Ravinia 2022, Issue 1

NELSON COSEY (BIG FREEDIA) TROMBONE SHORTY & ORLEANS AVENUE Born Troy Andrews in New Orleans in 1986, the future Trombone Shorty began learning music from his family by the age of 4, de- veloping chops on the trumpet and drums before settling on the trombone as his pri- mary instrument and earning professional gigs before the age of 10. His first gig at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival came alongside Bo Diddley, and he was leading his own brass band at age 6. He began attending the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, and by 2002 he had made his first recording under his own name, Swingin’ Gate , which featured several original compositions. With the Troy Andrews Quintet, he followed up in 2005 with The End of the Beginning , but another disc on the same local label (Treme Records) later that year, Orleans & Claiborne , was credited to Troy “Trombone Shorty” An- drews & Orleans Avenue. Before exiting his teens, Andrews was invited to join the horn section for Lenny Kravitz’s Electric Church World Tour; he later reconnected with Krav- itz to record “Whole Lotta Lovin’ ” for the Fats Domino tribute disc Goin’ Home . In 2010 he joined the Verve Records roster and released Backatown , which hit number one on Billboard ’s jazz chart and earned him his first Grammy nomination. Since then he’s toured alongside the likes of Jeff Beck and the Red Hot Chili Peppers as well as collaborat- ed across genres with Pharrell, Bruno Mars, Mark Ronson, Foo Fighters, Zac Brown, Rin- go Starr, and countless others. Even with little downtime offstage, Shorty & Orleans Avenue released For True in 2011 with special guests including Kravitz, Beck, and guitarist War- ren Haynes. That same year, he established the Trombone Shorty Foundation to support New Orleans music education, and in 2016 he won a Caldecott Honor for his illustrated autobiography for young readers. Meanwhile, his string of chart-toppers continued with Say That to Say This (2013) and Parking Lot Symphony (2017), his first disc on the histor- ic Blue Note label. Earlier this year he won a Grammy as a collaborator on Jon Batiste’s We Are and released his own new collection, Lift- ed . Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue first played Ravinia in 2018 and ae making their first return. TANK & THE BANGAS Coming from New Orleans, Tank & the Ban- gas are surrounded by plenty of grand mu- sical traditions, but the five-piece group has a rare knack for combining various musical styles—fiery soul, deft hip hop, deep-groove R&B, and subtle jazz—into a cohesive whole that evokes the scope of New Orleans music while retaining a distinctive feel all its own. The group traces origins to a loose collabo- ration at open-mic nights in 2011, soon fol- lowed by a featured set at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival that spurred a tire- less road ethic. Tank & the Bangas poured that energy into studio as well, independent- ly releasing the double album Think Tank in 2013. A year later they cut a concert album entitled The Big Bang Theory: Live at Gasa Gasa , and they continued to hold court at the Jazz Fest, converting audiences into passion- ate fans and garnering critical acclaim, from the New Orleans Advocate to the New York Times . The next big spark came in 2017 when Tank & the Bangas entered their riotous sin- gle “Quick” in NPR’s third Tiny Desk Contest, winning out over some 6,000 other artists by the unanimous vote of the expert panel. The group signed on to the Verve Records and is- sued the EPs Live Vibes and Live Vibes 2 by early 2019, when they were poised to make their major-label debut with Green Balloon . The disc cruised up to number three on Bill- board ’s Heatseekers chart with guidance from super-producers Mark Batson, Jack Splash, Zaytoven, and Robert Glasper, and Tank & the Bangas closed out the year with a nom- ination for the Best New Artist Grammy Award. Collaborations defined 2020 for the band, from a cover of the Burt Bacharach classic “What the World Needs Now Is Love” to the EP Friend Goals , and carried into 2021 with a pair of joint singles with Big Freedia, “Big” and “Betty Bussit.” This May, the group followed up with their third full-length disc, Red Balloon , featuring contributions from Questlove, Lalah Hathaway, and Trombone Shorty. Tank & the Bangas are making their Ravinia debut. BIG FREEDIA ANewOrleans native raised on a musical diet that included Patti LaBelle and Michael Jack- son, Big Freedia got hooked into the Crescent City’s nascent bounce music scene courtesy of drag queen and MC Katey Red in the late 1990s. She cut her first mix, titled Queen Diva , in 2003, but found herself displaced to Texas after Hurricane Katrina. There she helped grow a following for the bounce genre, and by 2010 not only was she on the radar for sets at South by Southwest, but she had recorded a guest spot on Galactic’s album Ya-Ka-May , released another mix of original singles, Big Freedia Hitz, Vol. 1 , and made her first nation- al TV appearance. Her recordings hit nation- al distribution the following year, but 2013 proved to be the banner year—Big Freedia hit the road on tour opening for The Postal Service, and the music TV channel Fuse be- gan airing Big Freedia Bounces Back , a reality docuseries chronicling evolution from choir- boy to bounce rapper that ran for six seasons and remains the highest rated original series on the network. In 2014, Big Freedia released her first full-length album, Just Be Free , and then in 2016 her voice reached even further through a recorded sample on Beyoncé’s Grammy-winning surprise single, “Forma- tion,” as well on the ensuing world tour. She closed that year with a holiday EP, A Very Big Freedia Christmazz , featuring highly original takes on classic seasonal sounds. Things heat- ed up again in 2018 with her recorded intro to Drake’s number-one hit “Nice For What,” and she parlayed her first major record label deal into a new EP, Third Ward Bounce , fea- turing Lizzo on the track “Karaoke” and other guests. The following year, Big Freedia guest- ed on Kesha’s new lead single “Raising Hell,” and the pop icon reciprocated the collabo- ration on “Chasing Rainbows” for Freedia’s 2020 EP Louder . The title track of that collec- tion featured the Swedish electro duo Icona Pop as a guest. The online cooking series she launched during the global pandemic served as an appetizer not only to more lifestyle pro- gramming opportunities, but to her latest EP, 2021’s six-track Big Diva Energy . Big Freedia is making her Ravinia debut. CYRIL NEVILLE The youngest of the four Neville Brothers, Cyril was inexorably drawn to a life in music after a youth incubated among Art, Charles, Aaron, and their extended family (including George “Big Chief Jolly” Landry). Neverthe- less, he didn’t begin performing professional- ly until 1967, at age 19, when he joined Art and Aaron in The Neville Sounds, which played the New Orleans club circuit on a regular ba- sis. Cyril and Aaron soon split off to formThe Soul Machine, and Cyril recorded his first solo single, “Gossip,” in the early ’70s, backed by Art’s new funk band, The Meters. The Soul Machine dissolved after unsuccessful moves to Nashville and New York, and Cyril joined The Meters as a vocalist and percussionist— highlighting its shift away from purely instru- mental music as it joined the Reprise Records roster—until its own dissolution in 1977. Af- ter the group premiered its new sound with Cabbage Alley (1972), The Meters followed up with the landmark Rejuvenation (1974) and joined the Rolling Stones on a sold-out US tour. After Fire on the Bayou (1975) and Trick Bag (1976), the group teamed up with horn section from Tower of Power on New Directions (1977), but there the Nevilles splin- tered again, this time all together to formThe Neville Brothers Band. The foursome creat- ed numerous recordings during the ’80s and ’90s, winning a Grammy for “Healing Chant” off 1989’s Yellow Moon . Cyril infrequently led side projects such as the Endangered Spe- cies Band and the Uptown Allstars during this period, with the latter group backing his first solo album, 1994’s The Fire This Time . He released another two discs, Soulo (1998) and New Orleans Cookin’ (2000), before re- convening a formal backing band. Neville has recently fronted the funk band Galactic and the blues-rock supergroup Royal Southern Brotherhood, and in 2013 he added Magic Honey to his solo discography. In collabo- ration with the World Order Entertainment label, he is compiling a solo box set and also issued a new single, “Love Has Got to Win.” Cyril Neville played Ravinia eight times be- tween 1993 and 2006 with The Neville Broth- ers Band, and tonight he makes his second solo appearance. RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE 39