'He's probably the I've spent the most time listening to,' Andrews admits. Considering Andrews's singing on Say That to Say This, he also seems to have taken detailed notes on Kravitz's use of vocal harmony. He'd been up late playing video games the night before and was using his trombone as a crutch as he tried to keep his eyelids open before the gig.Īfter high school, he joined Kravitz's horn section, where he gained a new tutor and a taste for rock'n'roll. When asked to pinpoint the moment he first remembers being taller than his horn, Andrews flashes on a concert somewhere in the Caribbean in his early teens. They called him Trombone Shorty because his horn was taller than he was. His older brother and mentor, trumpet player James Andrews, was the first person to take him on the road he was four years old. His grandfather was the R&B singer Jessie Hill. He grew up jamming in a highly musical family. No matter what kinds of problems we might be going through, or what kinds of problems the world might be going through, music is the place where we can all get along. So I've been brought up in a culture where the music is an escape for everyone. 'It's probably the only place you'll see people dancing in a funeral home. 'In New Orleans, we celebrate everything,' he says.

It's an approach that sounds an awful lot like pandering to the masses, but to Andrews, it's rooted in decades of tradition. But as the border-blind bandleader throws more ingredients into the mix, his songs pose an inherent question: when are you making gumbo, and when are you making mud?Īndrews says he's busy wrestling another aesthetic conundrum: he's perpetually searching for new ways to make audiences feel good. The 10-song disc was produced by R&B singer Raphael Saadiq, frequently evokes Andrews's rock hero, Lenny Kravitz, and includes a collaboration with New Orleans funk idols the Meters, who reunited at Andrews' request. He sounds just as comfortable on his new album, Say That to Say This.

Troy trombone shorty andrews