UPDATE, 5/31: The schedule apparently calls for Gringo Star to perform at 6 p.m., The Greyboy Allstars at 7:30, and Mayer Hawthorne at 9. This strikes me as odd since SCAD’s calendar and various press releases have referred to The Greyboy Allstars as the headliner, but that’s the lineup as far as I can tell.
ORIGINAL POST:
I’ve already done one short post listing the three acts for SCAD’s New Alumni Concert in Forsyth Park on Friday, May 31 — the night before graduation — featuring The Greyboy Allstars, Mayer Hawthorne, and Gringo Star.
That post has gotten a lot of traffic, but not as much as another post pointing out the ridiculousness but doggedness of the rumor that SCAD had booked Mumford & Sons for the annual free show. It’s a great example of the durability of misinformation on the web — once incorrect info is out there, it’s hard to correct it.
Since I didn’t actually write anything about Friday’s show for any of my print columns, I just wanted to say a little more here.
SCAD has clearly — and justifiably — lowered their sights for these big graduation concerts. Even with a permanent — if deeply flawed — stage in the center of Forsyth, a free concert of this scale is still a major production and a major expense.
Years ago, SCAD was pulling out all the stops, booking acts like George Clinton, James Brown, and Ziggy Marley (with the Neville Brothers opening). Michael Franti also did a great show as a big storm brewed in the distance.
There have been some strong acts the last few years too, but not quite the blazing headliners of earlier concerts. I found Cold War Kids a little disappointing two years ago, and last year I didn’t even make it to Grace Potter & the Nocturnals and JJ Grey & Mofro.
This year’s New Alumni Concert looks really good. We’ve known the lineup for a while, but only in the last few days or maybe a week has SCAD posted the following to its events calendar:
The annual New Alumni Concert in Forsyth Park is a celebration of the newest SCAD alumni and their achievements while SCAD students. Headlining this year’s concert are The Greyboy Allstars, a jazz-funk band from California. Also slated to perform are Atlanta indie rockers Gringo Star and R&B singer and songwriter Mayer Hawthorne, a longtime Savannah favorite. The concert is free and open to the public.
I should note that somewhere along the line, that press release has gotten a little garbled. Gringo Star is the longtime Savannah favorite. To my knowledge, Mayer Hawthorne has never played Savannah. Anyone?
One music-savvy friend expressed some surprise that Mayer Hawthorne isn’t the headliner. From his official bio:
Hawthorne grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, just outside of Detroit, and vividly remembers, as a child, driving with his father and tuning the car radio in to the rich soul and jazz history the region provided. “Most of the best music ever made came out of Detroit,†claims the singer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist, who counts Smokey Robinson and famed songwriting trio Holland, Dozier, Holland among his influences, but also draws inspiration from Michael McDonald, Juan Atkins and J Dilla.
Hawthorne has produced and played instruments for much of his life, but never intended to become a singer. What he became, however, was a new school soul sensation, touring globally and earning accolades from Playboy, NPR and Entertainment Weekly. “He’s an able singer…an arranger of astonishing precision,†wrote the New York Times when Hawthorne first hit the scene.
Hawthorne recently collaborated with Booker T on “Sound the Alarm”:
And Hawthorne has some videos with a stunning number of views on YouTube, including this one approaching 4 million:
And this one with almost 2.8 million:
I can’t say that I’m in love with Hawthorne’s sound, but clearly he’s a force to be reckoned with.
Gringo Star seems to me to have long been a candidate to hit it big. The jangly garage rock sound works well in small clubs and translates beautifully to the studio, as you can tell here:
I will be curious to hear Gringo Star in the big space of Forsyth Park. I’m not quite sure what piece of the puzzle has been missing to prevent the band from finding a broader audience — or whether it’s just been bad luck. The band has 18,000 likes on Facebook — an accomplishment in itself — so clearly I’m not the only one who has been impressed over the years. The problem might be simply PR — it’s hard on any of those sites even to find a simple band bio, which is an incredible frustration for writers like me.
The Greyboy Allstars, who have been playing together for almost 20 years, have the type of jammy sound that should be a big hit after dark with a young crowd in Forsyth:
The Greyboy Allstars recently released their album Inland Emperor. From the band’s bio:
On Inland Emperor, the Greyboy Allstars’ fourth studio album to date, one hears the benefits that accrue when a group of exceptional players with a wide variety of tastes and musical experiences continue to collaborate for 20 years. The cornerstones of The Greyboy Allstars sound remain the same: funk, soul and jazz; or, looked at another way, rhythm and spontaneity. Without attempting to recreate them, the band has drawn upon elements of many genres: old soundtracks, psychedelic garage rock, ’80s dance music, ’70s FM soft rock and Tropicalia, to name a few. As a result, Inland Emperor has the vibe of a mixtape whose tracks are united by an emphasis upon rhythm.
The Greyboy Allstars came together in 1994, when the individual members 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 famous for spinning `70s soul and funk. The guys so enjoyed playing together that they decided to continue on as a band. Right out of the box, The Greyboy Allstars starting 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 jazz genre, they became a national and international phenomenon. The lineup of the band remains nearly the same as it did on their breakthrough, West Coast Boogaloo: Denson on horns and vocals, Robert Walter on keyboards, Elgin Park (aka Michael Andrews) on guitars and vocals, and Chris Stillwell on bass. Original drummer Zak Najor has passed the baton on to 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?
At this point, the band’s members are as well known for their non-Allstars projects as for their work with the band. The individual members have gone to score film and television shows, work with platinum artists and bands both on the road and in the studio, and head their own highly regarded solo projects.
SCAD has the show listed for 6 p.m., and it might actually start then. Graduation is the following morning, and there’s no real upside either for graduates, SCAD staff, or visiting guests in having a show that runs extremely late the night before.
The weather forecast looks perfect, with a high in the 80s falling into the 70s in the evening.