Festival announces Trombone Shorty & Orleans with Big Boi for July 27 show

By Reader Staff

The Festival at Sandpoint will welcome a towering icon of the blues with Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue with Big Boi on Saturday, July 27. Tickets go on sale Friday, March 1.

Trombone Shorty’s Grammy-nominated sound is well displayed on the album Lifted, his second release for Blue Note Records, which is full of characteristic raw, ecstatic energy, channeling funk, soul, R&B and psychedelic rock — all components of the band’s legendary live show.

According to Shorty, “I think this is the closest we’ve ever gotten to bottling up the live show and putting it on a record. Normally, when I’m in the studio, I’m trying to make the cleanest thing I can, but this time around, I told everybody to really cut loose, to perform like they were onstage at a festival.”

And Shorty has spent a lifetime perfecting his stage presence. Born Troy Andrews, he got his start (and nickname, teeing off on the fact that his instrument was about as tall as he was) at the 1990 New Orleans Jazz Fest at 4 years old, performing with no less than Bo Diddley. At the age of 6, he was leading his own brass band. By his teenage years, Shorty was hired by Lenny Kravitz to join the band he assembled for his Electric Church World Tour.

In short: Trombone Shorty is a living legend. 

Since 2010, he’s released four chart-topping studio albums; toured with everyone from Jeff Beck to the Red Hot Chili Peppers; collaborated across genres with Pharrell, Bruno Mars, Mark Ronson, Foo Fighters, ZHU, Zac Brown, Normani, Ringo Starr and many more; played Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Newport Folk, Newport Jazz and nearly every other major festival; performed four times at the Grammy Awards, five times at the White House and on dozens of TV shows; launched the Trombone Shorty Foundation to support youth music education; and received the prestigious Caldecott Honor for his first children’s book. 

Trombone Shorty even appeared on the star-studded Sesame Street Gala, where he was honored with his own Muppet. Repeat: He has a Muppet.

Meanwhile, in NOLA, Shorty leads his own Mardi Gras parade atop a float crafted in his likeness, and hosts the annual Voodoo Threauxdown shows, which has drawn guests including Usher, Nick Jonas, Dierks Bentley, Andra Day and Leon Bridges to sit in with his band. What’s more, Shorty has taken over the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival’s hallowed final set,which has seen him closing out the internationally renowned gathering after performances by the likes of Neil Young, the Black Keys and Kings of Leon.

Also taking the FAS stage on July 27 will be Big Boi, the artist who indisputably set the pace for modern hip-hop. That’s a big claim, but backed up by the facts. As the L.A. Phil states on its website, “If the genre of hip-hop ever gets its own ‘Rap Mount Rushmore,’ a legacy as the region’s foremost wordsmith, funkiest gentleman and resident ATLien certainly guarantees a place for the diamond-selling artist, rapper, songwriter, record producer, actor, philanthropist born Antwan André Patton.”

Big Boi made history as the preeminent spitter of the Dungeon Family and one-half of OutKast. The legendary duo sold 25 million albums and garnered seven Grammy Awards, becoming the

first and only hip-hop artist in history to win the Grammy for Album of the Year upon

release of the 2003 RIAA Diamond-certified Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. 

Big Boi made his debut as a solo artist in 2010 with Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty, which hit No. 3 on the Billboard Top 200 and landed on Pitchfork’s “100 Best Albums of the Decade ‘So Far.’”

Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue with Big Boi will be a standard show, meaning the area in front of the stage is standing-room only. General admission is $59.95 (before taxes and fees). Gates will open at 6 p.m. and the music starts at 7:30 p.m. More info and tickets at festivalatsandpoint.com.