Orleans To The 'Bone

"He's my idol – he's like everything to me,” multi-instrumentalist Troy Andrews, who travels as Trombone Shorty, admits, on the line from his grandma's house in the New Orleans' Sixth Ward neighbourhood made famous by the TV series that takes its name from it, Tremé. He's talking about one Lenny Kravitz, in whose horn section Andrews toured the world in 2005 and who returned the favour, playing bass on Roses, a track off the 2011 Trombone Shorty album, For True. Andrews appears in a documentary, Looking Back On Love: Making Black And White America, about the making of the latest Kravitz album, released at the end of January.

“He's a big influence,” Andrews continues. “He's like an uncle, a big brother, we still talk a lot and we play with each other every once in a while. I think about if I didn't join his band at a young age, what would I sound like? Where would I be? I already idolised him, and I was able to learn from someone that I love very much, musically and everything… I don't know where I would be or what my sound would be. I know before I got in his band I was workin' towards something – I just didn't know what it was. I was just keepin' my mind open and just lettin' music take me there, so just being a part of the school of rock with Lenny Kravitz, it changed some things for me in a very good way, and I can't thank him enough for the opportunity. I steal a lot of things from him – don't tell him that!” he laughs.

Not that Andrews needed a whole lot of directing. By the time he was six, he was already playing drums, trumpet and trombone well enough to join his big brother's jazz band, forming his own band soon after. He studied at the New Orleans Centre for the Creative Arts and in his teens performed and recorded with the Stooges Brass Band – of that city's elite brass bands in the grand tradition of tradition of outfits like the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band – both of whom have visited Australia.

Not that Andrews was satisfied with just following tradition. With his combo, Orleans Avenue, he has forged his own unique style, which he's dubbed supafunkrock, the Kravitz influence obvious. “I listen to a lot of other instruments besides the trombone – I always [listened to] saxophones, trumpets and guitars because I was always trying to figure out how to do some things that they were doing.”

Of course, the Kravitz element is only a small part of the story for Andrews. The bigger picture is still New Orleans and everything that multi-cultural port city has brought to the table.

“Most of my influences come from New Orleans. Without this city and without this state [Louisiana], and the musical influences and the culture, I wouldn't be able to do what I do, so I owe it all back to my home state and my city.”

And just what is it about New Orleans that has made it such an extraordinary conduit for the creation of so much music the rest of the world now takes for granted – jazz, blues, funk and so on?

“Man, I'm still trying to figure it out,” Andrews says, the smile on his face audible, “it's somethin' really special but I can't never put ma hand on it, I can't figure it out, but I'm a part of it in some type of way of things unexplainable. But I think here, it's about family, about fun; everybody's friendly, everybody's very neighbourhood-like and I think we have so many musical avenues here that it all becomes one sound. So you got older musicians that are strong in R&B music and you got some people strong in funk music, you have some people that are strong in blues, some strong in jazz, and I think eventually all those type of musicians find some way or get hired on gigs to play with each other – even if they're not strong on whatever it is – and I think those different influences just makes it New Orleans music. New Orleans is puttin' everyone in one thing and go for what you know, and do what we do here.”

And it's not all old-school either, as Andrews explains. “I'm very influenced by early [New Orleans hip hop label] Cash Money and [New Orleans rapper] Master P. We have some of the biggest stars in hip hop – Lil Wayne and all those people are from New Orleans. Like I say, we all grew up listenin' to everyone and in some type of way, it's crazy, if you're around something or you hear it, some type of way it finds a way to come out through your music.”

Andrews has admitted in the past that the hardest part of songwriting for him has always been lyrics, which is why he was so keen to work with a variety of lyricists on For True – not least the legendary Lamont Dozier, who was part of a songwriting team with brothers Brian and Edward Holland that composed and produced so many hits for Motown between 1962 and 1967, with whom he wrote the track, Encore. But with the writing for the forthcoming album, he admits that's changing.

“It's comin' together – I actually took a little try at a few of them,” he says. “I never applied myself seriously enough to do it, you know, like, I just have to indulge in becomin' a lyricist and just gettin' with some of the good people that does it and just sit back and watch them and see how they come up with it. It's not as hard as I thought it was but it's startin' to come along, you know. The more I try, the easier it gets. But I don't know if it's good or not yet,” he chuckles.

“With the new album, it's a bit more… I don't want to say complex but we have different parts. You know in music we speak of A B C D as different segments of a song, and on this it's not just chorus, verse, chorus. We have, like, breakdowns, we have D sections and B and B in everything… I can say it's gonna take us to concentrate a little bit more to play this new music. We had more time to think about it and really make it as big as we wanted to do. Of course, with the studio we can go three times and be different people on it – I play the big horn section on some of the things. So it's gonna be very interesting – we're gonna have to take some time to rehearse. It's comin' together, and we just wrote a bunch of songs and laid down some music – we'll see how it works.”

Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue will be playing the following dates:

Thursday 28 and Friday 29 March - Bluesfest, Byron Bay NSW
Sunday 31 March - Enmore Theatre, Sydney NSW
Monday 1 April - Blue Beat, Sydney NSW