NEW ORLEANS ORGANIC
Trombone Shorty’s roots deep
Trombone Shorty; Orleans Avenue River Stage Wednesday, 9 p.m.
Troy Andrews, a.k.a. Trombone Shorty, would never wish another Hurricane Katrina on his native New Orleans. However, the 28-year-old trombonist, trumpet player and bandleader does note a positive side to that horrifically destructive storm of 2005.
“The musical neighbourhood may be even stronger than before,” says Andrews. “The storm put on everyone’s mind that you can’t get this music in Texas or Arkansas or wherever.”
In fact, the storm-induced dispersal of New Orleans residents meant an opportunity, post-Katrina, for musicians to mix and match their skills and styles as those who remained in or returned to the city sat in with other bands.
And mixed and matched is just the way that Andrews, who originated an energized amalgam of funk, jazz, R&B and hip hop he calls Supafunkrock!, likes his music.
If he came from somewhere else, he might find it easier to think of music in terms of strict genres, he says. “New Orleans being a melting pot, a gumbo-type place, I grew up thinking music is just music.”
Music was omnipresent when he was growing up in the New Orleans neighbourhood of Treme, a spot that gave birth to players such as jazz virtuoso drummer Shannon Powell and trombonist Lucien Barbarin and where brass band parades were a common event.
Treme residents have always been influenced by music — even if they don’t play themselves, says Andrews: “If it was raining and the brass bands couldn’t march around, people would put speakers out on their porches and whoever was sitting on the stoop would have music as they were watching the rain.”
Coming from a musical family, Andrews was playing funerals and busking in his hometown’s Jackson Square by the age of four. Andrews, whose skills extend to keyboards and drums, also got his first taste of performing with musical giants at that age of four. He was playing — loudly — with his older brother James’s band during a jazz festival parade when Bo Diddley, performing nearby, shouted out, “‘Who’s that playing on my set?’ ” recalls Andrews. “The crowd picked me up and surfed me to the stage. I played some notes. I didn’t even know what I was doing.”
By six, he was touring with his older brother. (Amused by the fact that Troy’s trombone was taller than its player, his brother began calling the younger sibling Trombone Shorty. The name stuck).
Since those early days, Andrews has added R&B, funk and rock to his musical mix, crediting his time hanging out with New Orleans’ the Neville Brothers when he was a preteen for that addition. At 19, he joined Lenny Kravitz’s horn section during the rocker’s 2005 world tour and has since appeared as a sideman for the likes of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Rod Stewart.
Andrews, who now heads up his own band Orleans Avenue, saw his first album on a major label, 2010’s Backatown, hit No. 1 on the Billboard jazz chart and stay there for nine straight weeks. He’s also appeared in several episodes of the HBO series Treme, and released his third album, Say That to Say This, last year.
He says he has “no idea” where his music will go in the future: “It happens organically.”