Time Trenier
Time Trenier grew up in New Orleans about the same time the music grew up. There were so many bands, playing whatever people wanted to hear, inventing new sounds just to stand out from the others. Time used to dance on the street corners with his brothers, one beating time with spoons till the other got tired dancing and they’d switch. It always brought some change, and that’s when they started calling him “Time” because he could cut it into pieces that you could set your watch by, but always without losing the life-pulse. And if you wanted he could cut those pieces into pieces, he could syncopate and bend time, mess with it in all kinds of ways and it still sounded right, sounded good. When he wasn’t little and cute enough anymore to dance on the corners he took up with horns, anything you could blow except the trombone (his arms weren’t long enough yet). He played with Buddy Bolden’s band just before Bolden got confused and they took him off, played with King Oliver, play the marches and the riverboats, played the cathouses and the political rallies, played all over New Orleans and up the river.
There is life and there is music, and Time prefers nowadays to spend his hours inside the music. It is safe in there, interesting and satisfying and free in a way that nothing outside it is. Even if you don’t care about or like the people you’re playing for you can put yourself into the music and forget about them. Doesn’t matter what it is- he’s played ragtime and John Philip Sousa, barrelhouse blues and church music and enough of this new jump style to know it’s nothing new really, just something that was there before emphasized, the honk and the growl laid on heavy, pushing the instrument toward its rough and lowdown tones. He’s mostly a sax man lately, most comfortable with it, has spent his time backing up the trumpet and clarinet solos the big bands went for just a few years back. Just tell me what you want and how you want it, Time can deliver the goods with his chops just as good if not better than ever. The only thing he won’t do is lay on his back and kick his legs up in the air while he plays. There’s music and there’s circus tricks and the acrobats are in charge of the latter.
Time has been in for a drink and a listen at Ty Purvis’ club, the man knows his way around a piano but can’t lay out enough green to support more than a little combo. Time owns his own little house now, teaches a few lessons to pay for the groceries, and only occasionally misses the music life and everything that comes with it. He’s retired from the professional part of it, out running from gig to gig with the boys, but if somebody needs a sax man in the area and can pay up front he’s there. Whatever they’re playing he can grab himself a piece of it. Drop out and he’s there to fill in, or take a solo without missing a beat. He can read off a chart if that’s what’s needed, he can sit back and lay down a bed for a vocal to nestle in, can step up and blow his guts out through the horn if it’s a different kind of party. Just don’t ask him to rehearse.
All summer I was all about Toronto. I’m so grateful to South by Southwest and Now Magazine for sponsoring the band, promoting HONEYDRIPPER and for working with Cameron to make a great party. Then Toronto happened and it was everything we wanted it to be.