Best Birthday Ever

It started early when a customer walked into the violin shop the day before and handed me a banjo uke as a present.


Got better the next day when we drove to New Orleans, arriving just in time to sit in with the Panorama Jazz Band at the Spotted Cat on Frenchman St. Word got out I was coming so many old friends turned out. Paddy and Ilsa showed off thier 8 month old and Ilsa made me some amazing cookies. Rick Perles and his wife were out as well. Got to see Jupiter Obediah Rogan Schenk at 10 months, all decked out in the outfit I got for him in Veracruz. Played some wonderful music and drank Gin and Tonics like water. We stayed with Bob and Anita Music, the parents in law of my favorite Cantor, who are thrilled to report that they recieved the proper permits to begin rebuilding thier home.

At the break, I got a call on my cell from Ben Saffer who along with his lovely wife Alice Spencer sang me a lovely well rehearsed version of Happy Bithday.

The next day I put on a a seer sucker suit and headed to a wedding just above Lake Ponchatrian for a client of my wifes which was story book perfect. Then it was back to the Quarter to drink and carouse. Sad to report that my 2 favorite food joints are closed for the forseeable future (Camilia Grill and Dunbars Creole Kitchen.) It's still a ghost town in some places, but we did see a lot of plucky folks getting thier lives back on track. Too damn slow however.

I should turn 40 more often...

Great meals of Austin, #1

Torta Milanesa, Taqueria Arandas on Burnet, $2.85

Calgary Folk Festival

It's all a blur. Here's what I remember.

Major highlights:

Playing 3 concerts and 4 workshops in 48 hours. Absolutely insane. Couldn’t have done it without my hearty band of Pirates however. To a man, each one of these musicians stepped up to the plate and calmly knocked the ball out of the park. Over the weekend found we playing with musicians from Iran, India. On another with local Canadian bluesmen and Robbie Fulks and then another with members of el Grupo Fantasma, each time playing some amazing off the cuff music with not so much of as how do you do before hand. Talk about playing by the seat of your pants. Then there was the late night jamming sessions with fellow Festival participants from Scotland to Honduras and all points in between. All in all what a good friend of mine calls a “peak experience.”

Honky-tonk fiddler Sean Orr and accordion savant Don Weeda both tied for the “All Around Cowboy” awards this weekend by not only predictably kicking ass on our own sets, but by coolly dominating musically at the workshop stages playing music neither are readily associated with. 

Sean in fact showed up for all of the klezmer bands workshops and played wonderfully on the Turkish, Persian, and Armenian tunes we chose. His duet playing with Michael Doucet on “Allons a Layfeyette” at the accordion workshop was of particular note. Dr. Weeda made laid down amazing solos in the “West of the Middle” workshop. That's where we poor country Jews found ourselves onstage with 2 wonderful Persian/Arabic/Indian fusion acts. Calgary based santur player Amir Amiri was generous and wonderful, but Niyaz, a very fine is somewhat snooty group from LA (go figure, eh?) wasn’t exactly playing ball with the workshop concept. Don took it upon himself to blow their minds playing a note-style perfect solo to one of their compositions. Even the aloof Saz player looked up and took notice. Don did similar at the “Texas Hold ‘Em” stage when he ripped out a Columbian cumbia number with Grupo Fantasma.

The most attended of our appearances was the one I was most worried about hosting. Entitled the “War on Error” workshop it featured the Syncopators, Robbie Fulks, and Canadian acts Doug Cox and Jay Crocker. Robbie was a known quantity to me having shared stages with him many times in my Bad Livers incarnation. He was predictably witty and wry and a solid take-charge rocker. The 2 Canuck acts were up to that moment mysteries to me, but as it turned out they were fine fellows all. Jay Crocker brought a slimmed down version of his horn thick band, showing up with a drummer, bassist and organ player and Jay on a funky old Hofner guitar. He led the combined band through his own compositions, a ballsy move at what is basically an awkward forced jam session done in front of an expectant public. (His stuff is pretty cool actually, and those who know me know this is not light praise.) Mr. Cox, a fine slide guitarist himself, was accompanied by his musical partner Sam Hurrie who did the singing for his turn and played a mighty fine slide guitar himself.

Rather than the boring stock concept of round robin playing of our own material, I opted for the more dangerous ‘let’s all play together” shtik. It worked like gangbusters (and how) in Winnipeg. But that had more to do with the shared Texas repertoire and easy-going attitudes of the participants. Most of all, its mighty hard finding tunes that are both interesting that also everybody can play on without rehearsal. Taking the easy was out, I stuck to the traditional material choosing Jimmy Rodgers, Al Jolson and Titus Turner which everybody on the talented panel had little difficulty digging into. Robbie did very well with a Moon Mullican number, but stumbled a little bit when he tried to pull out “I Wanna be Your Boyfriend” by the Ramones. I’m assuming he guessed (incorrectly as it turned out) that my band mates were fellow post modernists putting on a country front. My bassist Ricky Rees of Layfeyette LA probably hasn’t been in the same room with someone who ever even owned a Ramones record much less know the changes to one of their tunes, and that's why I hire him in fact. It was a bold swing from Robbie, but ultimately a miss.

No fear however as the talented Mr. Hurrie led the assembled in a super funky and straight ahead reading of “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” that had the entire audience on their feet by songs end. From then to festivals end, volunteers and audience members both told me it was the best moment they had at the whole festival.

Other moments of note were epic (and smoky) jam sessions with the fabulous D.Rangers of Winnipeg, the lads from Back of the Moon and dancing my ass off to El Grupo Fantasma who have become as fine a dance band as you will ever encounter.

Me and the wife stayed a few days afterwards to visit Banff and hike the trails, looking for Bears and such. It's damn pretty out that way and I fully plan on going back next chance I get. Got back to Calgary in time to see the amazing Rembetika Hipsters holding forth at their regular Wednesday night gig at the Pegasus. Sitting around a table, supping on a mezz and downing Mextaca brandy, they played the old school Greek-Oriental music like I’ve never seen live before. Bozouki, guitar, baglamas, fiddles and clarinet. Mark gives highest recommendation.

Came home to a house with a broken AC unit and triple digit temperature. Now it's absolute misery.

It all seems like a dream…

You thought it was too soon for another Capote? Think again..

Well it looks like there's hope for a happy outcome after all.

Doug McGrath's "Infamous" is slated for an October 13th release date. Finally, as I've been worried it never would see the light of day.


Here's the first sneak preview reveiw from the Independent (UK.) Read it here.

It really is true...

Little babies love the Banjo playing Jew....

Dig the two tone lid courtesy Sims Fine Hats, located inside The Men's Clotherie,6929 Airport Blvd # 146, Austin, TX 78757, not but 2 blocks from my house. (512) 323-9657.

Ask for Terrell Dillard and tell him I sent you.

Winnipeg Folk Festival

Report to follow soon.
Here's a fine picture from the "Home in San Antone" workshop with the High Flyers and the South Austin Jug Band.

You will note that I break 3 cardinal rules of stage performance. Can you spot them?

1. Sunglasses. Gotta let them see your eyes.

2. Stupid festival badge still on. Dorky.

3. Wristwatch. Dale Watson taught me to keep the watch on backwards so that you can tell the time while you're still playing. Otherwise you have to wait till a break between songs and then be seen by the whole assembled looking at your watch. Never cool.

Records I keep going back to. Volume one.

Seeing that our local NPR station (KUT radio, 90.5fm) is now completely programmed by the Music Director, leaving virtually no opportunity for the DJ to play his own choices*, I determined that I don’t need all these damn CD’s piling up in my office anymore. If I can’t share this music with anyone anymore, then might as well digitize it all and keep it to myself.

Like many folks are doing these days, I’m shedding the biscuits and keeping the tunes. MP3 sucks it may be true, but it’s manageable, easy to store and compress and share with others. I have not one, not two, but 3 hard drives (one stashed off site) to back up all my stuff however as I wish not to screw up completely.

There has been an unintended positive consequence to all this however. I get to listen to everything I load into the iTunes, and thus find some real gems that I may have overlooked otherwise. It reminds me of a similar experience many years ago, when I got my first CD changer. I would pop in 5 new CD’s, load in a blank 90 minute cassette tape and let it rip on “shuffle.” I’d take the tape with me on tour and through this exercise got exposed to a lot of good material I might have missed. The “shuffle” on my iTunes now serves exactly the same function only now I have 1700+ CD’s to choose from now. Ain’t technology grand?

So while I do this tedious task, I’ll got a few lines about records that I seem to be going back and listening to. Stuff you might have missed yourself and might do well to seek out.

Dave Stuckey & his Rhythm Gang “Get A Load of This” Hightone Music Group, 2000.

Here’s one that I really think didn’t have its day. Loaded to the gills with some of the finest roots pickers in Austin and recorded old-fashioned style at the bass players front living room, Mr. Stuckey hopes to evoke the freewheeling glory days of west coast hillbilly swing and in more than a few moments is quite successful. The casual environment of the session’s surroundings, coupled with the genuine joy of each others company while playing this material sets this CD head and shoulders above your run of the mill “gee I wish it was the 50’s” revivalist set, (which strangely most of these folks work in.) They really sound like they just discovered this stuff, they hit it hard and losse and by golly convince me too, even on tunes I’ve heard way too many times before. Stuckey’s originals stand up well to the classics as well. Truthfully, I’ve never heard any of these players sound better even on their own releases (with the possible exception of Dave Billers amazing LeRoy’s Blues, but that’s another essay.)

Hamstrung by being too scene-driven, and then released on a notoriously lousy label, it's a wonder it got out at all. Worth checking out.

****

OKeh Rhythm & Blues, Various Artists

Look around and see if you can’t find this CD reissue of the old double LP. It was my introduction to actual Black music, found at a record shop in Dallas TX in 1987. I make no small comment when I say it changed my musical life profoundly. Titus Turner, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Big Maybelle, the Ravens, even Little Richard and stupid novelty song about Willie Mays.

Holy cow. This stuff is big, loud, raw even when smooth and in your face. Made me reconsider ‘the Blues’ entirely which was only represented to my up to that point by balding middle age white guys slinging vintage Stratocasters at the open mic night at VZD’s in Norman OK. Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf LP’s were in my collection, but this uptown but way lowdown expression was a new one to me.

Led me to Big Joe Turner, Wynonnie Harris, T Bone Walker and eventually to Dallas native Zuzu Bollin who I was lucky enough to have played with a time or two before his untimely passing in 1990.

Sony eventually released an expanded OKeh collection, but it didn't have the same impact as these 28 tunes did all collected together.

*****, must find and cherish



*bear that in mind when they come asking you for money next pledge drive.

OK God, I give up...

If your point is a meditation on mortality, then I got it last week with Clifford Antone. Then German, now this:

Ellamae (Bobbie) Waite Rubin died Sunday, 11 June 2006 in Tucson, AZ. At her request, no services are planned.

Ms. Rubin was born April 13, 1914 in Olney, IL, the daughter of Delilah Verne (Howard) and Elias Berg Waite.

She was an excellent beautician, and was admired for her ability to style hair and give non-frizzy permanents, even when they were first introduced. Bobbie also worked with her family in a nursing home business in Connecticut, and later opened and operated her own care facility in Tucson in the 1950s and 60s. Her pink home, Rancho Toda La Vista, on Thornydale Road just north of Ina, was a landmark used by pilots training at Davis Monthan Air Force Base. For a few years her sons delighted in telling of their mother’s ranch in Tucson where she raised 10,000 head – of mice for research labs in Tucson.

Bobbie was best know for her hugs. She shared them everywhere she went and even passed out cards asking all around her to give more hugs. She loved to travel and took trips to Hawaii, Australia and Japan as well as throughout North America. She was an excellent bowler and won trophies in state and national tournaments for many years. She golfed, skied and danced until she was in her 80s. She greatly enjoyed volunteer work at Northwest Medical Center and received awards for her long and faithful service.

Bobbie is survived by her son and daughter-in-law, Howard and Mary Rubin, Mesa, three grandsons and their wives – Mark and Lainie Rubin, Austin, TX, Aaron and Patti Rubin, Oklahoma City, and Jason and Rebecca Rubin, Austin; a granddaughter and her husband Karen Rubin and Avron Bernstein; and grandchildren Willa, Isaac, Adam, Mara and Reesa Rubin, Lauren and Tess Hermes and Tyler Lindsey; special friends Steven and Sandy Ellinger, Steve Jr., and his wife and children, as well as many nieces and nephews.

She was preceded in death by her parents, a son Robert Hilliard Rubin, and her three brothers and two sisters.

In lieu of flowers, please make donations to a veterans’ charity or to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum.

More on German Goldenshteyn

The following is an email* I received from Michael Alpert about German’s passing which expresses a many of the same feelings I have about the man and his contributions, most of which we were only beginning to realize.

Micheal writes:

Dear Friends,

With deep, deep grief and a enormous feeling of loss, I am writing to inform you that German Goldenshteyn, master Bessarabian traditional clarinetist died yesterday morning (Sat, June 10), apparently of a sudden heart attack or stroke, just one week short of his 72nd birthday.

At the time, he was engaged in his second favorite social activity -- fishing. If there is any positive dimension to his untimely death, it is that he died doing one of the things he loved best, in the midst of the nature he so treasured, and at the height of public appreciation by colleagues, students and audiences.

As many of you know, German embodied a distinct combination of love, warmth, kindness, humor, irony and playfulness, as well as a street-wise and wryly philosophical attitude toward the world and his fellow human beings. But he was not made of sugar. At times the pain of his devastating early years as child survivor of the Nazi and Romanian Holocaust would well up in him. Tears would pour down his face at the gut-level surfacing of memories he could barely recall, or he could wax fierce and bitter, yet in a way that always passed quickly, like a sudden storm that lashes rain momentarily before giving way again to blue sky and shafts of sun.

He was modest to a fault, but knew exactly who he was, and took gentle pride in his extraordinary diligence at all he undertook -- whether his early years as a machinist turning steel at a lathe at the Kirk Agricultural Equipment Factory, or painstakingly notating and indexing the Jewish, Moldavian, Ukrainian and Russian melodies of his native Dniester Valley, played by him and his fellow musicians -- Jewish, Moldavian, Ukrainian and Rom -- at village and town weddings throughout southwestern Podolia and northern Moldavia.

There is so much to say, there is nothing that suffices. H' teyn v H' kakh. As German would often say: "...vifl yurn got vet mir nor geybn." -- as many years as G-d gives me. Hot tears flow, a smile comes remembering his witticisms and hearty laughter, a huge, sad, empty hole remains that he occupied in our lives. Godammit, why did he have to leave now? There is so much more to do, but there will never again be German to share it all with, to watch the determined look on his face as he played, completely in the moment, to share a joke with in his hearty Bessarabian Yiddish or eloquent Russian or downhome Romanian or Ukrainian or his ever-suprising English, to wrangle with over a turn or articulation, to watch as he patiently and lovingly encouraged young musicians, to lift a glass with and toast lekhayim, to bring us the living spirit of shtetl and village weddings, the mud and the snow and the vodka and the gasoline and the fires burning in the night air...

But he has bequeathed us a legacy of melodies deep and fiery, merry and heartrending, and it is ours now to carry on and play, celebrate, dance to, study, pass on to yet future generations, and tell them that we once knew a German, and he gave us these tunes to make our own...

German Goldenshteyn a"h is his survived by his wife Mina, their daughter, son-in law and grandson Klava, Borya and Alex Rozentul, numerous relatives, neighbors and landslayt (compatriots) in New York, Philadelphia, Vienna, Israel and Ukraine, and an entire community of musical friends and colleagues throughout the world.

*(I’ve edited out the parts where he talks about himself however. God love him, my old friend Michael tends to put himself at the center of attention even at someone else’s funeral.)

Pictured with me and German above is young Alex Kontorovich who not only single handedly produced German's only CD, he was also his most attentive disciple, himself a displaced Russian speaking Jewish clarinetist. Others may claim to have introduced us to German, but it is through Alex that his musical legacy has the most worthy exponent. A man of few words, he shares his thoughts on German as well:

Dear Friends,

As some of you may know, earlier this year some folks and I recorded a CD with a wonderful musician, husband, father, and grandfather, German Goldenshteyn. He had numbers tattooed on his arm from the war which left him an orphan, and a collection of 800 melodies from his 50 years on the bandstand. I was gearing up to email you all about the release party for his CD (which he had in his hands for a month before his heart attack while fishing two days ago) but today was his funeral. Now I'm not the overly sentimental or melodramatic type, but we lost a real gem. German exemplified how a musician active in the business can float above the everyday bullshit and politics of the industry and always keep in mind that our job is simply to make people happy. I never left his house hungry or sober, and hope the lessons we've all learned from him will stay with us for many years to come.

The show must go on; German wouldn't have it any other way. If you want to learn more about him and listen to clips of his playing, visit:

http://www.cdbaby.com/goldenshteyn

(Needless to say, the proceeds will be passed along to his wife.)

Our concert of German's music in Poland three weeks from now will go on, just instead of a celebration it will be in memoriam.

My best regards to you all, and my prayers to the Goldenshteyn family,

-Alex

--
_________________
Alex V. Kontorovich

German Goldenshteyn RIP

Too sad for words...

I got the call while standing in a field in Eden NC after a day of wonnderous music.

Frank London tells me that German is dead. A sudden heart attack, while out fishing with friends just yesterday. Hank and Dan from KlezKamp are here with me and we cried like babies and hugged and cried again. A series of frantic calls to his friends and musical compatriots confirms the worse.
Damn, he was just starting to get going, a CD and everything.

Words fail me and I will start sitting shiva with a good roaring drunk...Vodka probably...

Charlie Poole Festival & Contest

I'm off to Eden NC this weekend to help out at the 11th Annual Charlie Poole Music Festival. My old pal and Klez Kamp founder Hank Sapoznik scored a gig on the directing board of this wonderful event after releasing the amazing "You Ain't Talkin' to Me" Poole box set for Sony/Legacy last year. He and Klez Kamp manager Dan Peck invited me along to MC, judge and whatnot. I guess my qualifications come from the big Sing Out! article I wrote last year.

There's a big concert on Friday night and then an old time fiddle and banjo contest all the next day.

Should be a big time. Might actually get some picking in as well. Ah, to be amongst the goyim again.....

Mexico. It's hot...

..and not so many Jews.

Veracruz Jazz Festival. Second anual event in Mexico's famed Gulf port.

I'm hired to play banjo with the strange and amazing Panorama Jazz Band. They have a fine banjo player, but she don't like to travel (wha?!) which is fine by me as I'll be the cat who get's to go to such wonderful places and play good music.

Here's the crib notes:


1) Parading on a float in downtown Veracruz with a combined Panorama and Mahogany Brass Band. There are two local models flinging candy at the assembled.

These people like candy way too much.






2) Panorama's tuba player John Gross doing something I always obsess about and forgetting his leadpipe at home. He visits a local hardware store and then fasions a make shift one with AC tubing and duct tape. !Viva Technologica de Mexico!










3) Drinking and eating on el Zocolo, the public square in the center of town (which in Catholic Mexico means next to the catherderal.) The New Orleanians refer to it as "Jackson Square," except there's way more street musicians here. Mostly crappy "Norteno" accordion bands, like I don't get enough of that at home. Did see a couple of amazing Sones Jarocho trios and a community brass band playing the heck out of Danzon music. Decent Mariachi too, but I can get that any night that Relampago is playing here too..

4) I am presently the size of 3.75 average Veracruzans. Don't ask me how we found out.

5) Do not eat the BBQ. No really. Even if they sponsored the whole festival. Just don't do it. Not when the tamale vendors are right around the corner.

6) The Okie Jew was featured singing a Church of Christ Hymn played by a New Orleans Jazz band in Mexico, at a festival run by a Lebanese pianist. Chew on that one for a while.

7) The consul general of Honduras has offered me a place to run away to. Laugh if you like, but Jews are taught from an early age to "be comfortable, but keep you passport current." Historically speaking we're due for a pogrom right about now, and I have the man's cell number.

8) Flying back to Houston and then running down to the Miller Ampetheatre to play with Brian Marshall for the 17th annual Accordion Kings Festival.

On Improvisation in Music

A fine quote from legendary Brazilian Chorro mandolinist Jacob do Bandolim.  I concur.

"I improvise when I interpret music. But I improvise not for the sake of improvising, but to augment the scale and the sentiment of the composition. I am not completely tied to what the composer has done nor am I obligated to reproduce it exactly. I reproduce it in a manner that pleases me, in the way a painter reproduces nature that appears one way to everyone else and another way to himself. Thus, it is not the desire to improvise, to be original. It is rather the desire to encounter in musical phrases the richness in a composition, which, when it is well done, is subtle and refined in all its details, and that presents me with numerous possibilities."