Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue tear up Massey Hall, Wednesday

New Orleans trombone blaster Trombone Shorty brings the Crescent City heat to Massey Hall tonight. Check the clips below.  

Here's the scoop...

Born Troy Andrews, Trombone Shorty got his start (and nickname) earlier than most: at four, he made his first appearance at Jazz Fest performing with Bo Diddley; at six, he was leading his own brass band; and by his teenage years, he was hired by Lenny Kravitz to join the band he assembled for his Electric Church World Tour. Shorty’s proven he’s more than just a horn player, though. Catch a gig, open the pages of the New York Times or Vanity Fair, flip on any late-night or morning TV show and you’ll see an undeniable star with utterly magnetic charisma, a natural born showman who can command an audience with the best of them.

Since 2010, he’s released five chart topping studio albums (his most recent being 2022’s Lifted); toured with everyone from Jeff Beck to the Red Hot Chili Peppers; collaborated across genres with Pharrell, Bruno Mars, Mark Ronson, Foo Fighters, ZHU, Zac Brown, Ringo Starr, and countless more; played Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Newport Folk, Newport Jazz, and nearly every other major festival; performed four times at the GRAMMY Awards, six times at the White House, on dozens of TV shows, and at the star-studded Sesame Street Gala, where he was honoured with his own Muppet; launched the Trombone Shorty Foundation to support youth music education; and received the prestigious Caldecott Honor for his first children’s book.

Meanwhile in New Orleans, Shorty now leads his own Mardi Gras parade atop a giant float crafted in his likeness, hosts the annual Treme Threauxdown shows that have drawn guests including Usher, Nick Jonas, Dierks Bentley, Andra Day, and Leon Bridges to sit in with his band, and has taken over the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival’s hallowed final set, which has seen him closing out the internationally renowned gathering after performances by the likes of Neil Young, the Black Keys, and Kings of Leon.

In addition to touring across the globe nearly year-round, Trombone Shorty has started a very special tradition: a cultural exchange trip to Cuba with his Trombone Shorty Foundation. The fourth trip of his kind will take place in January of 2025, and includes an ever-expanding group of special guests artists who join Shorty and his Foundation to host workshops and play concerts in Cuba over a 5-day period, as well as nearly 100 students. 

Lifted, Trombone Shorty’s second release for Blue Note Records and 5th solo LP, was released in 2022. Recorded at Shorty’s own Buckjump Studio with producer Chris Seefried, the album finds the GRAMMY-nominated NOLA icon and his bandmates tapping into the raw power and exhilarating grooves of their legendary live show, channeling it all into a series of tight, explosive performances that blur the lines between funk, soul, R&B, and psychedelic rock. The writing is bold and self-assured, standing up to hard times and loss with grit and determination, and the playing is muscular to match, mixing pop gleam with hip-hop swagger and second line abandon. Wild as all that may sound, Lifted is still the work of a master craftsman, and the album’s nimble arrangements and judicious use of special guests—from Gary Clark Jr. and Lauren Daigle to the rhythm section from Shorty’s high school marching band—ultimately yields a collection that’s as refined as it is rapturous, one that balances technical virtuosity and emotional release in equal measure as it celebrates music’s primal power to bring us all together.

Get tickets for Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue's show at Massey Hall tonight right here. Watch the clips below. 

 

Happy Bong-Bong-Biddily Birthday Eek-A-Mouse!

Cheers to Jamaican dancehall reggae legend Eek-A-Mouse on his birthday. Here are a couple of clips and a Rotterdam performance. 

Midweek Mixdown: Italian Library Music with Lorenzo Fabrizi

Here's a sweet mix of Italian sound library treats put together by SONOR Music Editions founder Lorenzo Fabrizi. 

Italian Library Music From The Golden Era  

Filippo Trecca - Col Fiato In Gola 0:00

Sandro Brugnolini - Respòndico 2:58

Giovanni Tommaso - Walk Slow 7:18

Sandro Brugnolini - Roxy 10:47

Giovanni Tommaso - Analcolico 14:15

Rino de Filippi - Fabbricauto 16:13

Rino de Filippi - Agraria 19:07

Sandro Brugnolini - Gregorio VII 22:20

Alberto Baldan Bembo - Tropical Club 25:29

Paolo Ormi - You Dance, I Don't 28:38

JJ Whitefield - Other World 32:47

Claudio Tallino - Smoke Gets in Your Head 35:10

Happy Birthday Martin Scorsese!

Raising a glass to Martin Scorsese on his birthday – celebrating with some old pals – with a story from Catherine O'Hara. 

That time Catherine O'Hara first met Martin Scorcese...

CATHERINE O’HARA: “I had met Martin Scorsese about a year or two before ‘After Hours,’ at the Toronto Film Festival. He was being honored, and he was at the back of the theater where you enter. My sister, Mary Margaret, and I were arriving late and trying to sneak in without anybody noticing. And he looked over and went, ‘Hey, I know you!’

“While the crowd is waiting for him to go on, he’s telling me how much he loved SCTV. I was beyond flattered. Then he sent someone over to invite us to join him for dinner afterward. At the table was Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, his longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker—and Mary Margaret and me! It was crazy! I was way in over my head but just thrilled to be sitting there.

“At the end of the night, he said, ‘I wanna give you my phone number.’ He ripped out a piece of his passport and wrote his number on it. A year or two later, when I went in to meet him to talk about ‘After Hours,’ he told me this nightmare story that while in the Middle East scouting locations for ‘The Last Temptation of Christ,’ he got stopped at a border because of the ripped passport. He tried to explain: ‘I only ripped it out because I gave it to some actress.’

“I remember really being pumped up by Scorsese. He’d go, ‘Who’s this little fucker? He thinks that he can tell you what to do? You’re the one helping him!’ He made it clear my job was to make Griffin’s character’s life hell. It’s fun when you’re given license to be bad.

“Also, I got to drive the Mister Softee truck that’s trying to hunt down Griffin. Most of that driving you see in the movie is actually me behind the wheel. It wasn’t easy, but I was driving in an ice-cream truck in a Martin Scorsese movie, so I was not complaining.”

From Jake Malooley’s “‘After Hours’”:The Oral History of a Cult Classic”

Martin Scorsese and daughter Francesca celebrated their birthdays together with cakes of their own. 

Richard Reed Parry previews recording project with the late Dallas Good

Listen to "There's Time" and "The Brightest Light" from Dallas & Richard's forthcoming album Were The Watchtowers.

Writes Richard Reed Parry...

Dallas Good and Richard Reed Parry

"This is “There’s Time”, one of the first songs Dallas Good and I ever wrote together.  It’s from our upcoming album “Were the Watchtowers”, which he and I had been slowly making together since shortly after we first met in Dawson City over fifteen years ago. We got together a couple of times per year and wrote songs and recorded, taking our time, working at a very relaxed pace.  We became very close friends. 

"I would go visit him in Toronto And we would write songs in his living room, or he would come stay with me in Montreal and we would record at my studio.

"And then, somehow, he was suddenly gone. Dallas died unexpectedly in 2022 before we had completed our album, and there were two songs that we still hadn’t written lyrics for.  One of them is the last song Dallas ever worked on, called “Not in This World.” The title, which is also the main refrain in the song, is extra poignant now that he’s gone, almost eerily so. Finishing the lyrics and the record without him has been a strange and very emotional journey. Thankfully Dallas’ brother Travis came and sang harmony in his place. 

"To anyone who knew Dallas, or was a fan of his music, I’d like to ask your help in finishing the last song he ever wrote. We are going to sing it for him, and sing it to him, and wherever he is now I think he’d be really pleased to hear so many of his friends, family and fans singing together in his honour. 

"If you’d like to sing, email SingForDallas@gmail.com and you’ll receive a short audio clip of the song’s final refrain.  Play it in headphones and record your voice singing along with it. Record it on your computer or phone or any other means you have.

"The refrain in the song is simple - “not in this world, not in this world.” As I mentioned earlier - they’re extra poignant words, now that he’s no longer with us.

"If it’s easier, or more fun, get together with a friend and record each other. Don’t get too fussy about how it sounds, we’ll make it work and we’ll make it something beautiful. There is nothing better in this sweet old world than singing with  friends."

Thank you for joining us,

Love,

Richard (with Dallas somewhere nearby)

Nouvelle Vague – Richard Linklater's homage to French New Wave screens @ Fox Theatre, Nov 17-20

Richard Linklater (Dazed & Confused, Waking Life) does a brilliant job of recreating the look and feel of Paris, 1959 for Nouvelle Vague. 

Here's the scoop...

Nouvelle Vague is Oscar-nominated director Richard Linklater’s love letter to the revolutionary magic of the French New Wave, reimagining the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, which ultimately cemented Godard as a pioneer of global cinema.

As critic-turned-director Godard makes and breaks the rules, a mix of fresh faces and daring talents — including Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg, Aubry Dullin as Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Guillaume Marbeck as Godard himself — bring his spontaneous, electric film to life. Capturing the youthful dynamism and creative chaos at the heart of one of the world’s most beloved and influential movies, Nouvelle Vague transports us to the streets of 1959 Paris for an ode to the power of cinema to transform our lives.

Nouvelle Vague (2025)

Director: Richard Linklater

106 minutes

English/French, English subtitles

Fox Theatre (2236 Queen St. East)

Monday, November 17  6:30 pm

Tuesday, November 18  3:50 pm

Wednesday, November 19  4:00 pm

Thursday, November 20  6:20 pm

Get tickets right here. Watch Richard Linklater discuss the challenge of making a film that looks like it was shot in Paris in 1959 right  here followed by the trailer and a vintage clip of Richard Anthony singing the closing theme below.

Fergus Hambleton vs. The Byrds

Since it's Gene Clark's birthday, we're celebrating with Fergus Hambleton's version of his Byrds tune "The World Turns All Around Her"