REVIEW: Showman Trombone Shorty brings the crowd to its feet

Posted by arts_reviews

Posted: June 19, 2008 - 11:31 am

Dawnell Smith
Daily News Correspondent

Trombone Shorty: Showman Shorty sings and plays horns

If you missed Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue at the Wendy Williamson Wednesday night, consider it a life lesson in regret. The band opened with "A Whole Lot of Lovin" and went on to play a streetwise, elegant set culled from the fruits of musical history with imaginative flair.

Tunes melded multiple genres of music with nods to everyone from Louis Armstrong to ACDC. Trombone Shorty certainly knows how to rock and groove at the same time, prompting people to their feet through long solos and jams.

The man with the aural magic, Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews, showed more than chops on vocals, trombone and trumpet. He knows showmanship, the power of call and response, the percussive power of voice, the delicate relationship between performer and audience. By night's end, he had the crowd in his hands.

He powered the band as if conducting electricity, passing energy and attention from player to player and then dishing it out at the audience. Offbeat, a New Orleans’ music magazine, named him performer of the year in 2007 and it's easy to see why. Bone-lean and effusive, he wore black jeans, tee-shirt and a sly smile.

Halfway through the show, he stripped down to a tank top, more as a tease to the heat than a call for applause. But people noticed. Hundreds showed up for the concert, a steal at $3 to $5 for students and a remarkable deal for everyone else.

Andrews really got the crowd on its feet with a hip-hop intro to "Let's Get It On." Once he get got the crowd singing, Cupid's arrow had set.

Ever savvy about the power of music, Andrews enlisted an amazingly young and accomplished band to back him up.

Guitarist Pete "Freaky Pete" Murano played with an expression of bemusement as if his hands were disembodied from the rest of his body, doing funk grooves and raging solos in equal measure. Up front, James Martin countered Andrew's horn with his tenor sax. He played like a classically trained musician, letting loose in long runs of sonic improvisation but knowing when to pull the reigns.

Meanwhile, the heart of the band's sound, the rhythm section, proved equally capable of lingering on a groove or nailing a transition. The enthusiastic Michael Ballard looked rapt on bass, even with the sunglasses hiding his eyes, and Joey Peebles proved masterful on drums whether banging out classic rock or jazz. Fleshing out the squad, Dwayne "Big D" Williams played congas and hand percussions, adding depth to the band's songs, especially its Latin and funk grooves.

Yes, Latin, funk, jazz, Afro-Cuban, soul, R&B, rap—you name it, you got it at this show, whether familiar rock classics like "American Woman" and "Back in Black," or a medley of James Brown tunes, or a finale of "When the Saints Go Marching In" melded with multiple grooves from songs like "St. James Infirmary" or Trombone Shorty originals like "Groove On" and "Set Yourself Free."

At a certain point, the charismatic Andrews could only outdo himself, garnering howls of delight when he sustained a single note for several minutes while circular breathing and then again when taking the drum sticks and sending the rhythm section to the horns.

Versatility, all right. Playful, inventive versatility.

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