StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Saying this 'n that with Trombone Shorty

Stepping into our video spotlight today is Troy Andrews, better known as Trombone Shorty, who will be in St. Louis with his band Orleans Avenue on Monday, November 11 to play at the Old Rock House.

Mixing New Orleans jazz and funk with hip-hop and rock, Shorty's energetic live performances have made him a rising star in the jazz world and beyond. He's been to St. Louis several times in the last few years, most recently in May 2013 to perform at the Bluesweek festival, and is touring this fall in support of his third major-label album Say This To Say That, which came out on the Verve label in September. The record was produced by Raphael Saadiq of the neo-soul group Tony Toni Tone, and features a reunion of the original Meters on a cover of their song "By My Lady."

Still just 27 years old, Trombone Shorty grew up in New Orleans' Treme neighborhood, and first gained national attention while still a teenager, touring as part of the horn section for rocker Lenny Kravitz; performing with U2 and Green Day on Monday Night Football; and memorably playing "O Holy Night" with a group of displaced New Orleans musicians on a post-Katrina, pre-Christmas episode of NBC's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

Since then, he's also been a semi-regular on the HBO series Treme, appearing in six episodes that he somehow squeezed into an increasingly busy schedule of live shows throughout the US and Europe. Given that prolific touring activity, there's a lot of video footage of Trombone Shorty online, and so today we are able to bring you a hefty sample of his music, including four complete shows.

The first of those full sets is up above, and was recorded in New Orleans in 2012, just after the release of Shorty's second Verve album For True.

Down below is a more recent show, recorded in June of this year at the famed Red Rocks outdoor amphitheater in Colorado. Unfortunately, this video has been heavily "monetized" by its producers, resulting in frequent commercial interruptions, but it's a high quality recording and the most recent full show available online.

For who don't want to watch a whole set, you can get a smaller sample of Trombone Shorty in the thrid clip, which includes just three songs - "Dumaine St.", "Lagniappe" and "Do To Me" - and was recorded in 2011 as part of NPR's "Tiny Desk Concert" series.

The fourth and fifth videos are of two more complete concerts, recorded in 2011 at Jazz Baltica and the Montreux Jazz Festival. While there's obviously some overlap in material between these two shows and with the other full sets, they're not identical by any means, and for those who are really into it, it can be interesting to note the differences in song selection, pacing and so on.

To close things out, we set the controls of the "wayback machine" for the year 2000 to retrieve the sixth and final clip, which shows a 13-year-old Trombone Shorty soloing on the NOLA standard "Second Line" with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

For more about Trombone Shorty and Say That To Say This, check out this video interview he did earlier this month with the UK's Jazz FM, and this interview published in September on the website Complex.