In New Orleans, we like to interact with the crowd. We don't like people sitting down.
— Trombone Shorty
Whenever I go jamming, people are looking to cut me. The young ones learn my stuff and come play it at me, and I have to learn other stuff. I feel a lot of pressure. But it's cool. It's a good pressure.
I've lost a bunch of friends - some of them in jail, some of them made bad choices, some of them aren't where they should be.
I just want to spearhead and lead a new style of New Orleans music.
I was listening to Ministry and Garth Brooks and Charlie Pride and Wynton Marsalis, and then I would listen to Juvenile or Lil Wayne. It's just that I'm a big fan of music. I'm a student of music. And I just want to learn and keep enhancing my education about the music.
If I can just play, it doesn't matter where we are... Japan, Australia, or here in the neighborhood.
I don't know what America would be without New Orleans and the music.
I grew up right in the heart of Treme, so it was a real music neighborhood, and there was a bunch of bands like the Dirty Dozen Brass Band around.
To be able to do what you truly love for a living is a gift.
When I'm creating a song, I'm thinking of a hip-hop beat playing on a live drum set - kinda like the Roots would do. I will put New Orleans music on top of that with some other rhythms.
We really practice music and work really hard. Sometimes we'll leave at six in the morning, and we started at three the day before.
I may be taking a different approach, being a guy leading a band with a trombone, but if you take that out of it and put in a guitar or keyboard, it would be considered funk-rock music.
All New Orleans music is based off dance music, even jazz.
Hopefully, I can stay around a lot of young musicians and feed off of them.
I think The Meters are like The Beatles to us in New Orleans, you know.
I've been playing music since I was four, so it's part of my life. It's all I know. It's just a part of my everyday living.
No matter what setting I play in, I will always be New Orleans. It's one of the only cities where you can hang out with the Marsalis family, the Neville brothers, whoever it might be, and we all play together.
I grew up listening to the Neville Brothers and the Rebirth Brass Band.
I have to continue to make the older musicians proud and brush up on my skills.
As a kid, I would wake up, and there'd be a jazz funeral while I'm walking to school. And when I come home, you can find Rebirth band playing for a birthday party the same day.
Everywhere I go around the world, we have fans of New Orleans. Sometimes we go places, and people don't really know who we are, but they know New Orleans, and once we say we are from New Orleans, we have a lot of supporters.
Actually, I started off playing by ear and being around a bunch of musicians playing in the streets in the different parades.
Life would be pretty boring if I didn't explore. It's about letting my ears take me on an adventure to soak in everything I can.
Everything is a learning experience for me.
Australia is one of my favorite places to play - it's a crazy experience.
I was nurtured to play music pretty much from birth.
I got a chance to work with Mystikal and Mannie Fresh and Juvenile and all these people as I was growing up, and so that really influenced everything I do.
We don't want to be hot; we want to last - because eventually hot gets cooled down.
We come from New Orleans, so everything is emotional - for, once the music takes over, and we start blowing, we go into a different zone that takes over our whole body.
The music always takes us to different places. We'll just continue to play and see what doors open from there.
From the food to the Mardi Gras Indians to the brass bands and the second liners parading through the street, Jazz Fest presents New Orleans in one place.
I could just play my horn in my room for 20 minutes a day, and I will be happy.
People get caught up in recreating something, and that actually hurts the genre of music because there's nothing new.
I've dreamed a lot of things and a lot of them have come true. The Grammy nomination was the last thing on my list before I had to write a new one. So I'm working on a new one.
I have to continue to grow and take it to another level so the next generation has something to follow.
Sometimes it's very hard for other New Orleans musicians to break out. It starts with the musician. They have to be willing to take a risk. Playing in the city, you can get comfortable. You think things are going well, but you're always in the city.
I wanted to become a better entertainer, and I learned from my brother James Andrews. And I've been studying some tape of James Brown and different people.
Sometimes on my show, I just play something out of the blue, and the band picks up on it.
I've had a strong will power to become one of the best. And I'm not gonna let nothing stop me from going to my dream.
We had a bunch of instruments around the house. Like, I played different instruments, trumpet, bass, drums, piano, all that, but whatever I could get my hands on.
I had a lot of older musicians looking out for me, teaching me, and showing me things when they saw how interested I was in music from a young age. They would take me to the side and just play some things in my ear, and I would try to play it back to them.
I'm very proud of my band and my musicians.
Music for us is a place of joy. Bringin' joy... that's what we are all about.
Whatever fame or success we have right now came strictly from us playing. As long as we focus on music and not trying to be stars, I think we'll be okay.
If people aren't dancing, we're not doing our job.
I didn't know what the word 'genre' meant till I was twenty years old.
What's crazy about my life is that the biggest things that have happened just happen.
You always want to learn, you know.
It's like drinking water. You have to have water every day, and music is like water for me.
Music should be pushed forward.
