For Trombone Shorty, New Orleans is much more than just his hometown, and music is much more than just his job.
The Grammy-winning musician, born Troy Andrews, 39, has collaborated with everyone from Ringo Starr and Pharrell Williams to Foo Fighters and Little Big Town, and has been playing music for as long as he can remember, growing up in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans.
Dating back to his first New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival performance at just four years old — when Bo Diddley called him up to the stage after hearing a loud note coming from his trombone as he made his way through the crowd with his mother — music has been a key part of Andrews’ whole life, and he and his band “average about 150, 160 to 175 shows a year,” he tells PEOPLE.
But no matter how long he’s on the road, he always finds his way back home to New Orleans.
“Even though I’m extremely tired from touring, I have to get back to the city to feel the spirit and the fabric of what’s going on so I can continue to go represent what we have going,” he says.
His loyalty to the city led him to recently invest in the canned mocktail brand, Mockly, which is a “homegrown” Big Easy-based product.
“It’s New Orleans and everybody to me in New Orleans is like family so I wanted to be a part of a company that represents a clean lifestyle, especially representing the city of New Orleans,” Andrews, who doesn’t, and has never, drank alcohol himself explains to PEOPLE.
And as the Crescent City prepares to host the 2025 Super Bowl — where Andrews will perform a rendition of “America the Beautiful” ahead of the game with Lauren Daigle — he opened up to PEOPLE about favorite way to spend a day in his beloved town.
First things first, the day is likely not starting at the crack of dawn.
“I probably don’t wake up until noon,” he says, explaining that he is often up until the early hours of the morning as a musician. But once he’s up, he’d jump in the car and drive around his old stomping grounds.
“I would go to the Tremé neighborhood, my neighborhood where I’m born and raised, and go to the Li’l Dizzy’s, that’s a restaurant that’s right on Esplanade and North Robertson. I would drive through the Tremé neighborhood to say hello to everyone on Tuba Fats Square.”
He’d later grab a po’ boy for lunch — or an early dinner perhaps — at Parkway Bakery and Tavern or Verti Marte.
While out and about, he says he’d get cotton candy and walk to St. Charles Ave. where he’d stop by Bernard’s Pralines.
“Sometimes people in New Orleans, we like to be a tourist in our own city, so we’ll just park our cars on Canal Street and walk down to the French Quarter and get beignets at Café du Monde and walk along the Mississippi River and listen to the steamboats playing before they take off,” he says.
(Pro tip, he says: If the line at that Café du Monde location, drive to the City Park location instead!)
“Then we end up at the Blue Nile on Frenchmen Street later that night to listen to the New Breed Brass Band or anyone that’s playing on Frenchmen Street,” he says of the famous area filled with music venues. “There’s a lot of brass bands on the corner outside [too}.”
Other favorites include Commander’s Place, Lula Restaurant Distillery and grabbing a BBQ shrimp po’ boy from Liuzza’s by the Track: “It’s one of the best that I’ve ever…It’s a different type of thing”
In addition to his Super Bowl performance, Andrews also attended this year’s Grammy Awards on Feb. 2 where he was nominated for Best Regional Roots Music Album for Live At The 2024 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival which he played on with the New Breed Brass Band. And in April, he’ll be back where it all began — and where he has returned many times before — New Orleans Jazz Fest.
“It is great to be in New Orleans during this particular time with the Super Bowl, Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest right after that,” he says adding, “I’ll get to see a lot of people play a lot of music and just be here, so it doesn’t get any better than that for me.”
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