Hip Spanic Allstars

It’s a warm night on Mission Street. Going low and slow, cars cruise by the crowded sidewalks, as people hang out, check each other out, tease and flirt. The soundtrack of it all, old soul, salsa, R&B tracks, drifts over the street. It’s the scene set by the music of Hip Spanic Allstars. The new super group features members of Santana, Tower of Power, Spearhead, Primus and Los Mocosos

This is also the place, the culture where the Hip Spanic Allstars come from: San Francisco’s Mission District, the same fertile ground that gave us Santana and Sly and the Family Stone. The Hip Spanic Allstars can do it all--from Latin jazz, to salsa, to rock and roll, they stir it all and more together on their forthcoming album, Old-School Revolution (release date: October 26, 2018).

Joining forces, longtime friends and collaborators include Happy Sanchez, Frankie Navarro, Karl Perazzo (Santana), Nobert Stachal, Mic Gillette, Dave Shul (Michael Franti and Spearhead), and Jay Lane (Primus) on the drums. With this experienced lineup of friends, the Hip Spanic Allstars are the Mission District band you never thought could exist.

“We grew up in the era of the big funk groups, and they all had horns. A lot of those guys are not Latino, but it really resonated with the community. That was where we drew our roots,” exclaims Happy Sanchez, the driving force behind the Allstars. “The Bay Area always had a strong Latin and Tropical scene, and it’s a formula we’ve stuck to, year in, year out.”