The music of New Orleans comes to Taos
‘Voodoo Threauxdown’ tour comes to Taos on Saturday
For Trombone Shorty, his current tour is a full-circle moment.
The world-famous, New Orleans born-and-raised musician — his real name is Troy Andrews — is traveling the country with an all-star lineup of acts from his hometown.
His “Voodoo Threauxdown” tour, which celebrates New Orleans’ 300th anniversary, is coming to Taos this weekend. Accompanying him are the old-school Preservation Hall Band, funksters Galactic, the New Breed Brass Band, and guitarist and singer Walter “Wolfman” Washington, whose music blends almost every New Orleans genre.
One man on the roster, Cyril Neville, known as a member of R&B/ funk groups The Meters and The Neville Brothers, holds a special place in Andrews’ heart.
“He took me on tour with his brothers when I was probably 13 years old,” the 32-year-old brass musician and singer said in a recent phone interview from Lake Tahoe.
Andrews went out with The Neville Brothers for an entire summer, he said, and he had his first experience riding a tour bus. He called it a “blessing” to be able to return the favor to Charles Neville decades later. Hitting the road together this time around has brought back memories.
“The other night in Seattle, (Neville) said, ‘Do you remember this place?’,” Andrews recalled. “I said I’ve played it a couple of times before this and he’s like ‘No, this is one of the places I brought you with me and my brothers.’ When he said that, it totally clicked back to me … some of the places we’re playing, he’s
brought me here.”
Today, Andrews says, he and his band Orleans Avenue tour nearly yearround. In his already decadeslong career — he is said to have received his stage name after picking up his namesake instrument at age four — Andrews has evolved from a member of Lenny Kravitz’s band to joining the Rolling Stones as a guest star for shows earlier this year.
“We’ll go from our own tour, then we’ll go with the (Red Hot) Chili Peppers or the Foo Fighters, then we’ll go to our own tour, then it’s festival season or do other things,” he said.
“It’s been a great ride and a lot of fun to be able to play in different areas and different places, playing for different people every night.”
He created Voodoo Threauxdown as a way to showcase the types of shows he says happen in
his home city all the time, to play with groups that inspired him and expose newcomers like the New Breed Brass Band that he says have been inspired by his own sound. “I just wanted to be able to celebrate New Orleans music and bring it to people,” he said.
Along with classic New Orleans styles like jazz, funk and R&B, Andrews has also infused genres of his own generation that he said he hears at festivals and clubs all over: elements of rap, hiphop, punk and electronica are all noticeable in his recordings.
He’s trying to move the needle on what people consider New Orleans music to be, by simply doing his own thing and not copying the older musicians that came before him.
He quoted late New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint — piano master, singer, writer and record producer — as saying “Always do your own thing. Take what we did and learn from it, but always put your own stamp on it and move it forward.”
“Basically what we’re doing is living life and putting our life into the music, and taking all the things that came before us, learning from it, and adding different things that people may not have thought about; adding hip hop, adding punk, adding rock,” he said.
“We’ll be able to figure it out when we’re 60 years old, because right now we’re in the middle of creating it and I don’t know if we recognize what we’re doing yet. We’re just playing music. There’s no boundaries. That’s why it’s New Orleans music — we don’t know what to call it.”
His band’s part in Voodoo Threauxdown, he described, is a mixture of songs from Trombone Shorty albums, as well as covers like Toussaint’s “Here Come the Girls” and songs Neville created with his brothers, like “No More Okey Doke” and “Fire on the Bayou.”
Sometimes, he said, it feels like he and the other musicians on stage are having more fun than the audience: That’s how much he says they love representing their home city.
“In certain places, if we didn’t have any curfews to play, I think it would probably go for 10 hours if we could,” he said.