Greyboy Allstars Share ‘Catalina’ From ‘Como De Allstars’ Album: Exclusive Premiere

The Greyboy Allstars are gearing up for the release of Como De Allstars digitally this Friday, July 3. JamBase is pleased to preview the band’s first studio album in seven years by premiering Como De Allstars track “Catalina.”

The band — consisting of saxophonist Karl Denson, keyboardist Robert Walter, guitarist Elgin Park, bassist Chris Stillwell and drummer Aaron Redfield — formed in 1994 and released their debut album, West Coast Boogaloo, that same year. On August 7, GBA will reissue the long out of print LP, which features Fred Wesley through Light In The Attic.

Como De Allstars was just announced by GBA last week. “The record was in the can and we didn’t want to wait, so it was like, get it out there so people can enjoy it,” Park told JamBase. “We released the tunes because we realized we weren’t gonna be able to tour to support the album as we had planned due to the pandemic.”

“We had been waiting to find a good time in everyone’s schedules to tour,” added Walter. “I felt like we shouldn’t wait to release the music since there aren’t going to be any shows for a while. The music has an uplifting and fun feeling to it and we thought it could provide some nice relief during this stressful summer.”

Both Park and Walter weighed in on the connection between West Coast Boogaloo and Como De Allstars, a pair of albums at the bookends of GBA’s 25+ year career:

I am always surprised by the musical consistency and through line. Maybe the recordings sound slightly different, but the grooves, interaction, tone of the individuals, the decisions we are making are on the same horizon. – Park

Listening to them both you can tell we have evolved. If in nothing else, we have refined the sound and all gotten much better at our instruments. In a a lot of ways though we still are playing the same way and committed to the same basic ideas. The music is still funky, optimistic and natural. I feel very proud to be part of this lasting institution. – Walter

“Catalina” was penned by Karl Denson “years ago” according to Robert Walter. “We always loved it and it worked perfectly with the other songs on Como De Allstars,” the keyboardist explained. “‘Catalina came out of a pre-session we did for the album. We had a couple false starts and a few of our favorite tunes came out of them, all to be released at some point,” added Elgin Park. “This is a Karl Denson jam and we supported his idea with a bright rhythm track. I had just got a set up tuned bells and went to town on them.”

Stream “Catalina” below: