Photography by Lauren Allen
“I’m Kevin,” says the tuba player, and the entire crowd boos.
They boo because they love him.
They boo because, without Kevin Butler, no one would be here tonight.
They boo because they know it’ll get the rest of the band fired up.
Butler steps back into the shadows as Phil “The Thrill” Joseph, a trombone player whose body shakes and shimmies and slides in time with his instrument, leaps forward to the center microphone on the Kessler Theater stage.
Joseph, ever the band’s hype man, coos at the audience’s rowdiness and coaxes trumpet player Alcedrick Todd forward. Todd pretends to hesitate, then joins Joseph center stage.
It’s time to give Butler his flowers.
The origin story
Butler was born in the New Orleans suburbs and visited family often after moving to Houston at age nine. A naturally tall kid, his middle school band directors handed him a tuba and his parents inundated him with brass band influence until the jazz stuck.
Butler wound up in Dallas after pursuing a master’s degree in tuba from Southern Methodist University and stumbled into a few sousaphone gigs around DFW where he got to know the North Texas jazz scene, which was lacking a New Orleans-style brass band.
Playing around town, he met Todd through the Scat Jazz Lounge in Fort Worth. Todd played the Wednesday night show backed by a young Christian Levens on drums. A product of Hattiesburg, Mississippi and Laffayette, Louisiana, Todd plays the trumpet in a way that will make you think you’ve never truly heard jazz before that moment.
And Levens, who hailed from Fort Worth and is the son of two musicians, started playing with Todd at 17 years old. It was Todd who gave him the nickname that he can’t seem to shake: Baby Jazz.
“I feel like I’m going to be Baby Jazz even when I’m 60, 65, 70 years old,” Levens says.
In 2017, Butler was tasked with organizing a group to take up residency at a bar in Shanghai, China. Todd and Levens agreed to join, and almost immediately the band became “Shanghai-famous,” Todd says. It wasn’t uncommon for the musicians, who became known for their out-of-the-box crowd work, to be recognized by clubgoers while out shopping or eating at a restaurant.
“The owner of that club was really into jazz and blues music and he would push us to interact with the crowd. Instead of just being jazz musicians, saying ‘Thank you’ and going on to the next song, he wanted us to talk with the crowd,” Butler says. “That was one of the places where we really started doing what we now do at Revelers Hall.”
Meanwhile, Joseph was wrapping up a cruise ship gig. Originally from DeSoto, he reluctantly took up trombone after showing up late to sixth grade percussion tryouts. His dreams of drum line dashed, he was “pissed,” but trombone soon became “a part of him.” While studying classical trombone at the University of Texas at Arlington, Joseph was taken under the wing of the university’s artist-in-residence Adonis Rose. Rose was bandmates with Todd and introduced the two.
“We formed an alliance and we’ve been cool ever since,” Joseph says.
For a few years, everyone was back in DFW playing gigs and making it work. Todd had his own group, the Mississippi Bastard Project, and Butler had his, the Big Ass Brass Band. Everyone was a gun for hire, filling in on any gig that had an open slot.
Then, in 2020, Butler received the call about a new concept in Bishop Arts: a New Orleans-inspired jazz bar where a French 75 could be served alongside a Lone Star beer. The venue needed an anchoring group, owners Jason Roberts and Amy Cowan told Butler.
“And those were the guys I called,” Butler says. “Because they were the best.”
The weekend slot
There is a learning curve to playing Revelers Hall.
Unlike other jazz clubs, there is no stage. Musicians and audience members are eye level throughout a performance; there is quite literally no pedestal to stand on. The venue is small, so there is also no avoiding the crowd. When the bar first opened, the musicians and audience alike didn’t really know what to do in the space; it was a difficult gig to play, Joseph says.
“I almost quit. We started here and the first three months, it was weird. It was kind of slow, not at all what you see now,” he says. “Thank god I didn’t (quit) because that would have been the biggest regret of my life. We brought a lot … Even during the pandemic we were cranking it out and I realized this is a solid group of guys.”
They brought in Daniel Porter on keys. Joel Wells Jr., a server at the now defunct Dallas Grilled Cheese Co., would run over on his breaks to sing. Somewhere along the way, they all started thinking of the audience as a sixth member of the band.
And for four years now, every Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m., the Revelers Hall House Band plays. The music is classic New Orleans jazz: songs about Shaking That Thing or Money Money Money draw in curious passersby.
With just a glance, the band can jump from solo to solo, or bring the whole thing to a screeching stop.
“You’re seeing 15, 16 years of history. Sometimes I can look at one of them and we can have a whole conversation in a millisecond,” Levens says. “It’s just a look and they know exactly what I want, and I know exactly what they want.”
Each member of the band describes the others as his brothers. In four years, they’ve navigated life milestones such as marriages, births and heartbreaks. And they haven’t always handled the inevitable disagreements that come with a creative endeavor well.
“I think we would be a therapist’s worst nightmare,” Butler says. “But we don’t give up on each other.”
“At this point, I only want to do business with my brothers,” Levens adds.
If Joseph is the band’s dancing mascot, Todd is the fireworks that go off the moment a game is won. His bursts of energy are disciplined, proof that he has been a performer for decades and knows the precise moments to play the showmanship card.
“These guys are the party, and I try my best to be the confetti for the party,” Todd says. “I try to read everyone’s energy and get in when I fit in.”
On piano, Porter bridges the brass and the bass, and the band with Wells’ bluesy, smooth and subtle vocals. Tucked behind his drum set, Levens is the beating heart and never peacocks for attention. He’s the kind of guy who would rather throw the touchdown pass than catch it; end zone celebrations are best left to Joseph anyhow.
And Butler steers the ship, a vessel for his New Orleans jazz dream. On the sousaphone he sets the tempo; between songs he is on the mic.
Despite being the band’s backbone and voice, he is an intrinsically shy person. He’s never totally shaked the stage fright thing, he just learned to manage it. He can summon gusto when it comes to introducing an exciting new song or the members of the band, but he usually turns from the mic without saying his own name.
“It feels so awkward to introduce yourself,” he says.
Eventually, the audience started to notice. They started to ask “Who are you?” Then they started yelling it. So Todd took things into his own hands and freestyles the Kevin Butler song.
The Live Album
The Revelers Hall House Band recorded a live album at the Kessler Theater on the night of March 8. The crowd was full of Revelers regulars, who the band refers to as family. A woman — one of the band’s truly loyal listeners — was even called onto the stage for a “Happy Birthday” serenade.
So by the time Butler avoided naming himself, it was well rehearsed vitriol on the audience’s part that encouraged Todd to go off script for the Kevin Butler song.
Hearing the song is like watching lightning strike the same tree over and over again. If you can imagine the most scathing dis track you’ve ever heard, the song is the complete opposite. Butler turns bright red as Todd spits and weaves rhymes of adoration for the band leader. When it gets to the chorus, he screams “His name is Kevin” while the crowd chimes in, “Butler, Butler!”
The song has become such a running joke that it is as much a love letter to the fans as it is to Butler himself.
“There’s always that extra element in the band, and it’s the audience,” Todd says. “These people are here, and that’s what keeps us here. We feed off each other.”
They don’t know when the live album will be released, although Butler says he hopes it will be around the end of the year. It takes time, and money, to work through those kinds of things.
It hasn’t fully sunk in that they’ll have a live album under their belts. Each member plays with nearly a dozen different jazz bands, most of which are “in the Revelers orbit” any given month.
“Things are moving so fast right now,” Levens says. “At some point I’m sure I’ll listen back to the live album and be like, ‘Oh man, that was such a pivotal moment.’”
Most Sundays, the band picks “You Are My Sunshine,” the state song of Louisiana, to mark the end of their show. With Wells’ signature warble, the first verse is an emotional moment before the band picks up the tempo for a jolly outro.
“You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you.” The sentiment echoes through the bar.
Every show is an opportunity to take pause and to escape the troubles of life, Todd says. Both for himself and for the listener.
“We live in a world where hope and optimism are kind of dwindling,” Todd says. “I think as long as our music and our message is getting out there, then we are being good vehicles to distill hope and optimism to anyone who listens. Because music is people.”
