Smoota

Smoota grew up in Massachusetts and studied Film and Literature at Harvard University, where he played trombone and made 16mm films under the tutelage of legendary Yugoslavian maverick filmmaker Dusan Makavejev. After college, he moved to San Francisco and played bass in psych funk band C'mon Feet while working at Ubiquity Records, home of beloved rare groove label Luv n' Haight. Upon moving to New York, Smoota picked up the trombone again and, after tasting and rejecting the cubicle life as a book editor, moved to Brooklyn and began pursuing music full-time.

He currently plays trombone with acclaimed art rock band TV on the Radio and recently toured with Sufjan Stevens on his trombone-heavy Age of Adz tour (2010-11). He has also played and/or recorded with Spoon, Pharaoh Monche, Gordan Gano of the Violent Femmes, El-P, Akron/Family, Bebel Gilberto, The Bogmen, Chin Chin, Red Baraat, and many others. In 2009-10 Smoota played trombone and keyboards regularly with Antibalas in Fela!, the Broadway musical directed by acclaimed choreographer Bill T. Jones about the life of Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti . On Halloween 2009, he joined Sharon Jones and members of the Dap-Kings to help Phish cover the Rolling Stones album Exile on Main Street. (The show is documented in the 2010 theatrical film Phish 3D.) And in February 2010, Smoota played trombone and acted in a stage opera version of Melvin Van Peebles' proto-blaxploitation flick Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, directed by Van Peebles himself and featuring music from Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber, the cosmic freak jazz group led by Greg Tate (founder of the Black Rock Coalition with Living Colour's Vernon Reid). Smoota can usually be found on Monday nights playing at Union Pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with local dirty gospel R&B institution Rev. Vince Anderson and the Love Choir.