Interview: Trombone Shorty

In the span of seven studio albums—the first three of which were released on the small independent label, Treme Records—Trombone Shorty has reached the pinnacle for a New Orleans musician.

Leading his 10-person band, Orleans Avenue, the trombonist/trumpeter, whose real name is Troy Andrews, is widely considered the leading musician carrying forward the rich sounds, styles, and heritage of New Orleans music to the rest of the world.

It’s a position Andrews treasures and treats with great respect.

“We come from a very magical place, and to be able to do my part and continue to add on to what the greats have done, it’s a special thing,” Andrews said in a phone interview. “To be able to carry that torch and bring (New Orleans music) all over the world, it’s just an emotional (experience), like I carry that badge of honor in my heart. So whenever I go out and you see me, you know that I’m representing New Orleans to its fullest. And like I say, I stand on the shoulders of people who helped lift me up to that area.”

Now 38, Andrews has immersed himself in the music of the Crescent City almost from the day he was born. He spent his early years growing up in the musically vibrant Treme neighborhood of New Orleans, where, as a toddler, his parents first took him to second-line parades, and he began hearing the jazz and R&B sounds played on the streets of this storied district. (That’s a two-year-old Andrews being hoisted by his mother, Lois Nelson Andrews, to view a second-line parade on the cover of his latest album, “Lifted.”)

He comes from one of the city’s leading musical families. His brother, James Andrews III, has played trumpet in several of the city’s notable brass bands, including the New Birth Brass Band, and now leads his own ensemble, James Andrews and the Crescent City Allstars. His cousin, Glen David Andrews, a former trombonist with the Rebirth Brass Band, now leads his own Glen David Andrews Band. His grandfather, Jessie Hill, was an R&B/jazz singer who had a hit single, “Ooh Poo Pah Doo,” in 1960, and his great uncle, Walter “Papoose” Nelson, played with Fats Domino.

Andrews was all of four years old when he started playing trombone and showed an immediate aptitude for the instrument. That year, Bo Diddley spotted Andrews in a crowd at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and invited the young trombonist up on stage. He began building his skills by playing along with the musicians in second-line parades and had his own band at age six.

By his teens, Andrews had played with the Neville Brothers, joined the Stooges Brass Band and was attending the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts alongside close friend Jon Batiste. (Andrews won a Grammy in April 2022 for his contributions to the Batiste album “We Are.”)

Along the way, Andrews was befriended and mentored by some of the city’s most notable musicians, and a year after he graduated from high school in 2004, he toured with Lenny Kravitz as a featured member of Kravitz’s horn section. By the end of 2005, he had released his first three albums under his Trombone Shorty name.

On a local level, Andrews continued the city’s long tradition of supporting young musicians by donating instruments to New Orleans schools and starting a popular music program for high school musicians that provides a host of courses in music, navigating the music business, sound engineering and more.

Andrews’ blossoming talents as a musician and songwriter, meanwhile, earned him a deal with Verve Records, which released three acclaimed albums – 2010’s “Backatown,” 2011’s “For True” and 2013’s “Say That to Say This” -- that propelled him onto the global stage, earned him opening slots on tours with the Foo Fighters, Hall & Oates and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and had Andrews being touted as New Orleans’ next great artist as he established a robust and lively musical style that spans New Orleans jazz, funk, R&B, rock and hip-hop.

His status was further affirmed when Andrews was chosen to follow Professor Longhair and the Neville Brothers as the closing act of the city’s famed annual Jazz & Heritage Festival – perhaps the greatest honor a New Orleans musician can achieve.

“I’m just blessed that Quint Davis (producer and director of the festival) thought I was strong enough as a performer to be able to take over that spot,” Andrews said. “We have hundreds of bands in New Orleans, and for him to think that I was ready to give me that opportunity, it’s unbelievable.

“So it’s a big honor for me,” he added. “We travel so much and play around the world, that is a moment where people, the fan base that I’ve built traveling and touring around the world, get a chance to come see me on my home turf.”

As all of this has happened, Andrews’ global popularity has continued to expand. His next album, 2017’s “Parking Lot Symphony,” went No. 1 on “Billboard” magazine’s Jazz Albums chart and marked his debut under a new deal with Blue Note Records.

This brings things to “Lifted,” an album on which Andrews sought to set aside some of the precision of his previous studio albums in favor of capturing more of the power and energy of a Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue live show.

“That’s exactly what I was going for. I didn’t play it safe,” Andrews said. “And the big key point of it was let’s perform. Let’s not worry about the studio. I’m glad I thought about that. I don’t know what made me feel like that because normally what we would do is we’ll record, and then for some reason, we always take our song that we record and we learn it as it is on the album and then re-write it – not re-write it, we re-frame it, I should say – we re-frame it to fit what we do live. But this album, I wanted to go there first.

“We went in there and tried to get as much of the live sound that we could get in the studio while continuing to make it as tight as we possibly could,” he said. “But the energy and the way that we played, we didn’t think about being in the studio.”

“Lifted” achieves that goal, as Andrews and Orleans Avenue have never sounded so potent on album. The energy is apparent from the first notes of the opening track, “Come Back,” which balances robust horns and assertive beat with a smooth R&B melody. There’s jazz and some Earth, Wind & Fire-ish soul on “Good Company” and “Everybody in the World,” while “What It Takes,” featuring a sweet guest vocal from Lauren Daigle, blends pop and soul. Meanwhile, “I’m Standing Here” (with some searing guitar from guest Gary Clark Jr.) and the title track bring gritty rock into the proceedings.

Several songs from “Lifted” figure to be included in the shows Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue play on their current tour. On recent outings, shows lasted two hours or more and Andrews said that might happen again on his current tour.

“We have so much fun on stage, we don’t really feel it until we hit the last note, and our bodies are all tired and beat up,” he said. “We’re like ‘Oh, we didn’t realize we played that long’ But you know, when the audience, when the love is there between the audience and the musicians, it’s hard to keep time. We just play.”