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Written by Glenn BurnSilver
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Thursday, 22 March 2007 |
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 If you’ve heard of soul jazz revivalists the Greyboy Allstars featuring Karl Denson and Robert Walter, then you’ve heard of DJ Greyboy, at least in name anyway.
Greyboy created the Allstars, a band of stellar musicians he cobbled together, to play old-school soul jazz at parties and art openings. He never expected to be part of the proceedings.
“I wasn’t trying to put together a band with a DJ. I wasn’t trying to infuse the DJ with the band,” Greyboy, (real name Andreas Stevens) explained during a phone interview from his Long Beach, Calif., home.
Rather, his goal was to have a core group of musicians who would mix and match as bandleaders to release “organic music with traditional instruments, trying to capture the sounds I was being influenced by off old records.”
It didn’t quite work out that way. Mixing in a turntable element with the funky soul grooves and fast-paced playing of 1960s soul jazz turned out to be a groundbreaking approach. It was one that quickly gained steam among jazz fans and ultimately the hip-hop community that began sampling old soul and jazz albums.
“I didn’t think it would catch on like that,” he said.
Greyboy has since gone back to his roots, exploring musical avenues through deep funk grooves, old jazz riffs, classic soul, tight breakbeats, a touch of hip-hop and the occasional turntable scratch. He digs through thrift store bins and flea markets for unexpected grooves and lines that might be vaguely familiar but just obscure enough that they can’t be placed.
This is part of the DJ secret arsenal as they toy with the listener, mixing the music with parts of other musician’s work, finding that deep groove that works in the overall context of the music.
“I see my records as collages of these bits and pieces of sounds I have collected and put it in some big form that is original and makes sense,” he said. “It is almost required now because everything has been done, all the traditional routes have been explored.”
Being non-traditional in the first place, Greyboy shifted (in part) from samples to the real thing, occasionally employing soul singers like Bart Davenport and Daptones queen Sharon Jones.
“It’s more the attitude, the essence of just being open-minded and somewhat experimental,” he said.
“People are too busy trying to be original rather than just trying to be good. “It just goes back to that whole thing about the quality of music. It’s all about playing good music.”
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TO GO TO THE SHOW
DJ Greyboy
Doors 8 p.m.; Show 9 p.m.
Saturday, March 24
Aggie Theatre, 204 S. College Ave., Fort Collins, 482.8300
$10; www.djgreyboy.com
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COOL AND UNASSUMING
DJ Greyboy initially put together the Allstars as a group of musicians he could use in the studio as a backing band, and rehearsed them live at parties. As quick as the first album hit the streets, the soul jazz revival was under way. “But the cool thing about the Allstars was that at the time, I didn’t feel like I was doing anything special,” he said. “I felt like I was playing catch-up. It just turned out to be a really cool thing. But I just like to tell people that wasn’t my intention in the first place.”
Glenn BurnSilver
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MIXING ON THE FLY
The beauty of a DJ is that they can follow the audience vibe or play with the mood at their discretion. For DJ Greyboy, nothing is ever planned as every room and every crowd is different.
“Some of it is probably from laziness,” he admits with a laugh, “but how can you really say that the same set is appropriate in every place you play? Everyplace you go the people are so different. The mood is so different. I try and let those things determine what I do. I think it is best to adjust to every place I play.”
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