Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue ring in 2011 at World Cafe Live
The year that came to a close Friday night was a good one for Trombone Shorty, the New Orleans multi-instrumentalist born Troy Andrews, who blew out the old and rang in the new with his accomplished and energetic party band, Orleans Avenue, in a two-hour-plus show at a sold-out World Cafe Live.
The year that came to a close Friday night was a good one for Trombone Shorty, the New Orleans multi-instrumentalist born Troy Andrews, who blew out the old and rang in the new with his accomplished and energetic party band, Orleans Avenue, in a two-hour-plus show at a sold-out World Cafe Live.
Shorty, who also plays the trumpet (with popped-out Dizzy Gillespie cheeks), has stood taller than his stage name might lead you to believe for quite some time. The rising band leader, who turns 25 Sunday, was fronting his own brass band by the time he was 6.
But while New Orleans music aficionados have been onto the prematurely charismatic prodigy - the younger brother of trumpeter James Andrews and grandson of singer Jessie "Ooh Poo Pah Doo" Hill - the wider world got word only in 2010.
This past year, Shorty released his musically varied major-label debut, Backatown (which is up for a contemporary-jazz Grammy), and played himself in Treme, David Simon's ensemble-cast HBO drama. The show is named after the historic neighborhood where the Crescent City's brightest young star was raised. For the uninitiated, Friday's World Cafe show amply demonstrated what the fuss is about.
As a showman, Shorty has it all - from the million-dollar smile to the boundless joie de vivre with which he leads and shares the spotlight with the six-man Orleans Avenue, whether smearing his slide trombone against guitarist Pete Murano's chunky rock riffs or urging his band mates to embarrass themselves with free-form dance moves during an extended funk jam that repeatedly chanted the leading question: "Can you back it up?"
The answer to that question, in Shorty's case: Of course he can. He demonstrated as much in myriad ways, not only as a brass player, but also as a singer, beat boxer, and, at his best, songwriter. It's no slight to Shorty to say the great Allen Toussaint's "On Your Way Down" is the best thing on the at-times-too-tame Backatown.
Elsewhere, though, as on the off-to-the-races instrumental, "Suburbia," or the shimmery "Something Beautiful," which allowed him to display an impressively agile falsetto at the World Cafe, Shorty showed a developing aptitude to write in the wide range of styles that makes his vivacious New Orleans jam band brew so hard to pigeonhole.
It's as a showman, though, that Shorty really shines. He's a ham, to be sure - the note-holding, breath-control trickery during the trumpet solo on "The Sunny Side of the Street" being only the most crowd-pleasing example. Outfitted with Mardi Gras beads and party hats, the audience also was entertained with more-than-competent James Brown and Black Eyed Peas covers, as well as Shorty picking up the sticks and keeping the beat when drummer Joey Peebles got up to shake his booty.
One complaint: When the stroke of midnight got near, the band halted the show while a video screen was lowered. After a few momentum-killing minutes of technical glitches, the countdown to 1/1/11 was lamely brought to WCL revelers from Times Square by Ryan Seacrest, Jenny McCarthy, and Ke$ha.
Really? Do we have to watch Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve even when we've decided not to stay home and watch TV? Doesn't anybody have a watch with a second hand around here?