Top 107 Quotes & Sayings by Trombone Shorty
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Trombone Shorty.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
I didn't know what the word 'genre' meant till I was twenty years old.
I was given a horn at an early age. I never really got a chance to think about doing anything else until I was about 18, when I realized I could do something else if I wanted to. In my teens, I was rolling in it.
It was just music all day... My neighbors were musicians, and my brother and my family and everybody... It was just a musical neighborhood. I think the neighborhood was such a good family type of vibe for me that I didn't even realize some of the people weren't my real family till later on in life.
I could just play my horn in my room for 20 minutes a day, and I will be happy.
Music is changing. I'm just doing what I'm doing, and hopefully in the next 20, 30 years, some kids can take what I'm doing and change it again. If the music doesn't move, then it's dead.
It's like drinking water. You have to have water every day, and music is like water for me.
You always want to learn, you know.
I just want to spearhead and lead a new style of New Orleans 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.
Australia is one of my favorite places to play - it's a crazy experience.
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.
There's pride on Bourbon Street for the musicians that work there. They take it very seriously. I've never worked there or played in band there, but it's a part of the city. They play for the tourists and represent a whole different side of the culture of our city.
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.
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.
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 didn't grow up during the time that Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis and all those people were playing. So it's not really my responsibility to keep it up, what they were doing.
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.
I'm very proud of my band and my musicians.
I have to continue to make the older musicians proud and brush up on my skills.
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.
Hopefully, I can stay around a lot of young musicians and feed off of them.
I grew up listening to the Neville Brothers and the Rebirth Brass Band.
Most people don't even know what a trombone is. It's not that popular as a front instrument... I picked it up and fell in love with it as a kid. It's a difficult instrument, but I like doing things that seem impossible.
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.
All New Orleans music is based off dance music, even jazz.
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.
What's crazy about my life is that the biggest things that have happened just happen.
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 was nurtured to play music pretty much from birth.
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.
There's a lot of music at my fingertips that I can be influenced by. And just because I play a horn, I don't need to sound, or try to capture, what was happening before me. I can just respect it and learn from it.
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.
Music for us is a place of joy. Bringin' joy... that's what we are all about.
People get caught up in recreating something, and that actually hurts the genre of music because there's nothing new.
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.
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.
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.
If people aren't dancing, we're not doing our job.
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.
We don't want to be hot; we want to last - because eventually hot gets cooled down.
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.
I have to continue to grow and take it to another level so the next generation has something to follow.
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.
The music always takes us to different places. We'll just continue to play and see what doors open from there.
I don't know what America would be without New Orleans and the music.
Whenever we can, we try to talk to students. If I can, I'll invite kids from a school to a sound check and take questions from them. I want to show them it's cool to play the trombone. Kids are influenced by what's accessible to them. It's hard for kids to be introduced to music other than what they see on TV and video.
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.
To be able to do what you truly love for a living is a gift.
If I can just play, it doesn't matter where we are... Japan, Australia, or here in the neighborhood.
Music brings unity.
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.
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.
I think The Meters are like The Beatles to us in New Orleans, you know.
Music should be pushed forward.
Actually, I started off playing by ear and being around a bunch of musicians playing in the streets in the different parades.
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.
New Orleans is like a big musical gumbo. The sound I have is from being in the city my whole life.
Sometimes on my show, I just play something out of the blue, and the band picks up on it.
When I was a kid, my friends and I formed a band, Trombone Shorty's Brass Band. When I was six, I was a bandleader for my brother's band.
Everything is a learning experience for me.
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