Harvest the Music with Rebirth (lots of photos)

My favorite charity, my favorite weekly event and my favorite brass band came together as Rebirth Brass Band played Harvest the Music benefitting Second Harvest. I’m not alone in my love for Rebirth, the huge crowd was packed Jazz Fest-style into the small urban park. It was also one of the most wonderful weather days of the year. Between the blues skies, balmy breezes and temperatures in the mid 80’s, it was a perfect storm of comfort and beauty.

Rebirth is my favorite brass band, not just because they’re incredibly talented and fun as heck, they are also hit-makers who’ve churned out a number of songs that have become local anthems. “Do Watcha Wanna” is a city classic (and a way of life). They played several songs from the new CD coming out in February and each had that terrific blend of familiar beats with new funky twists. Several of the new songs got the crowd dancing as enthusiastically as old hits, they’re like old favorite songs you’ve never heard before. The most fun of these is certainly the ode to the Saints’ Super Bowl victory. Don’t know what it’s called yet, only that I can’t wait to hear it again. Though we’d never heard it before, the crowd was singing along by the second chorus, “We used to say, ‘who dat,’ now we say ‘we dat’…(wish I could remember the rest, but I know it was about winning again). The sure-to-be-a-hit song will be available for downloading after the band goes into the studio in November.

All of the musicians in the band are top notch but I want to make special notice of Derrick Tabb’s drum solo. Armed with little more than a snare, he banged out one of the greatest drum solos I’ve heard in some time, and that’s really saying something considering how much great music I’ve seen this year. When he broke the solo down to just his snare, he pulled sounds out of it I’d never heard, as if he were reinventing the instrument like Jimi Hendrix did with his guitar. The crowd went absolutely wild.

They closed the show with some familiar favorites, including “Casanova” and “Fire” and “Do Watcha Wanna.” I went home still glowing with the energy and talent this city is known for, lives for.

To listen to “Do Watcha Wanna” and for more information about the band:

http://www.rebirthbrassband.com/

And I’ve mentioned Rebirth more times than I can remember, which is why this blog has a “search” feature. The past post with the most information on the band is:

https://latonola.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/wednesday-lafayette-square/

For more info about Second Harvest:

http://no-hunger.org/

And for the Harvest the Music schedule:

http://harvestthemusic.org/

Just for fun, this video of a Treme Sidewalk Steppers second line features Rebirth playing as the Steppers are “Coming out the Door.”