Community Spotlight: New Breed Brass Band

Spotlight by Tami Fairweather

Like most members of the New Breed Brass Band, snare drummer and bandleader Jenard Andrews has been around music and musicians his whole life.

Growing up in the Treme neighborhood pre-Katrina as the son of trumpeter and vocalist James Andrews and nephew of Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews, Jenard says he saw a second line of some sort every day. “Whether it was a funeral, a repast, or just a band practicing in the neighborhood, at some point during the day you would hear and see some music.” That meant a lot to him growing up, he says. 

One of his earliest memories was going on a field trip to Preservation Hall with his McDonough 15 elementary school class where students got to interact with the musicians, hold some instruments, and even play the drums. He says it was his first time really falling in love with Preservation Hall, which was before his dad James did a residency through which he got to know the venue and band more. Now that he’s grown up and is doing gigs with Hall musicians that he considers royalty, he’s in awe to even be in their company: “I’m just a pup, you know what I mean? It’s crazy.”

There was a time, Jenard admits, that he didn’t really know what to do professionally, but he knew he loved being around music. He started playing the trombone while attending McDonogh 15. Later on he took up the trumpet and played the mellophone in the St. Augustine Marching 100. He made his way to the snare drum when one of the bands he’d been playing with needed someone to play. “I said ‘okay I’ll do it,’” he recalls. “Once I got on it, it was over with.”

Most members of the New Breed played together in junior high and high school with a band called the Baby Boys. Full of talent, they played second line brass music they knew best as a group, and each with different musicians while subbing in other bands, so they were also well known individually around town.

The original members of what would become the New Breed were jamming at “Uncle” [Trombone Shorty] Troy Andrews’ old studio one day in 2012 when Troy came back to get something he forgot and overheard them playing. “This is what y’all have been doing?” Jenard recalls him saying. “And then he gave it to us real.” They were essentially practicing the music they already knew, playing renditions of songs by internationally known brass bands like Rebirth, Soul Rebels, or Hot 8 who were doing their own thing. Yet they had the talent and maturity to create something new, something that wasn’t someone else’s music.

That new sound—and the band itself—was formed in the studio over a few years. Without material to record like most bands do, they created as they went. “It would just be like someone sitting at the piano or something, and we would be able to track from scratch,” says Jenard. “Every session we had, we were leaving the studio with at least two new songs.” And before they knew it, they had a lot of great material, including their first two songs “New Beginnings” and “New Breed Hot Fire.” By adding instruments like piano and guitar to the typical second line brass music, they have taken their sound more into pop, rock, and hip hop, creating something more musical—sweet and beautiful—yet still very much the sound and spirit of New Orleans that can’t be found anywhere else.

Their fresh sound and continued push to keep doing something different landed the band on stage at Jazz Fest, on tour opening for bigger acts like Dr. John, The Revivalists, and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band (among many others), and being named the Best Emerging Artist at the 2016 Offbeat Best of the Beat Awards.

In 2018, New Breed joined Trombone Shorty’s Voodoo Threauxdown Tour, sharing stages around the U.S. with an all-star lineup of New Orleans musical legends including Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Galactic, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Cyril Neville, Walter Wolfman Washington, and Kermit Ruffins. “It was like rolling Jazz Fest into every city we went to. Wherever we are, whenever we strike, we’re in New Orleans,” Jenard says. “Usually when people leave a show, they say they are coming to visit. And if they weren’t before, they are now.”

Seeing each other’s show every night also brought all the musicians closer, as did jamming out, and just hanging out backstage, where a lot of cultural and technical knowledge was shared with the up-and-coming band. “They understand how we’re doing something different, and they wanted to give us all the knowledge they can.” Jenard says he could be walking past someone, and they might say, “You know, you should try this tonight.” Sometimes it was about band leadership from PHJB’s bassist Ben Jaffe, or drummer Walter Harris, showing him “something simple that could turn out to be so major if you use it right, you know what I mean?”

Jenard and the band recognize their role as the next generation of music and culture bearers and are motivated by bands like Preservation Hall to keep moving the music forward by continually switching it up, not being afraid to try new arrangements or other new ways to keep it fresh and create some kind of new expression. “The old cats, they instill that in us because they know that not many people can do what we do, make the music we make, and keep the whole game going.”  

That’s why they are getting back into BuckJump Studios by the end of 2020 to work on their yet-to-be-named next album. They’re using their Preservation Hall Foundation Community Engagement Grant to make sure everything is tight with the band—that the horns, drums, and instruments are up-to-date and everyone has what they need after a COVID-19-induced hiatus. The last time they were in the studio was before the pandemic, when they finished an album that was supposed to be released at this year’s (canceled) Jazz Fest. Jenard says he never thought music could be taken away in New Orleans like it has been for most of 2020. But their call to the studio to make more music proves that it hasn’t, and when we all come out of this crisis New Breed will have two albums to drop. 

Jenard says what he loves most about making music is the feeling he gets. “No matter what’s going on or what we’re going through, I get on stage and forget everything.” When asked to describe it in one word, the answer is simple: “Love.”

It all comes back to that feeling. The feeling of New Orleans. “It wouldn’t be what it was if it wasn’t for New Orleans,” Jenard says. “I wouldn’t be doing music if I’d been born somewhere else.”

You can get that feeling anytime by listening to New Breed, and hear about the release of their new albums by following them on Facebook and Instagram.