Hebrew School

“Time is an enormous, long river, and I’m standing in it, just as you’re standing in it.” –Utah Phillips

The Red State String Band (l to r: Ben Stowe, Laura Feddersen, Mike Mermin) got their name when band members realized they all hailed from Republican strongholds. Thankfully, they made it to New York.

A while back I alluded to a reemergence of folk music in the city, and speculated on what that might mean, in that particular case with regard to singer-songwriter Joanna Newsom. The truth is that this reemergence (or is it simply a persistence?) extends far beyond what might be termed “folk” and in fact back to its roots: traditional American song, African American spirituals, bluegrass, country and the like.

New York City doesn’t even have a full-schedule country radio station. Yet whether bar-hopping through the Lower East Side or staggering one’s way through the erstwhile hinterlands of Brooklyn, one would be hard-pressed to avoid a whoop and holler, the snap of a washboard, or the twang of– well, anything that goes twang. At small venues like Banjo Jim’s in Manhattan, the current schedule smacks of ragtime piano, copious use of words like “river” and “mountain,” and Odetta night. Crossing the East River, Buttermilk’s monthly Cashank hootenanny (featuring the music of Johnny and Williams, respectively) continues to bring out of the woodwork crowds of boot-stompers, weekend jamboree warriors, and innocent bystanders like myself looking for fun without the expense of certain pretensions.

But aside from reiterations of the “old-timey” (the worst of which may be superficially mechanical in execution), New York is indeed nurturing an emergent pocket of artists who use these canons as a means of further creative juicing. They’re writing new material with eyeballs on the various traditions, using song structure as an emotional container for music that is completely relevant and often profoundly personal. They’re recontextualizing forgotten early-radio classics and giving them urban sensibility. And some of the most convincing ones are slightly out of their minds.

If it seems too facile to draw a line between the current state of affairs in New York City and the folk scare of the ’60s which produced Dylan, Dave Van Ronk, Smokey and his Sister et al., I can only connect the following dots: big corporate music in its birth pangs, and the same industry some forty years later at its death knell. Both sets of circumstances meant artistic fertility for New York musicians, so much so that, particularly in the light of obscurity, one might confuse the products of one era for the other.

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I honestly don’t think I’ve been to Sunny’s since I performed there with the Murrays in 2000. It’s a little less cobwebby, the atmosphere a little less rarefied. There’s now a large back room for bands to play, but it seems to have come at the expense of the availability of Rheingold beer in bottles. And it goes without saying that there was not a Fairway grocery store, nor a gargantuan Ikea opening in a month. Oh well.

But it also goes without saying that it’s still Sunny’s, packed like hell with honest-to-God humans on a cold and rainy Friday night, miles from a subway stop. The Red State String Band plows into an uptempo number, hushing the unhushable and quickly rendering mere seat-dancing unthinkable. Comprised of Mike Mermin on guitar and vocals, Laura Feddersen on fiddle, and Ben Stowe on banjo, they stand somehow in the midst of this old and new I’ve been trying to shed light on. Funnily, they do this in a venue which accomplishes the same in atmosphere, Sunny’s being an ostensible remnant of merchant marine hangouts of that pre-radio era of folk and country.

Red State held court for two sets, mixing traditional standards with originals written by Mike Mermin. The interplay of stylistic modes was sublime, and the musicians nothing less than serious professionals who have clearly honed their craft over a lifetime. They carried with them such a respect and devotion for their material, which varied in subject matter from drunken husbands, to ships at sea, to romantic love. The original tunes used these tropes of storytelling to underscore the timeless quality of these emotions.

Joined by Anna Leuchtenberger on accordion and vocals.

At the end of the night (and to my relief), Sunny’s is still Sunny’s.

Ceil Bialek and Edith Mandl. They’re twins.

For a while now, I’ve meant to publish a review and thoughts on Danielson: A Family Movie (or Make A Joyful Noise HERE), which I had seen on DVD this past winter. The award-winning documentary came to my Netflix queue’s attention at first not for its rave reviews or compelling story, but because a friend (and Sunset Park neighbor), Tom Eaton, who had played with honorary Family member Sufjan Stevens, had created an animation segment for the film (while making a brief cameo). My interest piqued, so I watched.

The movie trails Daniel Smith and his family band, Danielson, or Danielson Family, or Danielson Famile, or Smith’s solo project, Brother Danielson. Feeling a strong connection to his Christianity, he at one time lived at JPUSA in Chicago, an organization with ancestry in the Jesus movement of ’60s hippies, and somewhere along the way began to play Christian music. Weird and interesting Christian music.

Danielson’s success in the mainstream indie world, regardless of how people might have felt about it, resonated with me because of the questions it brought up about this music. (Seeing them open for Animal Collective last year probably helped, too.) The Christian music scene grew suspicious of Smith, as did indie music. Does great art get created in the space where vastly different parts of one’s potential audience both attempt to call a bluff? While Smith, with complete sincerity (…right?), pushed the creative boundaries of the Christian music juggernaut, does Jewish music push boundaries in an analogous way?

The answer to the latter question seemed obvious to me at first, but I can’t really be sure. If pressed I would say that Jewish music today, in all its shapes and colors, is a different cultural phenomenon altogether. But then again, being Jewish– albeit far (like, way far) less involved in my faith than Smith– kind of deprives me of any objectivity. Is “Christian rock” what non-Jews see in a Rorschach test of “Jewish rock?”

No answers forthcoming, though one of the most interesting moments of the film for me was when Daniel drummed up a compelling axiology: Christians and churches, he said, should be funding and supporting Christian bands– not the profit-driven music industry. Can we not say that Jews should also be doing more of the same?

OK, still no simple answers– but let’s have a beer some time.

Overheard at deli this morning:

“Oh, today’s Cinco de Mayo, isn’t it? Gotta get some Coronas.”
“Yup.”
“What’s it celebrate?”
“Independence.”
“When was that?”
“Eighteen something…”
“From who?”
“The Spanish.”

Well, not entirely, according to Hebrew School breaking news. Although Cinco de Mayo has broad-based appeal in the States as a day to celebrate Mexican culture– and by association its continued self-determination– the Mexican holiday is primarily observed in the state of Puebla as the day Mexicans began to rout French forces on May 5, 1862. Regardless, due to the popularity of the American holiday*, and perhaps the fact that a large number of the city’s Mexican-American residents have a Poblano heritage, throngs of happy and festive humanity abounded yesterday. (It also happened to be a ridiculously beautiful day.)

Traditional masked dancing occurs at the base of Sunset Park’s slope.

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* Analogously, the process by which American culture subsumes and reshapes traditional holidays brought from other countries seems to hold true with Jewish holidays such as Chanukah and Passover. Interestingly, these are also holidays where we celebrate the victory over enemies, the stamping out of oppresion.

Warming the cockles of any commie Jew’s heart, a group of us spontaneously gathered on International Workers’ Day to drink a bottle of Movia’s Puro Rose.

Readers may remember me extolling this wine’s virtues in my Slovenia posts. Puro is made from Pinot Noir grapes. It is unfiltered and can be decanted in a special way (in the case of this link, with a sentimental homage) to remove the majority of the naturally-occurring sediment, which in all its biodynamic glory is good to drink too. Everyone whom I’ve drank this with agrees that the wine has an enlivening quality, whereas your average Pinot Noir might induce that groggy “honey can we go home now” feeling.

While this is way more than I’ve ever even considered spending on a single bottle of wine, I heartily suggest that all of you find a bottle in your area, split the bill, and enjoy in good company, preferably with savory or spicy food (think Vietnamese, Mexican, Italian).

The modest result of my decanting; you’re seeing a cloudy sediment floating in cold water.

It’s still got a little of that magical particulate in it, but damn. We were spoiled since we drank Puro from its source, but this bottle did just fine after its trip to New York… Imagine a dry sparkling wine that is fruity without the telltale “big in the mouth” taste that plagues the American palate, putting people to bed without their supper.

Here’s what was going on in NYC yesterday…

“You put the cheese on the meat”