Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews -- who headlines the American Music Festival at FitzGerald's on Sunday -- has been playing music for 20 years, and professionally for nearly as long. In that time he has recorded a half-dozen albums and toured the world. All of which isn’t a particularly remarkable until you consider that Andrews is 24 years old.
In New Orleans, where Andrews was born and still lives, musicians don’t just start young, they’re practically in diapers when they begin kicking out the jams on whatever instrument is handy. Just about everybody makes music or has a family member who does, and Andrews’ family was no exception. His older brother, 40-year-old trumpeter and band leader James Andrews, was playing throughout the region by the time young Troy was able to walk.
“My whole family played, so instead of toys, we had instruments all around the house, and I naturally started picking them up and trying to make sounds on them,” Andrews says. “When everyone was gone, I’d pick stuff up, crawl inside a tuba. By the time I was 4, I was playing trombone. I was attracted to it because it reminded me of one of those paper whistles kids play at parties and I could make an elephant sound on it almost right away. My brother was a huge Louis Armstrong fan and Louis always had a trombone player at his side. There was a shortage of trombone players in the family, so he really encouraged me on it. When I was 7, my dad took me on tour with him.”
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