Features

Karl Denson: Play On, Player

Festival-goers may be convinced that Karl Denson has been following them around ever summer for the last decade as he appears in multiple, ever-morphing musical incarnations. Denson is, after all, a striking chameleon: a relentless saxophonist, flautist and vocalist who might turn up at any musical occasion for high-energy jamming. Whether it’s with his own band, Tiny Universe, with the inimitable Greyboy Allstars or as a guest with outfits such as New York’s jazz groove trio Soulive or California’s smoke-infused reggae punks Slightly Stoopid, Denson is in perpetual motion.

Those who’ve followed Denson’s career know that the San Diego-based player has serious staying power, despite the sometimes cruel and unusual nature of the music business. From his early days as the featured sax player in Lenny Kravitz’s band— that’s him wailing during the ingrained-in-your-brain solo at the apex of the 1989 hit “Let Love Rule”—to straight jazz gigs and his eventual residency on the jamband circuit, Denson’s endurance and ongoing success is a credit to his multifaceted talents as a musician and his long-grounded foundation as a family man.

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Denson was born in 1956 and grew up in Orange County, a notoriously conservative California community that, in contrast to being the home of Richard Nixon, has spawned artists from Jackson Browne and Tim Buckley to Social Distortion and No Doubt. (Denson came in at No. 21 on the O.C. Weekly’s list of best bands to emerge from behind the “Orange Curtain.”).

Though Denson says that no one in his family was particularly musically-oriented, his parents played a lot of now-classic soul in the house. His older brother eventually became a major jazz aficionado and turned Denson on to an impressively wide range of ‘60s and ‘70s artists that had a lasting impact on him. It’s also part of the reason that he never turned into Kenny G, he laughs.

“I got to listen to a lot of good music like Coltrane and a lot of the more avant-garde players out there when I was a kid,” he says. “And I totally attribute that to my decision never to play smooth jazz, ever. When jazz went smooth, I started to listen to punk.”

During the late 1980s, Kravitz, who was, at the time, something of an innovative genre-crosser, hired the young saxophonist to be part of his band. While massive international tours for Kravitz’s 1991 album Mama Said and 1993’s Are You Gonna Go My Way took Denson to major stages around the world, his exposure to the rigors and excess of the rock world caused him to reconsider a gig that centered more on his jazz roots.

Clocking in time as a member of ex-James Brown and Maceo Parker trombonist Fred Wesley’s band, Denson was able to eventually use his growing clout to land a multiple record deal with Minor Music, putting out four (by his current standards) unusually straight-ahead jazz albums between 1992 and 1995.

Denson, who was based in San Diego at the time, began collaborating with DJ Greyboy who had a regular gig at the Green Circle Bar playing acid jazz, groove-infused music. After collaborating on two tracks for Ubiquity Records’ influential Home Cookin’ compilation, the two formed Greyboy Records in 1993. Less than a year later, the project morphed into The Greyboy Allstars featuring guitarist Michael Andrews, organist/keyboardist Robert Walter, bassist Chris Stillwell and drummer Zak Najor. The group’s 1995 debut, West Coast Boogaloo, found immediate fans from the rock, hip-hop and jam worlds with its fusion of sounds.

As time went on, Denson says that he and his fellow bandmates’ outside gigs and personal lives eventually diluted the Allstars’ glue—particularly guitarist Elgin Park’s (who had replaced Andrews) budding career as a movie soundtrack composer—and they drifted apart. However, because there were never any bad feelings between members, the quintet re-emerged in 2001 for sporadic tour dates (most recently this past April) and high-profile festival performances (such as Outside Lands in San Francisco this past August).

“We never had what I’d consider a big breakup—people just wanted to do other things and we decided to take a few years off,” says Denson. “But we always enjoyed playing together, especially in recent years, and we realized we needed to do a follow-up to the last record [2007’s What Happened to Television? ].

The group has done three different recording sessions in the last year and a half while periodically touring. “It was exhausting, but it was a good experience,” says Denson of juggling the two duties. “It all helps to keep the band’s momentum going when we’re not playing together.”

The Allstars’ new album is currently slated for a spring release.