Brian Slattery Photo
The trumpets and saxes for Funky Dawgz Brass Band swung into their sound check on the lawn of Mitchell Library before the trombones even arrived. About 15 seconds into it, one of the bone players strolled up, calmly took his horn out of its case, assumed his position in the band, and came in hot, sounding like he’d arrived right when he was supposed to.
That sense of freewheeling discipline defined the evening Monday, as the Dawgz grooved through originals, brass band classics, and a few tasty covers to the delight of the crowd assembled on the lawn in front of them for the last installment of the Mitchell Library’s Beecher Park Summer Concert Series in Westville. With a few of the concerts rained out earlier in the summer — and the Dawgz in the midst of a few-month tour that had already taken them as far away as Segovia, Spain — this concert made up for lost time.
After a couple numbers to warm up, the band hit its stride with an uptempo rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Till You Get Enough,” which had people bobbing in their seats, and in line as they waited for pie, as part of the concert series’s signature pie-making competition.
The pies were gone quick, all 28 of them. The Dawgz were just getting started. They had the crowd’s attention from their first tune, though nobody had officially come to dance. Almost everyone had brought lawn chairs and blankets, and most were eating — either picnic food they’d brought or sandwiches they’d bought from the Caseus food truck in the library’s parking lot. The crowd smothered the band with appreciative applause at the end of every song, but still, nobody got up to dance.
The Funky Dawgz kept working and working. At last, two-thirds of the way through their set, when the band laid down a big, loose groove and started singing and throwing out strings of beads to excited children, the dam broke. Several people rose to their feet, first kids, then adults, and formed a dance floor under one of the PA speakers. A few more people stood up and danced in their places. By the time the Dawgz hit another inspired cover — of LeVert’s hit “Casanova,” which morphed into Rebirth Brass Band’s “Do Whatcha Wanna,” even more people were moving their bodies to the music.
The band was nearing the end of its set, and asked the people in the crowd if they wanted to stay in New Orleans. The crowd responded in the affirmative. So the band left their microphones and paraded through the crowd to “When The Saints Go Marching In,” a line of children and adults snaking behind them. As the evening cooled off, the show ended in a raucous burst of brass that compelled people to cheer and cheer. The Funky Dawgz Brass Band proved that one way to keep cool in the heat is to add a little fire.