Austin Against War March, 3/18/05

I had the honor of putting together a marching band to lead the Austin Against War annual march, this year noting the 3rd anniversary of of the US Invasion of Iraq.

You can see some nice photos of the ad-hoc band here on the American-Statesman's photo archive. The first pic made the cover of the Metro section, above the fold. (Note trumpeter Oliver Steck decked out in swimming trunks and goggles for the event.)

1st Post Katrina Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Krewe of Tucks Parade

Here's a photo play of Panorama Brass Band's participation in the 2006 Krewe of Tucks Parade, 2/25/06, New Orleans LA.

Seen from the trailer prior to lining up for the parade. Yeah, man!

Here's the trailer we played on. We had 11 players on the date. For some reason, the NOPD had forbidden brass bands from marching and informed us we must play on a trailer. 

(From what we could tell afterwards, it was to speed up the parade so that the over worked, stressed out Police force wouldn't have to go into overtime. In a few short days all those cops, along with firemen and EMTs are going to be kicked out of their FEMA provided homes, not knowing where they will be sleeping.)

Scene from the trailer. Not as well attended as last year from what I could tell.

Here's Ja-Ja from Montreal on trombone and great vibes. She's the only member who looks fetching in the uniform Orange/Blue combo. Note the locals on their ladders, most of which are replacement new and not as festively decorated like usual.



I have no idea who took this pic, but here leader Ben Schenck and fellow tenor horn man Don Godwin are wailing through a fabulous Serbian numbner called "Romski Cocek" while we tool down Canal Street. Wild!

Yes, my tuba has shrunk. Now it's a tenor horn, and quite a loud one too.

That's the very capable Jon Gross on Sousaphone behind me.

The parade is over now, and we're headed back uptown.

This burned out house is right off I-10 in fact. We kept playing as we went down Magazine, in the pouring rain as it turned out, for the folks shopping the very few stores still open there.

Mardi Gras in New Orleans, pt.1

Shame, shame, shame.

We are to be ashamed of oursleves. As a nation. As a people. Shamefull and pathetic. It's all I can think about upon my return from New Orleans. I could have filled my camera with pictures like this, but frankly I was too ashamed to do so.




Six months on and this is the scene, 2 blocks off Canal, just off the parade route.

My instruments make the cover...

So me or my music may be ignored here locally, but a nice photo some of my instruments got on the cover of XLent Magazine in a story about the Folk Alliance Conference. That's my fiddle and Vega tenor banjo. I helps provide the bass (Violins, Etc.) and the button accordion (Don Leady.) I'm in good company with a Collings guitar and an Ellis mandolin, either worth more than all the other instruments combined.

More on the conference later...

It's Official. I'm a "Superstar."

In the"modern klezmer world" at least.
According to Frank London, evidently.
Read his interveiw about the new Klezmer Brass All Stars CD :"Party Until You Are Beyond Rationality, An Interview with Klezmer Musician Frank London."

Mark "Rocks Out"

Here's a pic from shutterbug/clarinetist/proud father Bob Blacksburg. His very talented son Dan plays trombone with Frank London from time to time, and on NYE he was in Aaron Alexander's band. Bob has an eye and hauls his camera just about everywhere. (See his pics from Klez Kamp 2005 here.)

I'm guessing this pic was taken during my "solo" in 9/8 where I was encouraged by band leader Aaron to "go free."

Free indeed!

More fun with Google Translations

Reviews of Frank London's Klezmer Brass All Stars "Brotherhood of Brass," still one of my proudest recording achievements.

Words clumsily translated from the Foreign Press:

"frank London occupies with its Klezmer Brass of all star impressively that it a Klezmer beyond of schluchzenden clarinets and jammernden play the violin gives... after-felt the common roots of the music of Jews, Mauren and gypsies. If in political regard times school made."- Swabian newspaper 02/2004

"Stempenyu" - one says ehrfuerchtig in the Jewish world to a talentierten musician. Here directly 27 is to be heard from this sort to." - Jazz dimension

"a completely mad, alive plate. Blowing music purely in all-finest development." -Klezmer.de

"impetuous up to the Hektik, omitted are for an unlimited period durable and to each opportunity recommendable sixteen the titles." - West Time

"a marvelous Blaeserfest rings out from our Hifi plant." - Jazzeit

"there are moments in those radix complements easily from the hand goes. Today is it again so far." - South Wind

"listening it rather, as London Freaks integrates also tones south the white sausage equator in their Katechismus of subversiven blowing. Madly." - Amazon.de

Get Serious, Mr. Pancake

Here's one that slipped right by me.

Check out this CD of children's music made by my pal Frank Meyer. He's out in my front yard right now making a fence out of recycled bamboo, which is what he does for a living. But his real calling is funny songs. I've known him for years when he was the string bassist for one Austin's most underrated blues acts called the Mannish Boys (featuring a very young Gary Primich on harmonica.) He's just released the fabulously titled "Get Serious, Mr. Pancake" appropriate for children of any age. "Too Bad About Bugs" is the runaway hit I'll bet.

Some of Austin's most talented pickers contributed; Erik Hokkanen, Kevin Smith and Danny Levin to name but a few. Besides playing a bunch of tuba and bass on the disc, there's a hilarious photo of me gracing the back cover, as Mr. Pancake himself. Buy it and see it for yourself.

Scenes From the 9th Ward of New Orleans

From my pal Emile Francis:

Hi All,

Sorry about the morose pictures, but I drove through the Lower Nine for the first time yesterday (Thursday), and was amazed. Pictures just don't do it justice.

Scene from the front porch
The levee
Barge on the block.

To "the City" and NYE

Fellow KK staff member Dan Peck and I have what is now an annual tradition. I actually first met Dan years ago when he was working at John Hatton’s CD booth at Fiddle Tunes up in Port Townsend. Under a very friendly administration there, I had been invited to teach and perform four years in a row. I suspect that he had something to do with my coming on board at Klez Kamp as well, but at both events we hardly see each other during the week due to the working commitments involved.

I know Dan to be a fine old time banjoist and guitarist on top of being a swell guy. Rather than take the chartered bus back to the Workmen’s Circle Building in Manhattan after KK, Dan will drive me back to his place in Jersey City. This year he treated me to a trip to his ancestral home, am old Scots-Irish enclave called Kearny. There he took me to the most fabulous Fish and Chips shop I’ve been to on this side of the pond. Then a walk through the parks he used to play in as a kid in the brisk Jersey cold and then back to his place to eat the home made short bread we got from the restaurant. It was almost a date I tell you.

Having slept little if at all during the week, we both collapsed after a beer and didn’t wake till nearly 2pm the following day. Dan bravely loaded me back into his SUV and made the treacherous trip into midtown this New Years Eve Day, just to deliver me to my job site. I take lunch at the Stage Deli with a Texas Ex-Pat friend of mine who concurs that these Yankee Jewish men are generally weak and pathetic; nobody knows how to two-step up here and thus how hard it is to find a date. We catch up but she’s got a hot date with a nice Goyische boy in Hoboken ( a veteran no less) and I have a sound check to make.

If you ever wondered if you were out of shape, strap 40 pounds of luggage to your back and drag 100 pounds of tuba and electric bass behind you in a driving snow 15 blocks through midtown Manhattan. You will ‘feel the burn” I guarantee you. I get to the joint early, a very odd place in my estimation, called Makor. I was here on Christmas Eve checking out my friend Alex Kontorovich’s band when it was packed to the gills with wild eyed, desperate Jewish singles. I can safely say that in all my life I have never encountered that particular energy. I had up to that point never been in a “Jewish” bar for that matter, much less a “Jewish singles bar.” It was more than a little off putting I’ll tell ya. The word stereotypical comes to mind but I will try not to dwell too much on it.

(No really, it was really spooky. I don’t mean to fixate, but it bears mention. You had all these nice ladies, mostly in teams of three for some reason, all dolled up and out in the prowl, just as cute and accessable as could be. Then you had these creepy dudes in suits paying no attention to them at all instead hitting on the goyische waitresses. It was in a word, gross. I guess all that "Sex in the City" crap is for real. These poor people have no way decent way of being introduced properly. Thank the good Lord I was raised up in a place where couples dancing to a hot C&W band is an accepted form of courtship, and gentlemanly manners and Southern Graces aren’t considered quaint nor provincial. It ain't for nothng I married a Texas gal. And I’ll admit I used to carry great enmity for the Yankee; just a wee bit for the War of Northern Aggression, but mostly for my Yankee Jewish kin for being so stereotypically, well damnit, Yankee. Now I only carry pity for them. Bless their poor, lonely hearts.)

The gig goes splendidly, with Aaron Alexander’s Midrash Mish Mosh rocking way harder than you’d think a NY downtown art ensemble could muster. Then magically with a very few personnel changes and me setting down the electric bass for the tuba, Frank London’s traveling circus act of Chaos Incarnate oft titled the “Klezmer Brass All Stars” played right up to the cusp of 2006. It’s all a haze after that, but I do remember getting in a good hang backstage with Micheal Wex and Frank and his lovely wife Tine, a cheeseburger at the West Side Grill and waking up well rested on Aaron’s couch.

Here’s a prayer for the New Year. A healthy and prosperous year to all.

Klez Kamp Report v 1.1

As I write this from seat 20 B (exit row, aisle) of the plane taking me back to Texas, I am reminded how difficult it is to both live in a moment and to take proper note of it as well. So much went on during my week of teaching, playing, interacting and such that most of it zipped by with little notice. I brought a camera, but never had it handy when the fun stuff happened for instance.

Highlights include the following:

a) 1st nights staff concert, which was interminably long as usual, however punctuated by Jim Guttman’s amazing interpretation of a Beregovski dance tune in the style of Mingus’s Big Band. Made all the more wonderful by a solo section featuring Pete Sokolow’s stride break. Magic moment that I hope was captured on tape (or digital or whatever.)

b) Drinking a fine bottle of Zwack Slivopalinka with my Traditional Ensembles class. Our percussionist, Karen, had received it as a gift and generously shared it with all. The Hungarian Kosher slivo is my favorite and was happy to have a taste again.






I had a fine group of folks assigned to me this year including some familiar faces from years past. I laid a couple of Cookie Segestein arrangements on them and they made fine work of it. Sometimes I truly wonder what my classes must think of me. They come to study Yiddish culture and music and then they’re presented with a trash talking Texan who speaks Yiddish in the North-Central Oklahoman dialect. It must be a shock, especially to the Europeans who show up. At any rate, I have what I think is a clear, well-researched, stage proven and culturally informed agenda about this music and how to better perform it. I’m never fully certain however that I’ve gotten it all across to my class, especially in such a short time.


c) Jamming with Pete Sokolow in the lobby. He let me sit next to him and ham fist my way through a few numbers on a borrowed tenor banjo. I will mark my time sitting listening to him play James P Johnson and Eubie Blake numbers on a poorly tuned spinet as one of the great musical privileges of my life. No foolin’.

d) Lunch and dinner. Never made Breakfast, but the kitchen staff did real good this year, even with a glat Kosher menu. Josh Horowitz did refer to the “beef flavored laxative” in reference to the roast beef one night, but that was a single glitch. I’m sure I gained 5 pounds at least.

e) The schvitz. That’s Yiddish for steam room. Located in the Spa in the hotel’s basement.117 degrees steam heat, clean and pleasant. I was there half and hour each afternoon, concluding with a dip in the whirlpool. This resort could be the best facility they have had the event in, and I’ve been in 4 different places thus far.


f) Hanging out with really great people: Hank Sapoznik, band mate and KK founder who was cool as a cucumber this year. Cookie and Josh, who along with Hank could be the folks who best share my ideas about music. Seeing Alan Watsky again and playing his cool guitars and kvetching about the fiddle business. Working extensively with Jeff Baker (King Django) who is even hipper than I assumed, and playing all week with Aaron Alexander who I knew was great but forgot what big fun he was. Barely saw some of my old companions as we were all working hard; Frank London, Deb and Jeff Warschauer, and Micheal Wex who is having a great year, hopefully the start of many more as his biblical 7 years of want has been going on for about 28 now. (Buy his book BTW.)

In conclusion, there are other places that have similar concepts in teaching Yiddish culture, but having attended quite a few as both student and instructor, I can safely say that none provide the depth and breadth of exposure at the Living Traditions Klez Kamp. It’s the first of its kind and remains the gold standard that all others copy, so in some senses you’d be foolish to go elsewhere. Many participants I talked to this week said as much to me on several occasions.

Klez Kamp Report v 1.0

Hard to take time out and tell you anything as life here at Klez Kamp is a little like being trapped in a Yiddish speaking submarine, only the food is a little better.

Here's some random photos of a recording session with German Goldynstein:



German himself is criminally under recorded, with only one tune on Frank London's new CD, though lots of his students have gone on to record his material. I played on a studio session led by Michael Alpert over a year ago but as of yet, there is no sight of it's release.

Saxman/Clarinetist Alexander Kontorovich suggested that we try and do a recording session here during Klez Kamp, using an empty hotel room, the staff as a band and King Django's mobile recording rig. Everyone has graciously donated thier efforts to making this happen for German.

We're squeezing in recording sessions around our teaching schedules and 2 days in I can honestly say I'm quite impressed. With any luck we'll have a good reference CD (w/ accompanying sheet music book) for German to sell and for everyone to enjoy. Hopefully the the "proper" studio set will see the light of day as well and German will get deserved day in the sun.

Follow all the "fun" at the Klez Kamp blog.

NYC, NYE

Tomorrow morning I catch a flight for NYC, arriving just in time to hop a cab to Park Slope in Brooklyn and play a set with Aaron Alexander's Mix Mosh Midrash at 10pm. Aaron is on my SHORT list of drummers I like to play with and as a member of Frank London's Klezmer Brass All Stars I have built up a great musical rapport with him. I was particularly honored that he asked me to be a member of his group, playing a set his original compositions at this gig and then a week later at Makor for their New Year's Eve show.

To quote a friend of mine, it's taken me a year since his Tzadik Records release to "get" what he's doing. Now that I have, and have taken the time to actually learn his material (I hear musicians outside of Austin actually do that, rather than just show up for the gig and fake it) I would humbly recommend you seek out the CD. It's an unlikely convergence of Mr. Alexander's musical history which included expressive jazz, klezmer and eastern European music and even hardcore thrash. I will be playing the electric bass, which I am not known for and possibly with good reason. (see circa 1983 pic.) Wish me luck.

After that there's rumor of a salsa gig with Frank London and Anthony Coleman, but it could be apochryphal. If you know of anything fun to do in NYC on the 24th please do let me know. The morning of the 25th I head up to Hudson Valley Resort to attend and teach at the annual Jewish Music/Culture retreat called affectionately "Klez Kamp." I will report and fun occurs.

I'm back in Austin in the new year with regular gigs with the Ridgetop Syncopators and Lil' Alice and her Monkey Butlers. Best wishes for a safe new year.

And Merry Christmas.