Spam Allstars Bring Community Together on Thanksgiving Eve at ZeyZey

For years, Spam Allstars maintained an unintended tradition of playing Thanksgiving night, a byproduct of their weekly Thursday night residency at Hoy Como Ayer. Those early shows in Little Havana became their own kind of Miami ritual: a mix of people ditching family dinners early, locals escaping the bougie scene, and musicians rolling in after their own gigs. If it was Thursday, they played. Even on Thanksgiving. Now, 30 years later, they’re taking the stage Thanksgiving Eve, bringing together old friends visiting home for the holiday and new fans alike.

Spam Allstars could’ve only been born here: a city where salsa, sound-system culture, Power 96 freestyle, Cuban timba, and electronic beats all spill into each other like cafecito foam. Band founder Andrew Yeomanson says Miami shaped the band long before the band shaped Miami. “Everybody here grows up hearing everything; salsa, bass, freestyle, Cuban music, whatever’s coming out of a storefront,” he says. “There’s no other city like that.” With such a diverse pool of influences, the band’s ability to seamlessly blend them all together is a natural survival technique.

The group’s origins trace back to the mid-’90s, when Yeomanson (aka DJ Le Spam) began blending vinyl, live percussion, and various other musicians, like a mad scientist assembling a rhythm lab. “All that stuff together, the turntables, the sampler, the mixer, that’s my instrument,” he says. His trusty rig gradually formed a nucleus around which the band grew. The horn section expanded, percussionists and improvisers rotated in and out depending on the gig’s budget and needs, with the sound shifting accordingly. Eventually, they landed their Thursday residency at Hoy Como Ayer, allowing them to regularly experiment and hone their sound, building on the foundation of countless random gigs across the city and beyond.

These days, Yeomanson’s other life as founder of the City of Progress studio has him knee-deep in Miami’s musical past. Le Spam doesn’t just honor musical history through his own work; he archives it, digitizes it, studies it, and keeps it alive for future generations. Whole archives sit in danger of vanishing through humidity, decay, or the next construction disaster. He’s preserving multitrack tapes and forgotten catalogues from the Caribbean, Latin America, and South Florida. “When you see a room full of tapes that haven’t been digitized, it hits you,” he says. “Anything can happen. And if it hasn’t been preserved, it’s in peril.” 

He becomes especially animated when discussing the 2008 fire at Universal Studios, which destroyed a vault containing an unconfirmed but undeniably massive quantity of unreleased masters. “We’re never going to hear some of that music. It still kills me,” he says. “So the best thing I can do for the future of music is save what I can now.”

Even as he’s archiving the sounds that built Miami’s musical identity, Yeomanson remains grounded through the band he’s been shaping for decades. A tight, ever-evolving ensemble held together by horns, a deep percussion core, and the kind of chemistry that only comes from family-level bonds. Familiar faces anchor the group, but a new generation is quietly finding its place in the ranks. Afrobeta’s Smurphio (Tony Laurencio) often stands beside him now, able to sync his instruments to the samplers and go off into unique electronic avenues. AJ Hill’s daughter has begun exploring mallet percussion, a development that clearly lights Yeomanson up. “It’d be amazing to do something with that one day,” he says.

He doesn’t force the idea of legacy, but he’s not blind to it either. “Once you let the music go into the world, it has its own life,” he says. “If future generations pick it up, that would be the most gratifying thing.” The band has already outlived three decades of Miami reinvention, surviving scenes rising and collapsing, neighborhoods remade overnight, DJs and venues disappearing as fast as they arrived. In a city obsessed with the next thing, Spam Allstars has become something rare: a constant. A beating heart. A reference point.

Through it all, their philosophy hasn’t changed. The music expands and contracts depending on who shows up to play, the truest expression of a Miami band raised on improvisation, mutation, and collective energy. Which is why their Thanksgiving Eve set at ZeyZey feels more like a reunion than a concert. The band that accidentally created a holiday ritual is stepping back into it with a fresh lineup, a few surprises, and that signature chaos that only happens when Miami musicians return home for the season.

If you grew up here, if you left and came back, or if you’ve never seen Spam Allstars light up a courtyard under the Miami sky, this is the night.

Spam Allstars’ Homecoming Show. 8 p.m. Wednesday, November 26, at ZeyZey Miami, 353 NE 61st Street; zeyzeymiami.com. Tickets are $30 via Shotgun.