I had plans of writing a much longer/better review for the 2024 New Year’s Eve concert at The Pageant that featured Andy Frasco & The U.N. with Sean Canan’s Voodoo Funky Butt Brass Band opening. And the night truly deserves all the accolades.
But I’m spent and need to get something posted. Suffice it to say it was a spectacular way to finish 2024 and ring in 2025. Both bands were on fire and, I’m pretty certain that Andy Frasco & The U.N. outdid themselves during their two-hour set full of antics, guest appearances (Devon Allman for one), a midnight balloon drop complete with father time, crowd surfing, and more. In between dynamic songs and jams, Frasco occasionally reminisced, at one point sharing that the Funky Butt Brass Band was the first band he ever performed with in St. Louis, waxed poetically here and there, offered wise words urging fans to cut ties with what doesn’t work in their lives and also to “be crazy in 2025—f*ck it.” The bottle of Jameson that mostly sat on top of Frasco’s piano became a slide for bassist Floyd Kellogg and while some of the champagne was used to toast the new year, most of it Frasco doused all over his piano and Kellogg toward the end of the night but well before the grand finale—an impressive cover of Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name.”
While Funky Butt Brass Band has been a staple in St. Louis since 2008, this one-hour set was the first iteration of Sean Canan’s Voodoo Funky Butt Brass Band and we hope it’s not the last as there was some extra pop in this already high-energy, festive crew made up mostly, as the name suggests, horns of all kinds.
The show was one of the best I saw all year and even the exuberant, fun-loving crowd outdid themselves in sheer excitement and simply being in a festive mood all night.
See a ton of photos here (a few are from next door at Delmar Hall as Sean Canan trotted across the parking lot for a guest appearance covering 4 Non Blonde’s “What’s Up” with The Mighty Pines).
