Turning 16 is always so sweet.

But rather than 16 candles or a lavish party thrown by wealthy parents, The Greyboy Allstars will instead take relish in the four albums they’ve put under their belt in the past 16 years since they began in 1993. Though 16 is relatively young in the real world, in the music industry it is a sign of seasoned veterans who have paid their dues.

The band, which consists of Karl Denson on saxophone, Elgin Park on guitar, Robert Walter on keys, Chris Stillwell on bass and Aaron Redfield on drums, will be performing at the Fifth Third Bank Waterfront Independence Festival on July 4. LEO talked to Walter on getting older, the pros of embarking on multiple musical endeavors and feeling safe in the rhythmic underground.

LEO: How would you define the sound of the The Greyboy Allstars to someone who doesn’t know anything about you guys?

RW: It’s dance music, but it’s also improvisational. That kind of comes from a real direct set of influences, which is mainly jazz records from the late 60s and early 70s, where a lot of the jazz artists started incorporating rock and soul music influences. But they’re coming from a jazz background and they’re interpreting new music through their little filter. And at the time we started, not a lot of people were interested in those records. By now, its become more accepted by the jazz community and all that is part of the history that at the time would be kind of commercial sell-out records. We responded to that music and sort of championed it, told our friends about it, and started listening to a lot of music and started playing music that was heavily influenced by that. And I think that’s still a big influence on us although it’s become more natural to us and less imitative.

LEO: You guys have been together for 16 years. Is there anyway you can describe the journey of The Greyboy Allstars from the beginning to now?

Robert Walter: It’s sort of like the best band that any of us have been in, in my opinion. We’ve been in other projects that were good for other reasons. The down side of that is that it’s a pretty narrow thing stylistically. We basically play dance music, if you want to dance around. We’re really influenced by the ‘60s and ‘70s. We’ve always kind of protected that and kept that as the vibe. We don’t include everything that we’re interested in and everybody in the band is interested in all types of music, so I’ll do other things. But as far as the unit, the way we play together and the chemistry of it, that’s the thing I’ve never really encountered with any other group of people.

LEO: You mentioned that you play in different bands on the side…

RW: We all have multiple things. All of us have solo careers. I’ve made more records on my own than I have with the Greyboy Allstars. Karl Denson does the same thing, Michael Andrews (a.k.a Elgin Park) does that as well as being a film score composer, we all play on other people’s records and write music for other things. It was kind of a joke calling us an all-star group in the beginning because none of us had really done much. By now, we really all have accomplishments of our own.

LEO: How do you and the rest of the band members merge doing things on your own outside the band and the coming back to the band?

RW: It would be hard to find one project that would satisfy everything you want to do, if you’re really interested in music. I think a lot of guys in rock bands just like being in a band and all that, which being in a band totally satisfies that need. You go on the road, you play your shows, people like it…but if you’re interested in music, in general there’s so many different things you want to do and trying to do it all with one band would be both frustrating and also would not make for the best presentation of the music.

LEO: Do you find it difficult to get that mainstream success because all the members are varied in their endeavors?

RW: I like pop music, but it doesn’t necessarily get me excited the same ways that other kinds of music do, most of which have never existed in a real popular realm. I don’t feel like we should have been more successful, if that makes any sense. I’m still amazed they let us do it, really. And its never been a goal of mine particularly…other than I need to pay the rent, but my sense of self or happiness is not about how many people like the band. As long as there’s a crowd, somebody liked it. It’s more about being able to express my ideas. If there was no audience, I’d be bummed out, but I’m not unhappy with the size of the audience.

LEO: You’ve had 16 years of being in the “underground” music scene. What has that been like?

RW: I kind of think that we’ll always be there. There’s also…left of center rock bands that sort of exist in this zone forever. There’s any kind of music, there’s stuff like this. In a way, it sort of protects you from becoming a parody of yourself because it never became such a part of the consciousness that it’s too much a point of reference for people. As long as you can make a living that sort of allows you to do whatever you want…we’ve never been on a major label, we’ve never had anyone say, “Why don’t you do this instead of this on the next record?,” and “You need a hit,” and “You need to do this.” So we’ve just sort of gotten to do whatever we’ve wanted. By now it’s been long enough where I’ve seen bands, the new next thing come, and they’re playing the same size venues as us, and they get really popular, and then they’re playing the same size venue as us again. Once they’re popular, they wane. We’ve sort of just stayed at the same level. —Kathleen Keish