Tuba Skinny
Loose, joyful street-band jazz that feels like a New Orleans corner in 1925. Dusty brass, scrap-metal percussion, and vocals with a world-weary drawl.
Loose, joyful street-band jazz that feels like a New Orleans corner in 1925. Dusty brass, scrap-metal percussion, and vocals with a world-weary drawl.
Tuba Skinny sounds like a time machine parked on a humid Royal Street sidewalk. Their music is a living, breathing recreation of the 1920s and 30s jazz age, but it lacks the stiff formality of a museum piece. Instead, you get the grit of the street: the metallic scrape of a washboard, the deep huff of a tuba, and the bright, conversational interplay of cornet and clarinet. It is music that feels sun-baked and slightly frayed at the edges, yet bursting with a kinetic, communal energy.
What makes them truly distinctive is their commitment to the 'pre-phonograph' sound. They don't rely on modern studio tricks or flashy solos; their power comes from the collective polyphony of the ensemble. Erika Lewis’s vocals provide a haunting, earthy counterpoint to the brass, often dragging just a hair behind the beat to create a sense of effortless, late-afternoon cool. It is technically proficient but emotionally loose, capturing the spontaneity of a band that spent years honing their craft for passing tourists and locals alike.
Start with 'Blue Chime Stomp' to hear the band at their most cohesive and vibrant. It perfectly captures their ability to make century-old ragtime and blues feel like the most urgent, joyful thing you could possibly listen to right now. It is the ideal soundtrack for any moment that requires a bit of unpretentious, old-world soul.
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.
Shares swing, vocal jazz, traditional pop, bonfire (subgenre)
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