Trombone Shorty performs during the 2008 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

AP / Dave Martin

Troy Andrews, also known as Trombone Shorty, is only 22, but he’s had the experiences of an old pro. The trombonist and trumpeter grew up in the Treme section of New Orleans, where the music hangs thick in the air.

“Growing up in a musical family,” Troy Andrews says, “in a household that had thousands of instruments laying around — some broken, some that weren’t — they were like toys to me.” And vice versa. He remembers being 6 years old and playing a Big Wheel slung over his shoulder like a tuba.

His brother, James Andrews, took him on as the trombone player in his brass band. Troy Andrews started traveling to jazz festivals at age 7.

Playing with brass bands in the streets of New Orleans was an education. Andrews had plenty of musical opportunity, but at the same time the bar was set very high. “The legends of the street brass band music, they didn’t treat me like a kid. They were really showing me songs, and I had to play them right back at them.

“To get that first-hand experience with a bunch of the legends here, it was a blessing. I had solos that I had to take, and they treated me as an average member. They taught me a lot, but they expected a lot more than they taught me.”

He learned well enough to have already played with stars such as The Neville Brothers, Dr. John, Lenny Kravitz, Phish and more, as well as sitting in with bands in and around New Orleans whenever he’s in town. “If you see me by myself, I might be sitting in and playing bluegrass or country or whatever.”

But with his band, Orleans Avenue, he plays what he calls “super-rock funk” — a turbo-charged amalgam of musical forms with a rock rhythm section of guitar, bass and drums that can wrap around songs as disparate as “Saints” and “Back in Black,” as well as Shorty’s original ’70s funk and hip-hop-influenced grooves. But it always comes out sounding like the soulful party that is New Orleans music, led by Shorty’s moaning, wailing, groaning trombone (and occasionally trumpet). And his star is on the rise. “It keeps growing,” he says of his current tour, which keeps adding legs each time he thinks he’s home for a while.

It may seem like a long way from the brass bands, but he says it isn’t. “We already play that style of music; it’s just a different setup of instrumentation. We were already playing hip-hop; we were already playing funk and everything; it’s just that we were in a brass band.”

He says it’s just the next step in his evolution. “In the neighborhood, people expected me to do that . . . my foundation has been about having fun and playing party, dance music.” While he played some straight-ahead jazz early in his career, everything “moved in the direction that I am in now. . . . I never decided that I wanted to play this type of music; it happened naturally.”

Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue play at midnight Saturday on the Narragansett Beer Back Lot Stage behind the Providence Black Rep, 270 Westminster St., Providence, as part of the Providence SoundSession Festival. It’s free.

rmassimo@projo.com