Tuba Skinny

The nucleus of Tuba Skinny began coalescing in the Crescent City circa 2003 to 2005,[lower-alpha 3] just prior to Hurricane Katrina.[5][3][15] Several of its musicians played together in a handful of other bands on the streets of New Orleans.[15][14] None of them are native to the city.[2][14] The band's orchestrator and cornetist Shaye Cohn[lower-alpha 1]—the granddaughter of jazz saxophonist Al Cohn[17]—is a Bostonian.[5] Trombonist Barnabus Jones is a Virginian.[3][15] Todd Burdick, the eponymous tuba of Tuba Skinny who also plays the banjo and guitar, is a Chicagoan.[5][18] Guitarist Max Bien-Kahn is from San Francisco.[18] Vocalist and bass drummer Erika Lewis[lower-alpha 2] is from New York's Hudson River Valley and resides in Tennessee.[2] Clarinetist Craig Flory and frottoirist Robin Rapuzzi are from Seattle.[2]

In 2005, Shaye Cohn, Barnabus Jones, Todd Burdick, Kiowa Wells, and other itinerant street musicians who would eventually comprise Tuba Skinny formed a busking string band called the Dead Man Street Orchestra and often played in the hurricane-ravaged city.[8][22] Subsisting in modest circumstances,[23][24] they "played for tips in Jackson Square out of necessity more than choice."[5] Cohn played the accordion,[23] Jones played the fiddle,[17] Burdick played the banjo,[23] and Wells played the guitar.[23] Alynda Segarra—future band leader of Hurray for the Riff Raff—played the mini-washboard.[25][23][26] Their tramp band played Cajun folk music,[23] gypsy music,[17] and Balkan melodies,[21] as well as "old-time mountain music in the fashion of Old Crow Medicine Show, the Avett Brothers, and Uncle Earl."[5][22] A surviving 2005 recording of their Balkan melody interpretation of "You Are My Sunshine" illustrates the band's inchoate style during this period.[21]

At least one of the band members was arrested for "bumming for money on Bourbon Street" in the heart of the French Quarter and had learned to play a musical instrument in order to no longer have to beg for spare change.[26] As itinerant musicians, they frequently undertook boxcar tours as far away as the East Coast and West Coast.[23][24][5] At the time, the Dead Man Street Orchestra was described by The New Yorker as a motley collection of New Orleans street people belonging to "a subculture of rail-riding, outdoor-living hobos."[27] They 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."[24][28] A gritty photo-essay chronicling the hardscrabble perambulatory band, The Ballad of the Hobo by photographer James Heil, was published in Time magazine in 2006.[24][28]

While playing as the Dead Man Street Orchestra, the seeds for a brass band began to germinate in their minds. "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?'"[8] When the Dead Man Street Orchestra informally dissolved, Cohn, Jones, Burdick, Wells, Segarra, and other instrumentalists joined the Loose Marbles led by trumpeter Ben Polcer and clarinetist Michael Magro.[3][29][27]

By performing with the Loose Marbles,[lower-alpha 4] the budding musicians who would later comprise Tuba Skinny learned to play traditional jazz.[3] Polcer's and Magro's Loose Marbles was "a sort of amalgamated jazz corporation that creates subsidiaries around the city, to maximize tips and minimize boredom. The fifteen musicians play clarinet, trumpet, banjo, washboard, accordion, trombone, guitars, tuba, standup bass, and guitars, but you're likely to see only seven or eight performers at any given gig."[27] The ever-changing impromptu line-up sometimes included jazz vocalist Tamar Korn and trumpeter Marla Dixon.[30][31]

Cohn initially played jazz piano with the Loose Marbles.[32] This reflected her training as a classical pianist.[5] However, she had "burned out on classical piano" due to spending "many, many hours practicing in a tiny rehearsal room going over the same four measures again and again."[5][17] One day in New Orleans, while residing in a dilapidated building where there was an assortment of "abandoned" instruments,[5] Cohn salvaged a flood-damaged trumpet and became a devotee of the instrument.[5] "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. 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."[8][30][17]

Todd Burdick likewise began his musical background on different instruments.[18] He had played punk rock[lower-alpha 5] and experimental music as a percussionist, but he was introduced to the banjo, guitar, and other instruments by busking with the ensemble: "It was like learning from the ground up with them." Over time, as various musicians rolled in and out of the Loose Marbles, new ensembles were born such as chanteuse Meschiya Lake's Little Big Horns Jazz Band[33] and, later, Tuba Skinny.[8][32][34]

Todd Burdick

Barnabus Jones

Shaye Cohn

Erika Lewis

By 2009,[15] Shaye Cohn, Barnabus Jones, Kiowa Wells, and Todd Burdick had been frequently playing jazz on Royal Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans while learning an array of various instruments.[2] They selected hot jazz because—in their estimation—it was the most accessible form of music.[2] "People bump into you and say, ‘What kind of music is that? I never heard that kind of jazz,'" Cohn explained, "which I can relate to because, at one point, I had never heard this kind of jazz either."[5] Since "Bourbon Street's loud bars and drunken crowds make busking, or street performances, all but impossible," Tuba Skinny often performed on Royal Street with its quieter "art galleries, antique and jewelry shops and restaurants."[1][3]

The band's name, Tuba Skinny, was purportedly acquired by happenstance and was a sarcastic remark by a passerby. Whenever the band's slender[5] sousaphone player, Todd Burdick, would cycle down a street with his iconic instrument in Faubourg Marigny, a random heckler would repeatedly shout: "Hey, look, it's Tuba Skinny!"[2] This remark was a reference to Jackson Square musician Anthony "Tuba Fats" Lacen,[16] a "folk hero" who fought for the rights of street musicians and who died in 2004.[8][35] Burdick recounted this incident to his friends and band mates. The band decided to run with the incident and christened themselves, "Tuba Skinny."[5] Other than the happenstance name, the band has neither official ties to Tuba Fats nor was named in his honor.[8]

In their early years, the band drew extensively upon the Loose Marbles' repertoire. As time passed, they began resurrecting forgotten tunes by "Louis Armstrong's Hot 5 and Hot 7, Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers, Bunk Johnson, George Lewis, Jim Robinson, the Mississippi Sheiks, Sam Morgan's Jazz Band, Johnny and Baby Dodds, Blind Blake, Blind Boy Fuller, the Memphis Jug Band, King Oliver, Bessie Smith" and others.[8] They became a popular ensemble among local traditional jazz haunts because of their historical fidelity to the traditional 1920s jazz, which is an era that is often overlooked in the New Orleans music scene. Unlike revival or pre-revival bands, Tuba Skinny attempts to imitate the sound of traditional jazz in the days "before phonographs were widely available."[8]

Tuba Skinny in 2013 with clarinetist Ewan Bleach (left).

Tuba Skinny began globally touring as a band in July 2009 when they flew to France. An acquaintance had invited the band to the coastal town of Meschers-sur-Gironde where they played music in the streets and at a local tavern. They purchased used bicycles in Meschers and embarked upon a bicycle tour visiting the picturesque seaside towns along the southwest coast of France. They camped overnight to reduce expenses.[8]

Over the years, the band has continued their celebrated busking tradition. They played as a busking band in Hobart, Tasmania[2]—where they recorded their fifth album Pyramid Strut in 2013[3]—and in old town centers throughout mainland Europe such as France, Italy, and Spain.[2] Reportedly, their least pleasant experience while busking occurred at a flea market in San Severo, Italy, where not a single person lingered to listen to them.[2] The band also toured in their native homeland of the United States. To do so, they squeezed their eight members, primary instruments, secondary instruments, and several pets—including Barnabus' pet dog Tupelo[lower-alpha 7]—into a six-seat van.[8]

Over the years, Tuba Skinny has released ten albums containing more than a hundred tracks.[3] In September 2016, Cohn and Lewis released a country album Waiting For Stars for their other lesser-known band, The Lonesome Doves.[37] The album, described as "original country from Chattanooga by way of New Orleans," consisted entirely of songs composed by Lewis.[37] On the album, both Cohn and Lewis sang vocals, with Lewis playing the guitar and Cohn playing the fiddle.[37]

During Summer 2018, the band was invited to the Netherlands where they performed five nights a week for several months with the Ashton Brothers circus.[38] Their performances included Lewis' vocals accompanying trapeze acts and Cohn playing ragtime solos. When not performing with the circus, the band members bicycled into Utrecht where they busked on the city streets.[38] The circus invited them back the following year, but the band declined due to their commitment to seeking out new experiences.[38] "We're jazz musicians and seek improvisation all the time," frottoirist Rapuzzi explained, "We can't fix ourselves to the same set list of songs let alone the same acts and show routine for another season, all very untrue to the nature of our band."[38]

In April 2019, the peripatetic band released their tenth album Some Kind-a-Shake which was recorded at The Living Room Studio in New Orleans and featured nine instrumentalists.[39] In addition to traditional jazz and blues songs, the album featured two original compositions, "Some Kind-a-Shake" by Cohn, and "Berlin Rag" by noted clarinetist Ewan Bleach.[39] The jazz-centric publication The Syncopated Times reviewed the album and declared that the band's "tenth album, as unbelievable as this will sound, is their best."[39] The publication further observed that Tuba Skinny's "method is to rehearse on the street, fine tune in performance, and nail it in the studio."[39] Particular praise was given to the album's throwback emphasis on an ensemble sound as opposed to solos.[39]