ON the Beat | When Shorty Comes Marching Out
Jazz-adjacent Shows, from Trombone Shorty and Pacifica Jazz Orchestra, Brighten Concert Scene
Trombone Shorty is, as most culturally plugged-in humans know, not short. Nearly six feet tall, he’s got plenty of reasons to see him live, as the ever-popular arbiter and party-stoking source of a new New Orleans sensation. Shorty, a k a Troy Andrews, long ago found his way into a niche of his own off to the more populist side of jazz proper, but close enough to the j-word to earn ongoing access to gigs at jazz festivals and in series and venues which like to sparingly present the j-word.
Never mind that, once in a while, Andrews peels off a musically sophisticated solo, reminding us that he’s actually smarter and potentially deeper than his packaging suggests. Many of us are still waiting for that moment when Andrews digs deeper into the more sophisticated corners of his musical being. That moment is not now, and as we head up the hill to catch Shorty in one of his now almost annual appearances at the Santa Barbara Bowl on Thursday, September 5, a good, accessible, dance-happy time will be in the dance cards.
As heard on his most recent album, 2022’s Lifted, the genre menu is a happy mashup of R&B, hip hop lite, and gospel with tentacles in the loamy root system of music from New Orleans. It doesn’t feel out of place or a cheap reflexive gesture when his band slips into “When the Saints Go Marching In,” and literally marches in and amongst the crowd. Their cred. is on, along with their groove, which always feels right in the last gasp party mode of late summer at the Bowl.
Pacific Jazz Orchestra on the Welcome Mat Beat
It was just back in April that we were busy toasting the grand centennial milestone of The Granada Theatre and basking in the sleek and broadly appealing jazz-pop-big-band sound of the new Pacific Jazz Orchestra (PJO), under thehip guidance of thewell-connected German in Hollywood,bandleader-composer Chris Walden. After the show, a palpable buzz filtered through the air, in a post-show reception and elsewhere, and the consensus was the choice of this full-service and strategically crowd-pleasing band/project and the Granada needed to go on meeting like this. Maybe next year?
Sooner than expected, the PJO is making its way back to the Granada, playing on Friday, September 6, as part of the first flush of gigs in the young group’s new concert season. For this occasion, the special guests on tap are the always swinging and clean-burning guitarist John Pizzarelli, also a decent singer with winks in the Sinatra direction, and female vocalist Sy Smith. Smith is prized as a backup singer (20 feet from stardom) — for Whitney Houston, Meshell Ndegeocello, Chaka Khan, Chris Botti, etc. — and head of her own “nu-soul” band, out of which such current jazz luminaries as Thundercat and Kamasi Washington sprang.
TO-DOINGS:
Yacht rock fans alert! All aboard for the suave strains of the ’70s pop band Pablo Cruise, playing Ojai’s Libbey Bowl on Saturday, August 31, a band which seems to have prophetically peered into a crystal ball and foreseen the rise of the yacht rock phenom. The band is outta San Francisco, with form-fitting pillowy pop-soul sound, where edges of true funk fear to tread. You know them from the hits “Love Will Find a Way,” “Whatcha Gonna Do” (when she says goodbye … ) and “I go to Rio” (on a yacht).
Whether appreciated sincerely or with an ironic wink and a tip of the Thurston Howell cap, the Cruise may be what the end-of-summer agenda calls for.
The beloved music club/eatery known as SOhO is currently in the throes of 30th anniversary bliss — a real achievement in the fickle world of music venues in Santa Barbara, or anywhere. The Independent tipped a cover-story hat in the club’s direction recently (link) and the b-day celebration slowly unveils itself, as it will on Friday night’s appearance of Raw Silk. The tight dance-fired cover band, featuring bold woman of song Leslie Lembo, is one of those bands whose link to SOhO’s history runs deep.
But, nostalgia aside, it will be all about the present tense intensity when the Silken Ones kick up the grooves on Friday.
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