This band really knows how to lay down that second line rhythm with a strong groove that just won't let you go! New Orleans music has been a favorite of Mickey Bones for over twenty years and he still gives it that spark of life. Hard hitting funky second line rhythms and earnest traditional New Orleans jazz is what the Hot Tamales are all about. Ask Mickey about his years living in New Orleans...he has some great stories to tell !

 

Since it's inception in 1992 the Hot Tamale Brass Band has led the way in Boston for energetic, hard hitting New Orleans Jazz, Dixieland and New Orleans second Line Music

 

 

"Like jalapeno, cayenne, and habanero, the “Hot Tamales” have been spicing up the Rhythm and Roots Festival for several years now by playing and marching through the crowd as soon as each Main Stage show ends. Before long, this infectious New Orleans style second line band has picked up a veritable parade of merrymakers who march along with them complete with Mardi Gras masks, beads, festive hats, costumes and streamers that sparkle and wave in the wind. The “Hot Tamales” also lead our daily Kids Mardi Gras Parade, for which dozens of kids have hand-made their own masks and percussion instruments. It just wouldn’t be Rhythm and Roots without these wonderful musicians! As Emeril would say, they kick it up a notch!"

 

- Rhythm and Roots Festival

 

"Thank you so much for all your efforts and help with the First night celebration in Copley Square. Everyone had a fabulous time and our board of directors along with the visiting First Night cities called it a great success. Much of the praise belongs to you and the Hot Tamale Brass Dixieland Band. You guys were the hit of the party-kept everybody dancing and the festivities hopping! Once again THANK YOU from all of us at Boston First Night."

 

- Boston First Night

 

"During the event, you had to keep moving through hallways that got crowded all the time to catch the alternating 20-minute sets at T.T.'s and both levels of the Middle East. Sometimes the music moved with you, as the Hot Tamale Brass Band did a second line parade through all the clubs New Orleans style, adding a surreal element to the proceedings."

- Boston Phoenix

 

"One of the most important lessons that Mickey Bones of the Hot Tamale Brass Band has learned in his years of show business he learned the hard way: if your group is performing in a parade with the Ringling Brothers elephants, you should never let them put you between the elephants and the food. Bones recounted, "The parade organizers said, 'When we give the signal, start marching in front of the elephants and start playing'. But they were running them along at a pretty good clip, and in front of us was the cornbread and the water. That was what the elephants wanted. No one told us we were going to have to run for our lives. I turned around and saw 15 elephants as big as a house rampaging towards us"."

 

Oh That New Orleans Second Line !

 

Umbrellas are bobbing up and down and handkerchiefs are frantically moving back and forth. The Hot Tamale Brass Band is hitting it hard with Second Line songs.

 

At a wedding party, a corporate event or a nightclub people are strutting and dancing to our second line band. Maybe it's at a local parade where the whole neighborhood is out, joining in the parade.

 

This is a Second Line, one of  New Orleans’s cultural cornerstones. It's a tradition of

local social and pleasure clubs.

 

If you see the Hot Tamale second line brass band going by,

come on and can join in.

 

The Crazy Syncopations of Dixieland

 

Hot Tamale Brass band also plays New Orleans jazz, often called Dixieland.

 

Dixieland bands first played in New Orleans. Dixieland is one of the earliest styles of jazz. It combines marches, ragtime, quadrilles and blues with, inspired improvisation.

The Dixieland sound is created when one instrument plays the melody and the other instruments improvise around that melody.