Ashton Hines grew up playing trumpet and drums through New Orleans' pipeline of young brass bands, marching bands, and church groups before stepping out to lead his own project. Rather than stay inside any single tradition, Hines set out to mix everything he'd learned — brass band, marching band, church, jazz, gospel, and hip-hop — into what fans and organizers alike have dubbed “the band without a genre.”
The current lineup — Hines on trumpet and lead vocals alongside Joshua Phipps (sax/vocals), Jeremy Phipps and Terry Dunn (trombones), Myron Thomas (keys/vocals), Max Bronstein (guitar), Alex Dyring (bass), and Eric Freely (drums) — has become a fixture of the Frenchmen Street music district, holding down regular nights at Maison and the Blue Nile. The band has also performed for the New Orleans Jazz Museum's courtyard livestream series and toured beyond the city, bringing their genre-blurring, crowd-surfing live show to audiences well outside Louisiana.
