They sit beside each other as they play on stage, emulating the old New Orleans jazz bands into whose music they breathe new life — these eight relatively young revivalists with their cornet and clarinet, banjo and bass drum, trombone, guitar and washboard, and, yes, that unmistakable instrument for which their band, Tuba Skinny, is named.
Of course, it’s not a given that the stage is where they’ll be playing at all. They started out playing on the streets of the Crescent City in 2009, and they still do … sometimes.
“Actually, we played on the street the other day,” says guitarist/vocalist Greg Sherman. “We don’t as often anymore, but it’s a special thing that I love and that we all love. Even now, we could be touring in Europe or playing some big jazz festival and we’ll still often be tempted to go play out on the street, just because it’s a different experience. It’s more intimate and visceral, and people can be exposed to it who weren’t expecting to hear music that day.”
Whether or not Tuba Skinny will play on the streets of Fort Lauderdale during its very first visit to South Florida, the band will definitely take the stage at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts’ Amaturo Theater on Wednesday, Nov. 13. As the opening performance of the Gold Coast Jazz Society’s season, the program will feature selections from the unorthodox ensemble’s repertoire of over 400 numbers steeped in an historical fidelity to traditional 1920s jazz but also veering into such other iterations of Americana as jug band music, spirituals, country blues, string band music, ragtime and New Orleans R&B.
No matter the genre, Tuba Skinny infuses it with a foot-tapping, ear-tickling vibe that at its most joyous hits you like the musical equivalent of orchestrated hysterical laughter.
“That’s kind of what piqued our interest as something different to start off the season,” says Pamela Dearden, Gold Coast’s executive director. “They’re a different kind of group for us to present because they’re not in the realm of classic jazz and the band members are all younger. We do try to present younger artists, hoping that that will bring in some younger audience members.”
The Gold Coast Jazz’s mixed bag of a season rolls on with the “post-Motown bop” of former Jazz Messenger saxman Bobby Watson (Wednesday, Dec. 11) and the “happiness-themed” pianist stylings of Shelly Berg, the Dean of University of Miami’s Frost School of Music (Wednesday, Jan. 8). The season continues in 2025 with vocalist Michael Kaeshammer (Wednesday, Feb. 12), the Warren Wolf Quintet (Wednesday, March 12), Tony Desare Trio, (Wednesday, April 16) and the Luciana Souza Trio (Wednesday, May 14), all at the Amaturo Theater at the Broward Center.
Entering its 33rd season, the jazz society welcomes Tuba Skinny with an historical perspective of its own — by South Florida standards, at least. Its concert series began in 1992, at first presented in the main dining room of the Riverside Hotel on Las Olas Boulevard. Most of the bands that performed were composed of local musicians and put together by local jazz guitarist, Simon Salz, who later became the first music director of the Gold Coast Jazz Society Band.
Tuba Skinny’s origin story began about a decade later. It is a fascinating NOLA odyssey: Drawn by the gravitational pull of the French Quarter’s musical legacy, a scrambling of itinerant, musically inclined street people — none native to the city and at least one who learned to play an instrument as an alternative to panhandling — cycle through a couple of band incarnations and musical idioms. Ultimately, in 2009 they coalesce into a brass band, adopt the Tuba Skinny moniker and graduate from busking to touring internationally, going on to release 12 albums.
Sherman’s own musical journey is a case in point. “I started listening to blues when I was a teenager,” says the self-taught musician from Escondido, Calif., who’s been with the band since 2012. “I really liked the ’50s and ’60s New Orleans guys, like Smiley Lewis. That’s probably the largest influence on the stuff I do with Tuba Skinny.”
He says he left home when he was 18 and has been playing music on the street and traveling since then.
“I played a lot of Woody Guthrie and such things,” says Sherman, now 36. And then I heard the Memphis Jug Band song, “Stealin’ Stealin’.” That had a huge impact on me, and I put together a jug band.”
He says that was what led him to New Orleans.
“. . . I saw a guy named Stale Bread Scottie sing, which made me feel like, oh, wait, you can actually still sing these old blues songs, right? The way I’d seen it before was like these dudes just had superpowers — and I realized, oh no, they’re just human beings who practiced. Then I met the Tuba Skinny people, and I just ended up falling into the band.”
It’s the sort of narrative that might lead one to wonder if an underlying rejection of contemporary music was the glue that stuck these traditional music zealots together, making them a band on a historical mission.
“No,” says Sherman. “We were just always following music that we loved. I think everyone was doing a similar thing before they started the band. And then I think we all independently fell in love with New Orleans.”
That said, other than a tune from its 2022 compilation of original compositions, “Magnolia Stroll,” you won’t find any contemporary tunes on a Tuba Skinny setlist — except for the LeAnn Rimes ’90s hit,“Blue” (which is itself a cover of a 1958 song, so…)
“That’s probably the most contemporary tune we played,” says Sherman — with one deviation. “We were playing for an elementary school once and the kids asked us if we knew any modern songs. We played “All About That Bass.”
Any story on Tuba Skinny would be incomplete without addressing the gorilla in the name, the provenance of which is about as colorful as the band’s bio and which also sprung from the streets. As confirmed by Sherman, “Tuba Skinny” is a reference to New Orleans musician Anthony “Tuba Fats” Lacen, who was locally famous for fighting for the street musicians’ rights. Seeing the band’s slender tuba player, Todd Burdick, riding his bicycle with his instrument in tow, a random heckler would repeatedly shout: “Hey, look, it’s Tuba Skinny!”
Kind of by default, the name stuck, says Sherman.
“When the band started playing on the street — back then, you know, the height of all our ambition was just playing on the street — people started asking, what’s your band called? So you have to tell them something. And you never know that you’re gonna have to stick with it, you know, 15 years later.”
IF YOU GO
WHAT: Gold Coast Jazz Presents: Tuba Skinny, An Evening Of Jazz And Blues
WHERE: Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale
WHEN: 7:45 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 13
COST : $65
INFORMATION: (954) 462-0222;
www.browardcenter.org
