If anybody knows their way around a festival, it’s Trombone Shorty. Born Troy Andrews, he got his start (and nickname) earlier than most: at four, he made his first appearance at Jazz Fest performing with Bo Diddley; at six, he was leading his own brass band; and by his teenage years, he was hired by Lenny Kravitz to join the band he assembled for his Electric Church World Tour.
He grew up in Tremé, one of the oldest African American neighborhoods in the United States and the cradle of New Orleans’s protean Black street-music culture. “Every block had a musician living on it,” Andrews says. Many of them were family, nearly all of them “family” in a neighborhood of honorary uncles, aunts, and nephews. Troy’s older brother James is a bandleader who brought the younger sibling he dubbed Trombone Shorty out to perform on the streets, and on tour around the world, long before the younger Andrews reached adolescence. He learned by ear and “on the slab,” brass band-speak for the grueling four-hour-plus street parades called second lines. If James’s tuba player didn’t show up, well, Troy was a tuba player now, expected to pick up bass lines and harmonies on the move.
Since 2010, he’s released four chart topping studio albums; toured with everyone from Jeff Beck to the Red Hot Chili Peppers; collaborated across genres with Pharrell, Bruno Mars, Mark Ronson, Foo Fighters, ZHU, Zac Brown, Normani, Ringo Starr, and countless more; played Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Newport Folk, Newport Jazz, Austin City Limits and nearly every other major festival; and performed four times at the GRAMMY Awards.
This playlist includes tracks from his 2010 album “Backatown”; 2011’s “For True”; 2013’s “Say That To Say This”; 2017’s “Parking Lot Symphony”; and from his latest album “Lifted” …. plus a live versions of “Buckjump” from a 2019 concert at Austin City Limits.
Shared via Creative Commons
