Things don’t always turn out the way they’re flagged. I was under the impression that the second Hot 8 album, The Life & Times Of... was the first half of a pigeon pair, with the sequel apparently intended as a more reflective tribute to fallen friends delivered through a collection of traditional brass band material.
Well, here’s the sequel, and a glance down the writing credits shows plenty of Hot 8s collectively and individually, with nary a Trad. arr. in sight. That collection of traditional brass band material may have been the original intention, but the material, as it turns out, was written and arranged during The Life & Times Of... sessions. Hardly traditional in one sense, but in another it slots right into the New Orleans tradition.
While the predecessor was, to all intents and purposes, a party album, there isn’t a great deal of distance between it and what’s on offer here, which, of course, brings us into the New Orleans tradition, where the original role of the marching band included playing at funerals.
Those funeral duties (it’s hard to think of them as mere gigs) included accompanying the hearse to the graveyard, playing appropriately sombre material, followed by a more upbeat return from the cemetery, accompanied by the second line of mourners in a decidedly more upbeat manner. The person they’ve just buried had, after all, gone to glory and was now free from the sufferings and travails of this mortal coil. And that’s something to celebrate, along with the life they managed to lead along the way.
So, rather than the traditional material given a reflective workover (and things may well have started out that way), what emerged is very much a second line on the way back affair. A tad less rambunctious than the regular Hot 8 repertoire, but there's not much in it.