THE BAND

St. Louis is famous for its rich musical legacy, one steeped in jazz, blues, soul, funk, gospel, hip-hop, and rock ‘n’ roll. And representing the best of all of those traditions is St. Louis’s most popular band: the sensational Funky Butt Brass Band. 

 

Since coming together in 2008, the Funky Butt Brass Band have put on over 100 thrill-ride live shows every year that have expanded the limits of brass-band jambitiousness, defined by horn-heated instrumental lightning, polyrhythmic boogie-down sonics, dynamic vocals, crowd-tickling covers, and, true to their name, tuchus-taxing fun. 

 

With a frontline attack of four brass badasses alongside electric guitar, drums (and often organ), the Funky Butt Brass Band are perennial powerhouses on stage, master-level duelists, and spontaneous creators of instant classics. And by playing headline spots at St. Louis’s biggest events and most iconic, and drawing from the band’s rhapsodic studio albums, Funky Butt transport audiences inside their exuberant instrumental kaleidoscope and funk-drunk dance party.  

 

The Funky Butt horns are trumpeter Adam Hucke, the master of multiphonics; trombonist Aaron Chandler, the sultan of slide; sousaphonist Cody Henry, the baron of the bottom; and saxophonist Charlie Cerpa, the emperor of embouchure. Together, these brass kickers, master soloists all, turn a Funky Butt show into a parade of pipes, a volley of valves, a battalion of bells.

 

Then, adding rocket fuel to the Funky Butt is Rollin’ Ron Sikes, the prince of the pocket, the master of the march, providing full drumkit wallop behind the band, and on guitar, Jim Peters, the, champion of chank, the hammering-on, pulling-off, picking phenom with the seal-smooth movement around the strings and the guitar tone that rings like the bells of St. Louis Cathedral. 

 

Funky Butt knows no boundaries, combining New Orleans rag, Muscle Shoals fire, Motown polish, Stax punch, bell-bottom blues, honey-dripping funk, sunbaked gospel, and Southern boogie

into an intoxicating jam for the ages. 

 

With such instrumental mastery—as well as the vocal power, versatility, and harmonies of Hucke, Chandler, and Peters—Funky Butt are a one-band stop for all your funk, jazz, rock, blues, and zydeco needs, pumping out all-night electrifying brass-bash revelry. One minute, Funky Butt is thrilling crowds with brass-brimming rock and pop covers, pulling out everything from Prince to the Who to Peter Gabriel to Van Halen; the next they are hitting rafter-ringing gospel-soul and sweat-soaked R&B, embroidered with country, jump blues, and jazz, all backed by their muscular, swinging rhythm section. 

 

Then they are transporting audiences with spark-a-fatty psychedelia, lighting the fire of jam-and-jazz-minded explorers with their comet-hot textural mix and contrapuntal angles, parallelism and counterpoint, expression and locomotion.

 

Or do you want traditionalism? The Funk Butt Brass Band have you covered. They play dozens of Second Line performances every year—parades, festivals, weddings, funerals, holiday parties—specializing in New Orleans jazz, Dixieland, and Afro-Cuban traditions. And of course Funky Butt are the premier band for providing the soundtrack for Mardi Gras in St. Louis, the second-largest Mardi Gras celebration in the United States. Each year, Funky Butt powers the party for the biggest events for Fat Tuesday and Mardi Gras weekend. 

 

But the FBBB have also become the sound of every other holiday and seasonal occassion in St. Louis, from New Year’s Eve blowouts to St. Patrick’s Day street parties to the Cardinals opening-day festivities to Independence Day celebrations to the Last Waltz Thanksgiving concerts to their own massive Christmas tradition: the Funky Butt Brass Band’s annual Brasstravaganza.

 

The Brasstravaganza has become St. Louis’s most-popular holiday-themed show, a full-blown feast for the senses that turns the concert hall into a Christmas wonderland filled with costumes and cocktails, singalongs and Santa, a host of special guests, and the kind of advanced musical merrymaking that obliterates the line between the band and the audience and has resulted in the Brasstravaganza becoming one of the hottest tickets in town all year. In fact, popular demand now has the Brasstravaganza playing a sold-out three-night, four-show residency, including a family matinee. Last year, the boys even took the show on the road with Brasstravaganza dates in both Kansas City and Omaha. 

 

So while Funky Butt have spent years making St. Louis more fun, more musical, more sweat-soaked, and more sleep-deprived by way of the band’s daredevil brassic rock, frenzy-whipping tempos, and Cajun rampagin’, they have also managed to produce a wealth of stellar original material on their own studio discography, including 2009’s Cut the Body Loose, 2014’s Sugar Sugar Whomp Whomp, 2020’s Onward, and their Christmas collection, 2017’s A Funky Butt Family Christmas. 

 

There simply is no band like the Funky Butt Brass Band. They don’t just play the party; they are the party. So what will the next Funky Butt adventure be like? One thing’s for sure: It will be a danceathon dive into the musical melting pot of your dreams. And what will that Funky Butt odyssey do for your funky butt? It will free you up to get down. 

 

Let’s get Funky.