Tuba Skinny

Tuba Skinny is an American street band based in New Orleans, Louisiana, known for their performances of early jazz, ragtime, and blues music of the 1920s and 1930s. In contrast to many pre-revival and revival traditional bands, the ensemble seeks to emulate the sound of jazz in the days before phonographs became widely available. The band's instrumentation includes cornet, clarinet, trombone, tuba, tenor banjo, guitar, frottoir, and vocals. As a busking band, the group has performed on city streets and at music festivals around the world, including Mexico, Sweden, Australia, Italy, France, Switzerland, and Spain. Formed in 2009 after many years of playing in different New Orleans street bands, Tuba Skinny quickly gained a strong following on YouTube, where hundreds of fan-recorded videos attracted a substantial international viewership. Although the band does not maintain an official YouTube channel, its street performances are widely shared by fans. Critics have described the band's fan base as possessing a "lighthearted, fun, flapper vibe," a reflection of the early Jazz Age time period evoked by their music. In the decade and a half since their formation, Tuba Skinny has grown in popularity, releasing more than a dozen albums, touring internationally, and attracting high-profile fans such as R. Crumb, Amanda Palmer, and Neil Gaiman. Their albums have garnered several awards, and publications such as OffBeat and The Syncopated Times rank them among the leading traditional jazz bands active today. Despite international acclaim and paid appearances at jazz festivals, Tuba Skinny continues to perform on the streets of New Orleans and elsewhere in order to maintain their close connection with audiences. "A lot of us came down here [to New Orleans] without the expectation that we would be doing what we're doing today, but we were all drawn to stay here because of the city's rich musical legacy. We're all transplants from different parts of the country, but we share a deep love and respect for this city." — Shaye Cohn, OffBeat interview, 2018 The nucleus of Tuba Skinny began coalescing in the Crescent City circa 2003 to 2005, just prior to the devastation and upheaval caused by Hurricane Katrina. Many of the band's musicians, such as Shaye Cohn, traveled to New Orleans to meet up with other itinerant musicians with whom they could play together, and they began performing together in various bands on the city streets. None of the band is native to the city. Orchestrator and cornetist, Shaye Cohn, hails from Boston. She is the granddaughter of jazz saxophonist Al Cohn. Trombonist Barnabus Jones is a Virginian. Todd Burdick, the eponymous tuba of Tuba Skinny who also plays the banjo and guitar, is a Chicagoan. Guitarist Max Bien-Kahn is from San Francisco. Vocalist and bass drummer, Erika Lewis, is from New York's Hudson River Valley and resided in Tennessee. Clarinetist Craig Flory and frottoirist Robin Rapuzzi are both from Seattle. In late 2005, Todd Burdick, Shaye Cohn, Barnabus Jones, Kiowa Wells, Alynda Segarra, and other itinerant musicians who eventually comprised Tuba Skinny formed a busking band called the Dead Man Street Orchestra. They often played in the hurricane-ravaged streets of the city. Subsisting in modest circumstances, they "played for tips in Jackson Square out of necessity more than choice." At least one band member faced arrest for "bumming for money" while on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter and learned to play an instrument to stop begging for spare change. During this period, Burdick played the banjo, Cohn played the accordion, Jones played the fiddle, and Kiowa Wells played the guitar. Alynda Segarra, the future band leader of Hurray for the Riff Raff, played the mini-washboard. Their tramp band played Cajun folk music, gypsy music, and Balkan melodies, as well as old-time mountain music in the style of the Avett Brothers, Uncle Earl, and Old Crow Medicine Show. A surviving 2005 recording of their Balkan melody interpretation of "You Are My Sunshine" exemplifies the band's inchoate style during this period. "You Are My Sunshine" (2005) An audio sample of the Dead Man Street Orchestra's Balkan melody interpretation of "You Are My Sunshine," a state song of Louisiana. Performers include: Shaye Cohn (accordion), Barnabus Jones (fiddle), Todd Burdick (banjo), Kiowa Wells (guitar), and Alynda Segarra (washboard) Problems playing this file? See media help. At the time, publications described the band as a motley collection of New Orleans street people belonging to "a subculture of rail-riding, outdoor-living hobos." Its members were known to "sleep out in the open, look for food in trash cans, indulge themselves with excessive drinking and drugs and play great music." The band often undertook boxcar tours as far away as the East Coast and West Coast. In February 2007, a photo-essay by James Heil chronicling the hardscrabble perambulatory band titled The Ballad of the Hobo appeared in Time magazine. While playing with the Dead Man Street Orchestra, the seeds for a brass band began to germinate in the minds of Cohn, Jones, and others. "We had this talk one day when we were with Dead Man Street Orchestra," recalled Barnabus Jones, "I remember Shaye said, 'Wouldn't it be great if one day we had a brass band?'" When the Dead Man Street Orchestra dissolved, Cohn, Jones, Burdick, Wells, Segarra, and other instrumentalists joined the Loose Marbles, another busking ensemble led by trumpeter Ben Polcer and clarinetist Michael Magro. While performing with the Loose Marbles, the future members of Tuba Skinny learned to play traditional jazz. Polcer and Magro's Loose Marbles operated like a dynamic jazz collective, forming smaller groups across the city to keep performances fresh and maximize earnings. With a rotating lineup of approximately fifteen musicians, the ensemble featured clarinet, trumpet, banjo, washboard, accordion, trombone and stand-up bass, although any given performance typically included seven players. The ever-changing impromptu line-up sometimes included Kiowa Wells on the guitar, Alynda Segarra on the banjo, Meschiya Lake and Tamar Korn singing vocals, and Marla Dixon on the trumpet. Cohn initially played jazz piano with the Loose Marbles, reflecting her training as a classical pianist. After training for twelve years in classical piano, she "burned out" due to "many, many hours practicing in a tiny rehearsal room going over the same four measures again and again." One day in New Orleans, while residing in a dilapidated building strewn with an assortment of abandoned instruments, Cohn salvaged a flood-damaged "swamp trumpet" and became a devotee of the horn. "Barnabus [Jones] and I were trying to figure out scales on the trumpet together, and it was just so fun. I just got really hooked," Cohn recalled. "I had never played a wind instrument before and it just felt really powerful, so I got to play second trumpet with [the Loose Marbles], sometimes they'd invite me to play with them." "Most everyone in [Tuba Skinny] went through a punk rock phase. I think punk had a lot to do with people who took up string band music or trad jazz music. In punk, DIY is very important. You're going to do everything yourself." — Shaye Cohn, OffBeat interview, 2018 Todd Burdick, the band's tuba player, likewise began his musical journey on other instruments. He played punk rock and experimental music as a percussionist, and he learned to play the banjo, guitar, and other instruments by busking with the ensemble. "It was like learning from the ground up with them," Burdick stated. Over time, as various street musicians rolled in and out of the Loose Marbles, new ensembles formed such as Alyenda Seguerra's Hurray for the Riff Raff, Meschiya Lake's Little Big Horns and—eventually—Tuba Skinny. By 2009, Shaye Cohn, Barnabus Jones, Todd Burdick and Kiowa Wells frequently played hot jazz on Royal Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans while