Admittedly, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue is one of my favorite musicians, live or recorded. I have been following him for at least four years and this was his first headlining show in Boston! You know I bought tickets the day they went on sale…

Trombone Shorty

His brand of New Orleans funk is wonderfully engaging both to listen to and to watch.

I had seen Shorty three times in New York – two of those were trips I made specifically to see him perform and the third was the Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s 50th anniversary celebration at Carnegie Hall in which he participated. I also saw him at the Newport Folk Festival last summer.

The House of Blues is a good venue for him. It’s a good size and his band can fill the auditorium with their sound. They were playing to a sold-out crowd this night.

As soon as Shorty took the stage, he was in command of the room. He was ready to get every body in the crowd moving and the crowd was ready for that.

They played music from all three of his albums fairly equally – I didn’t count how many from each of his three albums, but I didn’t feel that they favored the most recent album which was released last year.

The entire band playing the drum kit

They ended their set with my favorite song of theirs, ‘Something Beautiful’ from the first album. It doesn’t get much better than that. My friend, who had never seen Shorty live and wasn’t terribly familiar with his music, said that his favorite song was the same as mine. I’m not sure why I find that so interesting…

The passion he brings to his performances never ceases to amaze me. He is still a young man of 28 years, but his maturity as a musician and a performer was evident throughout the show. 

Sister Sparrow & The Dirty Birds opened the show.  I had heard that they were good and that possibly the venue was too much space for them.  The former was true, but the latter proved not to be.

Arleigh Kincheloe of Sister Sparrow

Sister Sparrow is a soul/funk band that hails from New York. I thought their style was perfect to open for Shorty.

Arleigh Kincheloe fronts the band and her voice is quite powerful. I would love to see them again in a smaller venue – even though the House of Blues didn’t feel too big for them, I think they’d be well suited to the Royale, Paradise, The Sinclair…

This was a perfect night of music for me. If you’ve never seen Shorty perform, you owe it to yourself to see him. You won’t be disappointed.