Like most everyone else jamming to the retro-disco funktastic groove of "Housequake" at the Prince concert in The Fox Theater in Oakland, Calif., last year, Roy Agee was dancing. Unlike most anyone else jamming in the historic Bump City hall, Agee plays trombone in Prince's band The New Power Generation. And in a sudden, pulse-seizing realization, the Purple One himself danced over to Agee mid-song with an idea. "Roy! Put your horn down," Prince said, gesturing to center stage. "Go!" This wasn't rehearsed. The artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince wanted Agee, an oversized bald man sporting an oversized purple suit, to mosey up to the microphone at center stage where the brightest spotlight casts the longest shadow, and ham it up for the packed house.
Trouble is, Agee doesn't sing. At this moment, without his trombone, he's simply a musical Muggle in a purple suit.
Agee is an in-demand Nashville session trombonist and a touring sideman who's played with dozens of funk, soul, jazz and R&B luminaries, including Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin. He once performed an astounding 340 dates in a single year with the Glenn Miller Orchestra Band. Among other accolades, Agee — who, as a kid growing up in Mt. Juliet, liked the theme to The Greatest American Hero so much he taught himself to play it by ear on a cheap flutelike instrument — holds a degree in orchestral trombone from Vanderbilt's Blair School of Music. He also plays locally with jazz ensemble The AA Octet, along with two highly regarded Music City tribute bands: 12 Against Nature (Steely Dan) and Make Me Smile (Chicago). Currently, he's working on a forthcoming instrumental record for 2015 that he says will reflect a broad swath of styles.
And yet, despite a résumé attesting to his versatile musical virtuosity, according to his personal Facebook profile, his main gig is "lead hugger at the Hug Emporium."
"I've always been silly, I love to be silly," Agee tells the Scene matter-of-factly, as if the black T-shirt he's wearing with an airbrushed Chewbacca staring into a stiff breeze behind mirrored sunglasses might leave one wondering. "I have this job — a big gig with Prince — and some people can buy into the trip of doing that."
Unfortunately for Prince die-hards, due to a non-disclosure agreement that comes along with the gig, Agee doesn't divulge how the sausage is made at Paisley Park, but he's got plenty more to talk about as he sits in a large chair in a small room in his East Nashville home. For example: He's related to the famous late Tennessee writer James Agee. "He's my second or third cousin," Agee says of his kin, who famously co-wrote the screenplay for The African Queen and posthumously won a Pulitzer for the autobiographical novel A Death in the Family. "People know me as a lighthearted person, but I have that same brooding part of my personality."
Bouts of brooding notwithstanding, Agee exudes a laid-back contentedness fit for a lead hugger (if there were such a place as a Hug Emporium). He keeps his head clean-shaven and wears rectangular, wire-framed glasses that break up the otherwise uninterrupted roundness that lends him his endearing shape. Though he's a natural conversationalist who smiles easily and laughs readily, from time to time his face sinks into a scowl.
It's hard to tell whether the musical instruments strewn about Agee's middle-aged bachelor's man cave haphazardly came to rest in random spots, or whether they're strategically placed to facilitate a future need. Either way, they're everywhere — one surprisingly large trombone, two guitars, a ukulele and a banjo are within arm's reach of his large chair, so is an Xbox controller. It's a habitat notably devoid of a decorator's touch. The furniture doesn't match, only one of the windows has anything that could be described as a "window treatment," and there's an impressive flat-screen TV that makes the little room feel even smaller.
It's from this chair that self-proclaimed "social experimentalist" Agee effortlessly tosses off a swath of voices like a voiceover actor for animated features. On his YouTube channel, you'll find him wearing an inexpensive Afro wig, social-experimenting himself through comedy sketches about Bach and Beethoven. From this chair he also makes — and records — crank calls. Sometimes, on a late-night lark, he'll call live TV home-shopping shows that hawk jewelry or preach salvation for donations, and try to get on the air. Sometimes it's as an overly enthusiastic customer who wants to praise the product on the screen, other times it's as a farmer asking the 700 Club to pray for his musically misguided son. Most end the same way: with Agee's characters unspooling way more backstory than the mark on the other end of the phone bargained for.
"I really want to get a full bit on the air at QVC, but it's hard to get past the screener," Agee explains. "I've been on there, but they have an eight-second delay, and that makes it a bitch."
As his animated YouTube videos can attest, Agee has called lots of other unsuspecting entities. But to get a sense of his musical stage presence, look up his performance in fellow Prince and the NPG alum Andy Allo's "People Pleaser" video, if you've ever wanted to see a large man in a dark suit and stylishly open collar karate-kick head-high before launching into a nasty trombone solo.
Back to last year's Prince concert in Oakland, where sweat suddenly formed on Agee's brow.
"Roy! Put your horn down," Prince said, gesturing to center stage. "Go!"
Roy did as The Purple One requested — he put his horn down and went.
"All I could think is, 'What's happening?' " Agee recalls. Then, suddenly, he knew exactly what to do: He summoned the exhibitionist he's cultivated for years in DIY sketch comedy on YouTube and crank yanking — he scatted like a champ for a full two minutes as the rhythm section dropped out on Prince's cue.
"Then everybody in Oakland absolutely lost it," Agee says, laughing. "When I look back, I think, 'Holy God!' I really thought I would spend my life working on a loading dock in Mt. Juliet, but somehow I get to do this."
"Can I assume we won't be crank-calling Prince tonight?"
"That would be epic!" Agee says.
"You'd lose your job."
"Yes! But it would be epic!"
"Roy, if we crank call Prince right now, I can pretty much guarantee this article will run in Rolling Stone magazine."
"That, too, would be epic!"
Email music@nashvillescene.com
