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Rebirth Brass Band
Gambit > bestofneworleans.com > may 1 > 2012
MORAN/PHOTOGRAPHY Y JERRY E PHOTO BORLEANIAN FIN E NATIV
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In elementary school, Keith started on the snare drum, and then switched to the marching-band baritone horn, which he would play all through college before finding his way back to the bass drum for Rebirth. “My brother Philip taught me how to read music,” Keith says. Phil started on trombone and switched to tuba while in the marching band at Joseph S. Clark High School in Treme. “It’s all the same bass clef family,” Phil says. “I’d sleep with it in my bed, wake up playing the tuba. I said, ‘That’s my calling.’” At Clark, the core group of young musicians that would soon evolve into Rebirth Brass Band included the Frazier brothers, Kermit Ruffins on trumpet, Reginald Stewart on trombone and Kenneth Austin on snare, among others. “We played a few gigs at the school, and then we started playing in the French Quarter for tips,” Phil says. The new band’s local idols included Olympia Brass Band, The Chosen Few, Tornado Brass Band, and — especially — Dirty Dozen Brass Band. “Oh, man, that was my band,” Phil says. At that time, Dirty Dozen played a regular gig on Monday nights at the Glass House Uptown. “We were kind of young, so we’d sneak in and say, ‘We’ve got to do this, these guys are good,’” Keith says. “If it weren’t for them, we probably wouldn’t be here. They set the tone.” (A mindblowing clip of Dirty Dozen at the Glass House in 1982 is currently available on
four times a year,” Keith says. “We blew up in Europe before we blew up in the States. They have a deep respect for American music and jazz. They’d tell us, ‘You’re maintaining something that’s two or three hundred years old.’ So a lot of bands go to Europe first.” Phil says 25 musicians have played with Rebirth Brass Band over the years, including the nine currently in the band: trumpet players Chadrick Honore, Derek Shezbie and Glen Andrews; trombone players Stafford Agee and Gregory Veals; sax player Vincent Broussard; snare drummer Derrick Tabb; and Phil and Keith on tuba and bass drum. This lineup has been pretty stable over the last three or four years, both Fraziers say. Tracey Freeman, who produced Rebirth’s Grammy-winning album Rebirth of New Orleans, believes the band has never sounded better. “Members kept coming and going, but once they found this lineup and it was solid, that was it,” Freeman says. “Twenty-nine years of hard work. They just never give up.” Freeman is no stranger to awards. He earned a Grammy in 2002 for producing Harry Connick Jr.’s Songs I Heard. And he has worked with Rebirth twice before, on 2005’s Throwback, for which Rebirth reunited with Kermit Ruffins, and 2008’s 25th Anniversary album. According to Freeman, one key to the success of Rebirth of New Orleans — the band’s 13th album — was preparation. “The band had a bunch of original songs, and they were adamant about not doing extended jams,” he says. “They mapped it out ahead of time. I remember one rehearsal at Howlin’ Wolf where they just stood in the middle of the floor until they’d worked through all these songs.” There were some small changes to the band’s usual recording process for Rebirth of New Orleans. The drums and horns were recorded in separate rooms for better isolation, and most of the solos were added later to the full-band recordings. “I think this helped because it gave the guys some time to think about what they wanted to do,” Keith says. Freeman gives a lot of credit to Basin Street Records, which was working with Rebirth for the first time. “It was the right record, the right label, the right promotion and a great performance by the band — everything kind of fell into place,” Freeman says. “It really says something when an indie label wins a Grammy.” Anyone who wants to experience Rebirth Brass Band
3:45 p.m.
YouTube, courtesy of the Alan Lomax Archive.)
Sunday, May 6 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival Congo Square Stage
In the late 1970s, some musicians took the traditional New Orleans brass band and evolved something new, incorporating elements of funk, soul, rhythm and blues and other modern forms while maintaining its ties to early jazz and the street culture of second-line parades. The tuba became a defining instrument largely through the work of the legendary Anthony “Tuba Fats” Lacen, who played with Treme Brass Band and Olympia Brass Band, among others. Dirty Dozen tubamaster Kirk Joseph carried on that tradition, and the band’s driving rhythms and everything-but-thekitchen-sink repertoire had a profound influence on local musicians. By 1983, Rebirth Brass Band had found its name and was already forging its own identity and sound. “Rebirth’s music is much more rhythmic, and it relies on this pulsing sound from Phil that starts to bob and weave, and then the horns come in,” Berry says. “It’s not as deeply grounded in melody as Dirty Dozen was. Rebirth played so many more second lines and funerals.” It wasn’t long before the band hit the road, and stayed there. “We were going to Europe three or