New Orleans in 2015 is a bizarre mixture of anarchist street music, mutant brass band power and 19th century circus sideshow weirdness. Few bands epitomize that eclectic style better than Dirty Bourbon River Show, which kicks off a national tour with a hometown appearance in New Orleans this Saturday, April 4 at d.b.a. The tour is in support of the band’s new album, Important Things Humans Should Know.
Band leader and multi-instrumentalist Noah Adams started the group after moving to New Orleans in 2009. “Our very first gig was at Tipitina’s Homegrown Night, where you can get your start,” Adams says. “It’s free, you just try to get people to say your name at the door. We told everyone. It was an hour slot, but we only had 30 minutes of music. We got an amazing turn out, went all out, and it just grew from there.”
Adams on piano, Jimmy William’s on tuba and Dane “Bootsy” Schindler on drums create an engaging cacophony on Important Things…. “We’re always tinkering and playing with parts,” Adams says. “And we’ve released a lot of albums, churned them out. It was a good way of figuring out who we were, how to incorporate a lot of things into one song.”
The music is only part of the attraction in what often seems like a bizarre travelling circus.
“We definitely think a lot about that,” Adams acknowledges. “It’s like Shostakovich meets Entry of the Gladiators. There’s a ringmaster, and very physical performances. There are kind of vignettes you used to find in vaudeville. We change tempo, key, styles, so it unfolds like a story. And we include a lot of jazz. We want to be people’s gateway to jazz! It’s just not listened to enough anymore, and New Orleans is where it was born.”
The new album will be the centerpiece of the live performances, from the jazz-punk of “One-Legged One-Armed One-Eyed Unicycle Man,” a full-throttle brass assault on the senses that features horn man Matt Thomas playing two saxes at once; to the organ-driven, cumbia-inflected dance powerhouse “The Clams And I.”

Recommended listening:
Dirty Bourbon River Show – Important Things Humans Should Know
Dirty Bourbon River Show – Volume 3