstars to continue pushing the envelope, to reimagine what a Greyboy Allstars album sounds like.

Though prolific as a collective, Greyboy Allstars studio albums are rare events. They only happen when everything sits just right, and the quintet have something new they want to say. Flair is the sound of a band still growing, still evolving, still looking for that pure and sacred approach to making music. “At this point, something we all share is that drive to make something people really care about, something that you want to last,” Park concludes. “We want to be intentional about the energy we’re putting out into the world, and let what we play be completely, naturally us.”