“Don't get me wrong, we got it goin' on in New Orleans. He's just better.” - Allen Toussaint talking about Trombone Shorty

“A genius player. He's got nothing but personality, he plays his ass off and he's a beautiful human being.” - Lenny Kravitz on Trombone Shorty

“Shorty possesses the rarest combination of talent, technical capability and down-home soul. I'm his biggest fan.” - Wynton Marsalis

Troy 'Trombone Shorty' Andrews' new album, Backatown, is the work of a rare artist who can draw both the unqualified respect of jazz legends and deliver a high-energy rock show capable of mesmerizing international rock stars and audiences alike. With such an unprecedented mix of rock, funk, jazz, hip-hop and soul, he had to create his own name to describe his signature sound: Supafunkrock! Andrews is the kind of player who comes along maybe once in a generation, and Backatown is the latest, clearest proof that hisartistry is as singular as his raw talent.

The album title comes from the locals' term for the area of New Orleans that includes the Tremé [pronounced Tre-MAY] neighborhood in the city's 6th Ward, where Troy was born and raised—getting his nickname at four years old when he was observed by his older brother James marching in a street parade wielding a trombone twice as long as the kid was high. The cultural backdrop of the Tremé—the oldest black neighborhood in the U.S.—is at the very root of Troy's music, on top of which he's built his own sound. The streetwise, gritty feel of the term underscores the difference between the stereotype of the New Orleans jazz musician and what this audacious young artist and his cohorts are going for, and pulling off.

Equally adept on trombone and trumpet, Andrews plays a variety of other instruments as well. He's applied the same skill sets and fierce discipline to his vocal instrument, to soulful effect, as the album demonstrates. Surrounding Andrews is his band, Orleans Avenue—Mike Ballard on bass, Pete Murano on guitar, Joey Peebles on drums, Dwayne Williams on percussion and Dan Oestreicher on baritone sax—virtuosos every one.

Backatown is the band's first recording to get a national release. All but one of the 14 tracks are originals, the lone cover being the Allen Toussaint classic “On Your Way Down,” with the legend himself sitting in on piano. “Don't get me wrong, we got it goin' on in New Orleans,” Toussaint said of Andrews. “He's just better.” Andrews was delighted when Toussaint told him he liked this version of the much-recorded song. Other contributors include fellow Louisiana homeboy Marc Broussard singing with Andrews on “Right to Complain” and Troy's former bandleader Lenny Kravitz, who plays guitar and sings backing vocals on “Something Beautiful.” (Troy recently returned the favor, spending the better part of a week in the Bahamas playing on Kravitz's upcoming LP.)

“In our band we have people from different cultural backgrounds who listen to all kinds of different styles,” Andrews explains, “and when we get into our studio in New Orleans—we call it the Gumbo Room—we throw it all in and see how we can make it work as one thing, so that it's not so left-field. We just try to make everything fit, you know, and I think that had a major effect on the record. We just banged a bunch of things out to see how they could work. We weren't afraid to approach a bunch of different musical styles—rock music, R&B, whatever—just because there's a horn in front. We just did what we do, and over time we developed something fresh. Making this record was a learning experience for us because, for the earlier records, we did them in like three days; this time we stayed in there for months in between tour dates, writing, picking things apart and reconstructing them.”

Andrews started early, learning how to play drums and what he remembers as “the world's smallest trumpet” at the age of three. By the time he reached six, this prodigy was playing trumpet and trombone in a jazz band led by his older brother James, himself a trumpet player of local renown who has been called “Satchmo of the Ghetto.” Not long afterward, Troy formed his own band with some other musically inclined kids from Tremé, including current bandmate Williams, and they became regulars at Jackson Square, playing for spare change and pulling in as much as $400 apiece on a particularly hopping weekend. During a visit to a small New Orleans club, Bono and the Edge happened upon the trombone player, who was then 12. “We walked in and the place was jumping,” the Edge recalled. “There was this little funk band, but they were all playing brass instruments, which is something I'd never heard of or seen before. We were just mesmerized by him. I ended up with Bono, after a few tequilas, dancing with a bunch of girls on the top of the bar. It was one of those sort of nights.”

Troy's rarefied talents and immense promise inspired the organizers of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival to pick him as the subject of the fest's annual Congo Square official poster. In 2009, at 23, he became the youngest artist ever to be pictured on a poster—the next youngest was Wynton Marsalis, who was featured at age 41. Said Marsalis of Andrews, “Shorty possesses the rarest combination of talent, technical capability and down-home soul. I'm his biggest fan.”

The press has been blown away as well. Checking out a Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue performance, New York Times lead music critic Jon Pareles observed that the front man “flaunted the presence of a rock star... He played trombone with almost combative postures.” And Rolling Stone's David Fricke observed that Andrews, “looking like a street-parade P. Diddy in a sharp white suit, made true heavy metal with his horn in a thrilling recasting of AC/DCs ‘Back in Black.'”

When asked about his favorite songs on Backatown, Andrews says, “Actually, I'm quite comfortable with the whole record. Being a musician, I'm never, ever comfortable with a record, because as soon as it's finished I hear something I could change, but not in this case. It's cool for me, 'cause I'm not on there takin' an eight-minute solo or anything like that. I think it's a well-rounded record, with songs that can catch everybody's attention.