The Greyboy Allstars

The Greyboy Allstars
The Greyboy Allstars performing at the Hangout Music Festival 2012
Background information
Origin	San Diego, California, USA
Genres	soul jazz acid jazz
Years active	1993 – present
Labels	Knowledge Room Recordings
Website	http://www.greyboyallstars.com/ https://www.facebook.com/thegreyboyallstars https://twitter.com/GreyboyAllstars
Members	DJ Greyboy Karl Denson Robert Walter Chris Stillwell Elgin Park Aaron Redfield
Past members	Zak Najor Alan Evans

The Greyboy Allstars are a jazz band who released their fourth album, Inland Emperor, in 2013.

The band came together in 1994, when a select group of musicians were asked to perform at a record release party for the landmark acid jazz and club staple “Freestylin” by San Diego’s DJ Greyboy, who was well known for spinning `70s soul and funk. The group enjoyed playing together, and decided to continue on as a band. The Greyboy Allstars started playing weekly at San Diego’s now defunct Green Circle, weekends at San Francisco’s Elbo Room and various clubs throughout Europe. By playing danceable boogaloo music within the soul and jazz genres, they became very popular both nationally and internationally.

The lineup of the band remains nearly the same, with Karl Denson on horns, flute, and vocals, Robert Walter on keyboards, Elgin Park (a.k.a. Michael Andrews) on guitars and vocals, and Chris Stillwell on bass. Original drummer Zak Najor was replaced by Aaron Redfield, an old friend of the band and frequent collaborator. While DJ Greyboy is no longer a member of the band, he remains a central figure in their artistic output, having introduced the band to many of the records that inspire their sound, produced their first album and appeared on 2007′s What Happened to Television?

Individual members of the group have gone on to score film and television shows, work with platinum artists and bands both on the road and in the studio, and head their own solo projects.

For Inland Emperor, they worked out the arrangements during the recording, which took place live over just a few sessions at Elgin Park’s studio in Glendale, CA. Denson says of this accelerated pace of creation, “We do in one week would take me two months to do in any other situation.” Grammy Award-winning producer/engineer Mickey Petralia (Beck, Peaches, Eels, Flight of the Conchords) mixed the tracks.