Natalie Cressman was an 18-year-old freshman at the Manhattan School of Music when she scored the trombone chair in Trey Anastasio’s solo band. Her father, Jeff Cressman, has collaborated with Santana for many years and played trombone in a big-band version of Trey Anastasio Band in 2006 and 2007. When Anastasio decided to aid horns to a reformed TAB in 2010, the elder Cresssman was unable to rejoin the group due to his Santana commitments and recommended his daughter for the spot. Natalie immediately clicked with the ensemble and forged a close relationship with longtime TAB trumpeter and vocalist Jen Hartswick, who has grown into something of her musical older sister.
Cressman’s also become a marquee name in her own right, gigging out with her own Natalie Cressman Band and sitting in with a variety of jazz and jam players. Along with Hartswick and TAB saxophonist James Casey, Natalie recently contributed to Phish’s 2016 studio effort Big Boat and helped the group ring in 2017 at New York’s Madison Square Garden. This year, she will release a pair of very different records: a jazzy EP Traces with her own outfit and a singer-songwriter collection with Mike Bono. While back home in the Bay Area for few performances and family visits, the 25-year-old New York musician discussed her recent studio releases, her NYE Phish sit in and how she’s avoided the Millennial tag.
You are in the midst of a number of projects, but let’s start talking about your new album with Mike Bono, Etchings in Amber. How did you and Mike first connect, and what led to this EP?
We started playing together in college. We met at a jam session that a friend had put together and then, when Mike moved back to New York after graduating from Berklee School of Music, he started playing electric guitar in my band. Then, we had this one opportunity to play a gig as just the two of us, and we did some of my music as a duo. We just love the sound and the freedom that playing as just the two of us allows, so we started writing music together for that project. We had this monthly gig on the Upper West Side at this place called the Dead Poet, and we used that opportunity to test out new songs. So, song by song, we built up enough repertoire for an album.
In terms of the writing, did you each bring in your own ideas or write as a duo?
It’s a bit of both. There’s six songs on the record where Mike wrote the music and I wrote the lyrics. And three of the songs are songs where I primarily wrote the music and then Mike and I arranged it as a duo. There are a couple sections of things that we wrote together while we were rehearsing but, for the most part, we would send stuff back and forth and collaborate remotely.
You explore a bunch of different textures on the album, yet you shy away from your signature instrument. Did you consciously decide not to play trombone or did you more naturally move away from the instrument?
When we originally started talking about the duo record, we thought that maybe a trombone solo could fit in somewhere, but then, with the way the texture of the album came out, it felt like it would be a little intrusive to just put an arbitrary trombone solo in. So that’s how it ended up being only vocals and guitar. And then I also had my full band EP coming out—at the time, I didn’t know which was gonna come out first—but there’s the horn writing on that, so I was already fulfilled in the trombone department, being able to the write horn parts for my band project. I didn’t sweat that it ended up being only vocals [laughs]. It was nice to dig into my identity as a singer without the trombone component. Normally, I’m mostly splitting my duties between voice and trombone, so it was nice to just focus on being a vocalist on that project.
You studied trombone in school and play with an assortment of different combos. Did you take voice lessons as well?
I’ve actually sung my whole life. My mom is a vocalist and voice teacher, and so when I was young, I was really into musical theater. I even did some professional theater in the Bay Area that involved some singing. I was in the children’s chorus out here in San Francisco before I went to Broadway. But once I started getting serious about trombone, [singing] was definitely secondary to playing trombone. When I moved to New York, I was planning to focus on trombone, and then I started singing backup in Trey’s band, and that really awakened my desire to sing and write songs with lyrics. It went from there.
You mentioned that your band also has an EP coming out. Can you give us a little background on the musicians in your current band and how they entered your orbit?
It’s changed a lot over the years from my first album. I had the band Secret Garden, and it’s definitely evolved from there, but most of the people that are in my band and on the record are people that I met at Manhattan School of Music or I had been playing with even before then. So the new album is definitely the furthest away from the jazz world that I came up in and met all these guys in. Part of what made us all stick together is that we all are really stylistically eclectic in what we like to play. For instance, the bass player on my last two records is an electronic music producer, who goes by the name of Jonathan Stein. I’ve known him since high school. He was a classical bass major at Manhattan School of Music, but now he mostly does electronic music. I also went to college with Ivan Jackson, who is part of the group BassTracks. He really had a great year career-wise. They did that Chance The Rapper song “No Problem” that was nominated for a Grammy. We’ve been playing together all throughout college and he’s been the trumpet player in my band, and he produced my EP. So it’s definitely been a very “in-house” thing—very home grown. A lot of us even lived together for a time in Brooklyn. It’s been a very natural evolution, with where all of us are at creatively, in kind of inspiring each other and pushing the envelope of what’s possible with a live band mixed with electronics.
You studied jazz in college. Has that always been your first love?
I’ve always been pretty all over the place with my music tastes. I listened to pop growing up as a kid, but I love world music, especially Cuban and Brazilian. I also grew up exposed to the original jazz scene in the Bay Area and listening to reggae. I like good music, and it doesn’t matter what genre, but when I went to college for jazz, I was definitely more focused on that. By the time those four years were up, I was ready for something else, and I was already checking out music way outside of that. I’ve also started to get into singer-songwriter stuff recently.
Your father played with Santana and Trey Anastasio for years, and you joined TAB in 2011. How familiar were you with the jam scene before you joined his band?
For the most part, my dad raised me on a lot of classic rock—we’re total Beatles buffs. We can probably sing any Beatles song in their whole discography, ‘cause that was just in the house growing up. I actually wasn’t super aware of the jam scene until I started working with Trey and came at it from that perspective later in life, which I know kind of shocks a lot of fans. But I also think Trey likes working with people that are outside of his wheelhouse, because he likes bringing in a lot of different ingredients to his music. I think it was probably refreshing that I wasn’t a huge Phish head.
When you first connected with him and joined the band, what was the process of learning his catalog like? Did you dig into his discography or listen to certain live shows?
He definitely hooked me up with an archive of live versions of the songs from different iterations of the band. That was the way that I got into it. They sent me a big chunk of songs to learn, basically, to get familiar with the catalog. So I dug into it from the live perspective, and now more recently, I’ve checked out some Phish studio records and been involved with some of the studio records. So it has changed a little bit since then. But my dad also handed me a whole stack of handwritten music, and there’s a lot of stuff that we don’t play anymore that was in there that I got really excited to learn, and then I was like, “Aww, we’re not doing that anymore?” [Laughs.]
Have you tried to bring any of those shows back into rotation?
[Laughs.] Well, I don’t know if it was because I missed it, but we were trying to bring “Cincinnati” back into the repertoire. But it’s constantly changing. It was exciting, it was fun. I just like being challenged by the music, and I think Trey does a really good job of challenging us with what he likes to play every night.
The TAB lineup has shifted a little bit since you joined the band. Especially since James Casey came onboard in 2012, you seem to have grown into a true horn section that has collaborated with a variety of different projects in and out of the Phish world. Did you feel there was a point where the three of you truly clicked?
Jen and I have felt that connection since we met, basically. We were the people that suggested James to Trey, and it didn’t take very long for us to really feel like a unit. The more and more we play, especially the longer tours that we’ve done, it definitely solidifies our connection and we end up finishing each other’s sentences. That makes it really easy to hop into any other situation as a horn section. We can get into gear very quickly because we know each other really well as musicians and as people.
Jen was also quite young when she started playing with Trey. What advice did she give you when you joined TAB?
She’s definitely helped me a lot and still teaches me a lot to this day. She’s shown me the way. A lot of what she teaches by example is that, at a certain point, there are so many brilliant musicians out there, but what makes you stand apart is how easy you are to work with. She’s just such a joy to be around, and so on top of her game logistically, musically and professionally. That’s why she’s so in-demand, and it made me realize that there’s more to having a successful career in the music industry than being a good player. You also have to be a good person, and someone that people can rely on. And also, she taught me not sweat the small stuff—and not go on the Internet. [Laughs.] Because as an 18 year old, I would be incredibly impressionable and definitely took things really hard, when people would criticize or be crude. I think the best advice from her and Trey was just to disengage and not let them get into your psyche at all.
In certain ways, I think people place more emphasis on age difference in the rock and pop worlds than they do in jazz and orchestra settings. Do you feel your time playing in those settings helped you stand next to older musicians more confidently?
That’s a really good point. I’ve always been playing with people older than me, often quite a bit older than me, coming up with my parents being in the Bay Area, and I’ve never felt weird about being friends with people that are twice my age. But I do know that that is a unique thing for certain 18 year olds to feel. But it didn’t bother me—it didn’t even register as weird. And Jen will often say, “You’re just not like most twenty-somethings.”
That’s because I’ve been mostly hanging out with people older than me. I don’t really scream millennial, at least I hope not. I think it helps that I’m used to interacting with different people, and that definitely comes from the jazz world that I grew up in, because I was learning from people older than me. That spurs your growth—I love to play with people that are more experienced than me, even though it might hurt my ego sometimes to be the weakest link. But I think that’s what makes you better. It spurs a lot of improvement, quickly. So I’ve always been excited about those kinds of opportunities to grow.
Speaking of new opportunities, you played with Phish at Madison Square on New Year’s Eve along with the rest of the TAB horns. What were your thoughts on the night?
Nothing could have prepared me for that experience. I’ve been to the Garden before, and actually danced onstage at a Santana concert my dad was playing when I was 12, but I never had performed there, and it’s always been on my bucket list. So to be there on New Year’s Eve, with a sold-out crowd and some of my favorite people in the whole universe, it was really special. The production that they put on for their New Year’s gag was just amazing. It was an incredible thing to witness and to be a part of. So I was pinching myself the whole time. That will probably remain as a highlight of my life. I don’t know what can top that, really.
*You’ve sat in with Phish twice and also contributed to last year’s Big Boat studio album. Musically, did you communicate with Trey differently with Phish versus TAB? *
Oh definitely. I think he’s very reactive to the people he’s playing with, and I think the guys in Phish have such a unique dynamic between each other, and they can go any direction and have been doing it for so long. He definitely adapts to the environment that he’s in—or sets the environment—maybe subconsciously. But I think he does have a different approach in TAB than in Phish. It’s kind of hard to pinpoint, but I think there’s definitely a big difference there. Especially on a New Year’s Eve gig, they have to deliver a show that’s high energy and hits all the right notes, metaphorically speaking, for the audience. Whereas with TAB, I think he likes to bring it down with some of the softer songs that are a little slower and more mellow. I think he also gets to set the tone a little bit more with his solo project. That’s just what I’ve observed.
Shifting back to your work with other people, you mentioned that you were new to the jamband scene when you stared your work with Trey. Now you’ve played with all sorts of people in a lot of different configurations over the years. Who were some of the first people that you really bonded with and started collaborating with once you had your name out there through your work with Trey and through your own band?
There’s a lot of people that I’ve really enjoyed playing with, but people that I really jelled with personally and professionally are the Umphrey’s McGee guys. I had so much fun doing those few gigs with them that I’ve done. More recently, I’ve been doing some work with The Motet. I played with them at Red Rocks this summer and just did a show with them at The Fillmore this past weekend. They’re just such a great group of guys and really putting out incredibly tight, funky music, and it’s super fun to just hop in and be a part of that here and there. Those are two that come to mind that I’ve really enjoyed.
You are also featured on the new album by Big Gigantic, a band that grew out of The Motet. Is The Motet how you got connected with the Big Gigantic world?
No, I knew Dom [Lalli] before that. Dom actually went to my college a long time before I was there, but we were on the same team, so to speak. I met him through Jen when we were out in Denver and realized that we had this connection. We had some of the same teachers at our college and were both jazz musicians that rebelled against the norm. We just love to geek-out about music. He’s such an avid music fan and creates beautiful things. So that’s how we linked up—through Jen and then finding all these commonalities in our stories. I was super excited to get to sing on their Big Gigantic album, which was very much something I wouldn’t have though thought I would be doing three years ago.
Do you feel that your recent work in the hip-hop and electronic realm has influenced your playing?
Yeah, I really have been enjoying the challenge of trying to stay true to myself and bring a certain level of complexity—just keeping my songwriting the way that it’s been, but also kind of reaching out to this new style that obviously people are really relating to right now. I’m trying to put a little something for everyone in my music, because my last couple albums were jazz albums that really only people who enjoy jazz can engage in. So I’ve really enjoyed producing my songs in a different way recently—still trying to stay true to my sound as it’s been my whole musical life, but also exploring other avenues.
It is a cool time to be alive. As a lot of people are aware, music genres are kind of blending into one another. We’re at this day and age where anything is really possible, and for me, not being tethered to one style of music is very liberating.
You have a busy spring between headlining dates, shows with TAB and other collaborations. Are you also working on any studio projects?
I’m really excited for this EP to finally be out. We’ve been working on it for the last couple of years. It’s been about two years since I wrote the songs, and I just took a really long time to realize the project fully. But it’s coming out at the beginning of next month, and then we’re gonna do a New York City release show in March, and Philly as well, and then a San Francisco release show in May. So I’m really looking forward to playing with my band again, and then it’ll be time to figure out what the next step is. I’ve also got a really busy spring with TAB, which will be really nice ‘cause it’s been a long time since we’ve actually had a tour. I am also starting to absorb influences for the next project, back in phase one of the creative process.
Finally, last year you played two shows with you father in TAB when he subbed in while James Casey was on the road with Meghan Trainor. It must have been special to play with him in that setting.
It was such a highlight for me—coming full circle. He was my first teacher, my biggest mentor and also got me that gig in the first place by recommending me to Trey. So, being able to share the stage with him for those two really special shows was like the culmination of all the gratitude and excitement in the world, because he’s my number-one trombone player; he’s always been my role model. To be in a whole different part of the country from where I grew up, sharing the stage with my dad, was a pretty cool moment. It was cool to look over and see him having a great time and beaming about how much fun it is. Jen was like, “Yay! Cressman sandwich!”
