Bonerama: almost as fun to say as it is to hear. No, it's not a Vanessa Del Rio flick; it's a four trombone-powered outfit from New Orleans that makes Phil Spector's wall of sound look like a cardboard fence. This is the brass band equivalent to a muscle car with a horny teenager at the wheel.

Horn players Mark Mullins and Craig Klein put the band together during some downtime from their regular gig with Harry Connick, Jr. Playing it straight wasn't the idea; experimental guitar got thrown in with rock drums. With an emphasis on the funky and the unpredictable, this Big Easy 'bone barrage is part parade, part earthquake, part wrong, and all right.

And the word is hittin' the street as the band tears the lid off joints like Montage Live Music Hall, where it appeared at last year's Rochester International Jazz Fest. Mullins and Klein have since given Connick notice and have been full bore Bonerama ever since, hitting festivals like Monterey, Telluride, and Sonoma.

Luxuratin' in Louisiana between tours, Mullins put down the 'bone and picked up the phone. Here's what he said.

CITY: How did you arrive at Bonerama?

We developed it as a kind of labor of love. There're so many great brass bands in New Orleans. There's a bunch of really wonderful trombone players that all come from different backgrounds. We thought it would be fun to put together a trombone-based brass band that could definitely be rooted in the New Orleans brass band tradition but wouldn't be limited by just staying there. It could have one foot outside that circle as well and really tackle any sort of music we felt we could tackle.

Were you trying to be obtuse or did you think the trombone's time had come to shine?

We think it was long overdue. But then yes, the trombone has been generally known as a support instrument or as part of a horn section or part of a brass band. It's always a part of something. As far as a lead instrument or as an instrument that's in the forefront of a group, it's a little more unusual.

Could you have pulled this off in any city other than New Orleans?

That's a great question.

I know.

Absolutely not. A huge part of it is rooted in New Orleans and it's a part of what we walk around and breathe every day. The way we're doing it and the way we're influenced by the stuff where we live could have only happened quite this way in New Orleans.

How did you develop the Bonerama sound?

It was a clear, natural approach. You take the things you're influenced by, you take them in. We happen to play the trombone and that's our voice for the stuff we spit back out. The stuff that we take in isn't just trombone stuff. We take in Led Zeppelin, we take in Beethoven, The Meters; we take in a lot of different things and spit that back out through the trombone.

A lot of the lead lines you play are guitar riffs. Does the trombone have a shot at being the new guitar?

In my mind each string can be seen as an extension of the trombone slide and the range and the sonority. The range that guitarists get, like the Zeppelin stuff - the low meaty crunchy riff stuff - that stuff just transfers so well to trombone. I don't know if it's a sonority issue or if it's a timbre thing... the fact that we can bend notes like a guitar player. It's just a natural transfer for a lot of rock guitar stuff.

But a true test would be air-trombone players in the audience. Had any yet?

Yes. It's hilarious, but we do and it's funny. The first time I saw that we were just looking at each other and thought it was the funniest thing in the world. We felt like we'd really accomplished something.

So you're contributing to the instrument's hip factor?

We want to change the way people think about the trombone. And we feel we can do it in a natural way, just taking music that we love and reinterpreting it, combined with the music that we write, which is kinda all over the place, too. Everyone in the band writes music. We have a lot of weapons with all these things when you put 'em together.

And it totally works.

Yeah. There's something about multiple trombones together without any other instruments. When it's in unison it's as powerful as a Mack truck comin' down the road when you've got four 'bones blastin'.

What determines if a song is Bonerama worthy or not?

We might not know until we get in and actually try it. The arrangement has to be accessible and make sense, too. Some of the things we do aren't that innovative; we're just taking things and pretty much reinterpreting them. It's a case-by-case thing. I mean, I like Queen but I don't know if we could pull off a Queen song.

Whenever a band rooted in a traditional music gooses it unconventionally, feathers get ruffled. Piss off any purists lately?

Probably. There's probably some people that think if we're calling ourselves a New Orleans brass band then we probably shouldn't be playing Black Sabbath. But they said that when The Dirty Dozen came on the scene 25 years ago and they started playing funk. I just hope that we're picking up on a similar thing. You've gotta acknowledge where this stuff is and where it came from but you can't ignore where it wants to go. To be able to allow it to move forward is key to having the original stuff live." 

Bonerama

Pittsford-Sutherland High School, 55 Sutherland St, Pittsford

Thursday, December 6

7:30 p.m. | $10-$12 | 267-1100