In our first concert of the season comes one of the best live performers you will ever see! Andrews comes from a storied extended family of musicians. He was born in the historic Tremé neighborhood which many consider to be the oldest black community in the United States where the struggle to survive is older than the mighty oak trees in the Crescent City. According to family folklore, Anthony "Tuba Fats" Lacen, a patriarch of modern New Orleans music, directed the bell of his horn toward Andrews's mother's belly as a way to induce labor. Andrews was born the following day. Transfixed by the magic and mystery of the city's second-line parades, Andrews and his older brother, Derrick Tabb of the Rebirth Brass Band, along with their younger cousin Troy "Trombone Shorty," soaked up life's musical lessons by learning the history of the brass band tradition firsthand from iconic figures like Tuba Fats. They also learned the power of the city's Mardi Gras Indian culture.
"The musicians I heard coming up literally brought me out of the womb," Andrews says. "Jesus was born in a manger. I was born in a second line."
Starting on the bass drum as a child, Andrews soon picked up the trombone; he was blowing a joyful noise by the time he was 12. He practiced his musicianship and showmanship with the city's most energetic brass bands, from New Birth and L'il Rascals to ReBirth and Treme. "He's always had a massive presence and a massive sweetness," says Paul Sanchez, the New Orleans singer-songwriter who has collaborated with Andrews.
That presence and sweetness have long endeared Andrews to audiences at his regular gigs at such New Orleans clubs as dba and Three Muses. In recent years he began making waves as a headliner at the world's biggest block party the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival where he has ripped it up in the gospel tent, the blues tent and the jazz tent. " "Glen is one of the giant talents of New Orleans music," says the festival's producer Quint Davis.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal last year, journalist Blumenfeld offered: "Onstage and off, electrifying club audiences and street scenes, speaking his mind at civic rallies, Glen David Andrews perhaps best embodies what David Simon, creator of the HBO series Treme, meant when he said, "culture is what brought New Orleans back."
"Life is hard and you have to be bold, you have to make choices," Andrews says. "Katrina was disorienting but we've got to move on. My Tremé will never be the same. But New Orleans culture is a permanent part of me. My Tremé taught me about the happiness of entertaining and respecting the power of the moment. The gift of my sobriety is in my music now and I want to share my my Tremé my New Orleans with the world."