Still Singing Those Post-Katrina Blues

For Sanchez, scion of the city's working-class Irish Channel neighborhood, life pre-Katrina meant 16 years of touring the world with Cowboy Mouth. Partying like a rock star. He had a wife and a house, cash in his pocket. Then the water wiped out everything he had. Everything, that is, but his wife.

Back in the day, it was sold-out gigs at the 9:30 club in Washington. Now he's no longer with Cowboy Mouth, and when he's not playing for tips, Sanchez is driving from city to city, playing house parties for $750 a pop, hoping for the random club gig. Being "formerly of" a once-popular band gets you only so far.

Sanchez was in Atlanta recording a Cowboy Mouth album when the storm hit. With nowhere to go, the band booked a bunch of gigs and hit the road. But playing with the band now felt like "a cartoon," so he left. For three months, he and his wife hid out in Belize, too battle-scarred to move back home. Eventually, they made it back, renting out a spot in the Lakeview area.

His music has changed: It's slower, sadder, resolute, seasoned with both bitterness and hope, rooted in New Orleans traditions and themes. Now he's collaborating on a new CD with his buddy, Boutte; he spends a lot of time hanging out with blues and jazz musicians.

"At 47, I don't have to prove to anyone that I can rock," says Sanchez, a man with a fondness for old-school fedoras. "I played rock-and-roll. Now I play New Orleans music. There's definitely a freedom in that."

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At 21, Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews is one of the lucky ones. Where others have struggled post-Katrina, his career is taking off: He played with the Neville Brothers on Letterman. He made his acting debut on NBC's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." For the rest of the year, he's got 19 gigs booked, touring the country with his jazz-funk-rock-pop band, Orleans Avenue.

When Katrina hit, Andrews was a 19-year-old wunderkind on break from touring with Lenny Kravitz. He fled with his family to Dallas, 10 crammed in his Volvo, wondering and worrying if other family members made it out, too.

He didn't stay away for long. New Orleans grounds him. Specifically, it is Faubourg Treme that feeds him -- reputed to be America's oldest black neighborhood, which nurtured the musical talents of the Rebirth Brass Band, 19th-century Creole classical composer Edmund Dede, Kermit Ruffins and Louis Prima. The neighborhood that nurtured Andrews.

Here, high-water marks along the wooden shotgun houses and shuttered nightclubs give mute testimony to the flood. Few residents returned, but today, under a highway overpass, against a backdrop of murals of long-gone jazz greats, a group of men gathers as it does every day, sitting on metal folding chairs, trying to reclaim a little bit of community. Most of them don't live here any longer.

"These," Andrews says, pointing at the men as he pulls up alongside them in his oversize SUV, "are the last that's left. This is the soul of the neighborhood."

He rolls down the window. "Hey, Dad. Do you need anything? You hungry?" His father, James, smiles at him, shakes his head.

This is where Trombone Shorty comes to touch base, to get his "laugh on," to run errands for his elders. To remind himself not to get a big head. To remind himself of the importance of reaching back, to pull along other musicians who aren't as fortunate as he.

"New Orleans made me who I am," Andrews says. "I can't leave it.

"I need New Orleans. And New Orleans needs me."