FLORIDA.   ‘CLUBHOUSES’ AS BIG AS BASKETBALL ARENAS

We just got back from a parallel universe -- the land of retired New York Jews, called South Florida.  Yiddishe Cup performed at four Century Village retirement communities in Palm Beach and Broward counties. 

Each complex had 10,000-15,000 residents and a theater resembling a Big Ten basketball arena.  These theaters were attached to buildings quaintly called "clubhouses," which looked like Monticellos. 

We enjoyed time-traveling; other acts appearing this month are Debby Boone, Dr. Ruth, Jack Jones, "Jim Bailey as Judy Garland," Joel Grey, and Larry Storch, "the loveable Corporal Agarn from F-Troop."

One huge cummerbund-popping emcee told us he had "opened for the Righteous Brothers, done Vegas, the cruise ships, been married nine times. Only Mickey [Rooney] has me beat."  His latest wife won't let him travel, so now he sells Cadillacs during the day and emcees shows at night. 

For a Midwestern Jewish band to play in such a densely Jewish world, well, I felt like an ex-patriot koto player returning to Tokyo.  I was astounded by the sheer numbers involved -- we played for over 7,000 people in eight concerts.  These folks loved our Borscht Belt comedy stuff, and they corrected our pronunciation of Brooklyn's "Pitkin Avenue," gratis.

We did a comedy sketch by an obscure Catskill comedian, Billy Hodes.  A woman in the audience said, "I'm kvelling.  I spent my honeymoon at the New Roxy Hotel [Loch Sheldrake, New York].  August 8, 1945.  Billy Hodes was the emcee."

The band stayed at a Ft. Lauderdale hotel that was ripe for a drug bust -- rusted room doors, Big Diamond Dave on keyboard in the lounge, ciggy stench in the lobby.  Only Elmore Leonard was missing.  But the beach was right out the door, and the food service was Greek.  Paradise, actually. 

THE HARDEST-WORKING KLEZMER BAND IN AMERICA . . . YIDDISHE CUP!

Case Study #1. Religious Stuff.
 
So we're playing this blow-out dance medley at a very "frum" (observant) bar mitzvah in Cleveland.  About one minute into the song, a rabbi comes up to the bandstand and tells the singer to cut the music.  I ask the singer, "What's up?"  The singer tells me, "It's a religious thing."

Turns out the rabbi didn't like the fact men were seated near the women's dance floor.  Let me back up: there are two dance floors, one for men and one for women, and there's a row of potted palms separating the dance floors.  The tables, fully set with centerpieces, were not readily moveable. 

So we couldn’t play any dance music . . . for the next three hours.  Just wallpaper music.  Ouch.  What a bore.



Study #2. Ethnic Stuff.

A Methodist wedding in Akron, Ohio.  Mashed potatoes, prime rib, chicken, corn and carrots.  (I've never seen mashed potatoes at a Jewish wedding.)  These Methodists had heard us at First Night, Akron.  Not a Jew in the joint -- the party center.  But they like the Jewish stuff we play.  A large gent, about 6-4, father of the bride no less, asks, "You know any Irish?"  No problem, I tell him.

In a couple weeks we'll play for Catholics in Toledo; the groom, Horst, wants to hear Austrian music. No problem. We did an Austrian wedding several years ago -- a couple guests even wore lederhosen -- and we played "Edelweiss" three times.  That's our Austrian repertoire. Seems we do one or two gentile weddings a year.    



Study #3. Differing Tastes in Music: How to Deal with It.
 
At a St. Louis wedding, the bride says, "Don't play any American music. Just klezmer!"  Then her aunt says, "You have to play 'In the Mood' so we can swing dance!" 

When the bride and groom -- and a million other guests -- go into the atrium for photos (and temporarily ruin the party), I say, "Don't tell anybody, but we're going to play a swing tune now."  The bride comes back in the middle of the tune, swing dances, and says, "I'm really glad you played that!"

FUNK VS. KLEZ

At a fancy Detroit wedding we shared the gig with a soul band. I asked the female soul singer, "Have you seen 'Standing in the Shadows of Motown'?"  She said her father was  in it.  He was the pianist, Johnny Griffith. 

The elderly tenorman in the band told me, "They didn't feature the horn players. I know them all." The tenorman’s tuning up sounded better than most Yiddishe Cup jazz solos. But he liked our klezmer stuff, like our version of "Araber Tantz." 

 "What kind of scale was that?" he said. 

 "In Yiddish it's called 'freygish,'" I said.  (Freygish is the "Hava Nagila" scale: E F G# A B C D E.)

“Cool.”

THE NEXT STAGE ARRIVES IN THREE MINUTES

There was a concert organizer -- cell phone in hand -- standing in a grassy field in Huntington Woods, Mich.  Just that -- no stage, no electrical outlet, no bathroom, no crowd.  The woman asked us if we'd like bottled water.  Yes, that and a crowd . . . a concert, basically.

 Then a stage drove up, as did a toilet, an outlet and people. (The stage was on the back of a truck. The other items came by vehicle and foot.)

PICKY, PICKY SIDEMAN

Our keyboard player was kvetching in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.  . . . OK, so it was 92 degrees and we were in direct sunlight, and the keyboardist was just about to faint.  Afterward he said, "Next time put in the contract 'the band will not play in direct sunlight.'"  Next time, he’ll ask for purple M&Ms, too.

"STRADIVARIUS" CLARINET MANGLED

The low-F key on my clarinet got twisted like a corkscrew at a concert in Flint, Mich.  I asked the stagehand if he had touched the horn.  "No," he said, "Nobody touched your clarinet! Nobody gets on this stage during sound check without my permission .”

Stagehand number #2 wrote me a personal check for repairs after the show.  "A mike stand could have fallen on your clarinet," she said.

KLEZMER MARIACHIS

In Dallas, while most of Yiddishe Cup visited the "grassy knoll," I stopped at the neighborhood taco shop to update myself on Mexican drinks. 

The taco shop had orange, carrot, horchata, mango, guava and sidral/apple beverages.  The shop even had bottled Coke from Mexico. The clerk said Mexican Coke is sweeter than American Coke.  I was doing well with my Ohio Spanish until the clerk asked me if my order was "para aqui o llevar?" (For here or to go?) 

This month, in Cleveland, we're playing a wedding for an Ecuadorean Jew whose parents don't speak English.  I'm supposed to say in Spanish: "You will probably see people seated in chairs in the wind." For when the bride and groom are lifted on chairs.

The bridal couple has requested Yiddishe Cup play a mariachi song, "El Rey."   I figured it was something romantic. Then I got the lyrics off the Internet: "I always do what I want and my word is the law."  Somewhat like Dion's "The Wanderer."   

Yiddishe Cup's ultimate hip-spanic experience was when we played "La Bamba" for 2,000 Hispanics at an outdoor concert in El Paso, Tex., a couple years ago. For Jewish flavor we inserted some Hebrew lyrics -- "Behold how good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity" from Psalm 133 ("Hine Ma Tov"). We got that idea from a recording by a Kansas City band, Guns 'n' Charoses.

Daniel Ducoff, our shtickmeister (dance leader), called the El Paso concert our "Jewish Mexican Woodstock."

We are  klezmerachis. 

MISSISSIPPI  JEWK  JOINT

I did a  solo clarinet gig , for no audience, in the chapel at St. Dominic Hospital, Jackson, Miss.

A nun walked by and asked if I needed help.  Yes, I did!

My wife, Alice, was undergoing emergency surgery -- on our vacation, no less.  The doc said to her, "Ma-am, you are knockin' at heaven's do-or."   

The operation went well -- 100% well.  (Medical details spared.) 

In the recovery room, the nurses asked Alice if she wanted a visit from the "sisters" (nuns).  I said no for Alice, who was delirious, but afterward Alice said she would have liked that. 

It turned out every rabbi in town came to see her, though.  That's two.  Both were women.  So Alice got the Jewish nuns.

Why Mississippi for vacation?  My mother is from Yazoo City, Miss. Maybe that's why Yiddishe Cup has harmonica on some tunes.

“TO KUGEL,”  A VERB

Yiddishe Cup recently kugel-ed the owner of The Ark, the acoustic music club in  Ann Arbor, Mich.  One of Yiddishe Cup's biggest fan, Lea Grossman, delivered a homemade noodle kugel to The Ark's headquarters.  The Ark's owner was startled.  Why?  Did he expect brisket?

Lea really wants to sing with the band again, like she did at Yiddishe Cup's prior Ark appearance.

File this one under "Jewish Forklore, 21st Century."

OLE,  OY VEY

Yiddishe Cup has cornered the market on Cleveland's Spanish-speaking Jewish community.  This market can fit comfortably into the back seat of a Ford Taurus.  (We occasionally play bar mitzvahs and weddings for Cleveland Clinic doctors  from Latin America.)

The upshot is we know a couple Spanish tunes.  And this will come in handy at our next concert, at the Chamizal National Memorial, an outdoor venue on the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas.  We expect the crowd to be about 2,500 Hispanics, plus a handful of Jewish doctors.

What will we play for an encore?  Think of it this way: When the Ukrainian dance troupes come through Cleveland, they often do a Yankee hoedown for an encore.

We could go with "La Bamba," but we are all sick of that.

We could do "El Rey," the mariachi tune.  That would definitely establish our bona fides along the border.

This is our second trip to El Paso.

WORLD’S SCARIEST GIG – AND YIDDISHE CUP WASN’T EVEN PLAYING

I was slunk back in the chair at the "Jeopardy!" studio in Los Angeles.  My 23-year-old son, Ted, was scheduled to compete.

I was in the VIP section,  next to a large "country" guy from Idaho, whose son was the winner of the first couple games.  The son, Bud, was a Bill Gates look-alike with Coke-bottle glasses.  He ran a category on Hawaii, thanks to Bud having just returned from a Hawaiian vacation.  The dad told me that.

The contestants were editors, teachers, reporters, law students and computer guys.  Teddy was in a batch, or "class," of 13 contestants.

I'm sitting in the audience, through four games, thinking, "Are they going to not call my kid, and we'll have to fly back to Ohio and do this all over again?"  ("Jeopardy!" tapes five games in a day.)  I worried like my late father.  Pathetic, I guess.  One of the "Jeopardy!" ushers told me it was conceivable Ted wouldn't play that day.  Turns out she had her facts wrong.  Only locals -- from places like Ventura, San Diego and Long Beach -- get held over.  "Jeopardy!" doesn't like paying return airfares for contestants from far away. 

So Teddy got on.

It was like watching my kid attempt a 50-yard field goal at the Ohio State-Michigan game with one second left on the clock.  I was totally helpless to affect the result, but I felt like I was kicking the ball.  That's the weird part about being a parent -- all that collateral, out-of-your-control joy and pain.

OK, I'm ready to die now.  He won two games.

MATH PROBLEM

In February Yiddishe Cup played a blues bar in downtown Cleveland as a diversion, sort of, to get us through that nasty winter.  We were supposed to get  X dollars.  After the show, the club owner led me into his  office and said, "You don't really expect me to pay you  X dollars, do you?  How'd we come up that figure?  I grossed X-500 at the door."

I said, "OK, give me what you want."  So he started handing me single dollar bills.  Singles!  Those are worth, like, a quarter.  I said, "How about a check?"

He said, "You wouldn't want a check from me."

True.

He eventually got out some $50s and $100s, plus 100 singles.

Well, at least it felt like a lot of dough.

No more bar gigs, unless they're bar mitzvahs.

GO EAST, KLEZMER GUYS
 
At Cleveland cocktail parties, I'm often asked, "Who pays for your little Yiddishe Cup road trips -- those Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy Camp trips you guys go on?"
 
The client pays. Yiddishe Cup is not a high school glee club!  Yiddishe Cup  has played throughout the United States  and Canada.  And now, finally, New York is picking up on our smell . . . our scent; Yiddishe Cup plays the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts. 
 
In Brooklyn we’re going to do “Essen,” a song about eating too much food at a Catskills resort.  Yiddishe Cup has been to the Catskills several times -- not as performers, but as paying customers at KlezKamp, the annual convention of klezmer musicians and Yiddishists.  No Jewish subject is too arcane for KlezKamp. There’s even a Brown U. professor named Brown who lectures on Brown’s, an old Catskills hotel.
 
Another frequent Cleveland cocktail party question is: "How'd you guys get a gig in New York?"

Because Yiddishe Cup is different.  Yiddishe Cup does klezmer comedy.  Mickey Katz is dead, and we're the next best thing.  Or as Dr. Demento recently put it: "Yiddishe Cup is a dizzying combination of retro and contemporary references, and hot music."  

OUR CROWD -- INDY
 
We just played Indy -- which is actually Indpls. One of our hosts in Indy said, "I really like your CD, but please don't play that song about eating food, 'Essen.' "  (There's a significant cultural difference between Midwestern Jews and East Coast Jews, which would make an interesting seminar at KlezKamp, except the East Coasters would never sanction it.)

We opened in Indy, at a Reform temple, for Gabe Kaplan, of Welcome Back Kotter fame. 
 
Kaplan said he can’t get a job as a Gabe Kaplan impersonator because he doesn’t look like Gabe Kaplan anymore.  He's 60 and now plays high stakes poker in Las Vegas.
 
Kaplan's stand-up humor is a bit risque, at least for a guy standing in front of a bima (altar) in Indy.  Example: A widower in Miami Beach asks his date, an elderly woman, if she likes sex, and she says, "Infrequently." The widower asks, "Is that one word or two? "

“NORTH CAROLINA  KLEZMER HAIKUS”  BY JACK KEROUAC

The Greensboro Furniture Market
means no beds
except at the dumpy hotel
across from the Executive Club,
which in Cleveland is a catering hall,
but in NC is a strip joint.
Are we playing Amsterdam?

Continental breakfast
The Corn Flakes in the Styrofoam bowl
need milk
for weight
fast.
Too late.  
Where’s the broom?  
 
Musicians with instruments
talk to other musicians with instruments
at the Delta counter.
Our gig was colder than an M-F, the drummer says.
So you froze your pupik [bellybutton] off? our singer says.
The Neville Brothers drummer
He played with Dylan
Doesn’t speak Yiddish.

OHIO KLEZMER HIPSTERS GOES TO BROOKLYN

Yiddishe Cup played the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts.  George Robinson, in a preview article for the New York Jewish Week, wrote, "Yiddishe Cup is a band that was made for a hip, Jewish New York audience.  It's a wildly funny amalgam of Mickey Katz, Spike Jones, PDQ Bach and straight-ahead klezmer."

Yiddishe Cup was so hip we didn't stay anywhere in New York you've ever heard of.  We were in an emerging neighborhood.  Specifically, we hid from our fans at a Queens mom-and-pop hotel, which had a great view of an auto transmission shop, an Afghani restaurant, a Chinese bakery, and an auto-detailing garage called Illusions.

Speaking of which, where was our limo? Where was the New York Times reporter?

I asked the desk clerk if we should  take the subway or bus into Manhattan. 

"Train," he said.

At our concert we had the chutzpah to interrogate native Brooklynites on Brooklyn.  Our source was 1957 Dodgers baseball cards.

Q. Duke Snider's real first name?  A. Edwin. 
Q. Pee Wee Reese's?  A. Harold.  
Q. Al Walker's nickname?  A. Dixie.  

One man in the audience even guessed Duke Snider's height correctly (6-1).

I told the audience I had gone to high school in Cleveland with Eric Carmen of the Raspberries. That’s a N.Y. thing – mentioning where and who you went to high school with.  Like "I was two years behind Neil Diamond at Lincoln High" or "Larry David was in my class at Sheepshead Bay."  Say this daily if you're a New Yorker.

The Brooklyn crowd of 700 was a mix of hipsters, Modern Orthodox Jews and  AKs ( “AK” is Yiddish slang for "old person," meaning anybody 10 years older than you).

KLEZMER INVESTING

Yiddishe Cup's dance leader, Sir Dance-a-lot, collects refrigerator magnets of states Yiddishe Cup has played. 

So I sometimes give Dance-a-lot magnet investment advice.  For instance, seven years ago I told him to buy "Kentucky."

We have yet to play Kentucky.  Dang.

The conductor of the Cleveland Pops Orchestra has played in 10 foreign countries and 29 states.

Who's counting.

It's getting on my nerves -- not playing Kentucky.  Do you know how close Kentucky is to Ohio?      Ridiculously, abuttingly close.

Yiddishe Cup goes abroad soon, traveling to Windsor, Ontario. Yes, Windsor is "abroad."  And that Ontario magnet will count double, as a "state/province" and as a "foreign country."

ANOTHER JEWISH CLARINET PLAYER FROM OHIO

Yiddishe Cup's singer, Irwin Weinberger, and I recently participated in the Great Ohio Bike Adventure (not a huge klezmer event).  We wound up in Circleville, where we visited the Ted Lewis Museum.  Lewis  -- born Theodore Friedman -- was a huge vaudeville star.   Eddie Condon, banjo player, once said of him , "Ted Lewis made the clarinet talk, and it usually said, 'Please put me back in my case.'" [source: "Klezmer!" by Henry Sapoznik]

Then I went on Israel National Radio and played for free.

Next week I will pay to play at a showcase.

THE KLEZMER SPORTING LIFE

Yiddishe Cup owns a mini black-and-white TV that is so old Walter Cronkite spent some time inside it . Yiddishe Cup uses this TV every decade or so, for major sporting events that conflict with gigs. For instance, we used the box during the 1995 World Series, when Yiddishe Cup musicians hid in a storage room at Cleveland's Fairmount Temple during Simchat Torah and sneaked peaks at how the Cleveland Indians were doing.  Not well.

The mini-TV saw action, again, 11 years later for The Game -- the Michigan-Ohio State football game of several months ago.  [This major sporting event might mean nothing to you if, (A.), you live outside the Midwest, and/or, (B.), you're a musician . . . excuse me, artiste.] 

On the day of The Game, Yiddishe Cup played in Ann Arbor, Mich.  Oddly, Yiddishe Cup had played in Ann Arbor two years before, also on game day, and had blasted the Ohio State fight song from Yiddishe Cup's van horn. 

This time around, we considered playing "Hang on Sloopy," an Ohio State favorite, during the Ann Arbor party. We didn't.  Why?  We wanted to live.  We're Buckeyes but we're not nuts.  (And some of us root for Michigan, but that's another story.)

YIDDISHE CUP’S TRIP ABROAD

Yiddishe Cup played the Windsor, Ontario,  Canada . . . (breath) . . . JCC. 

The final "C" in "JCC" stands for "Centre."

In the same vein -- the cross-cultural vein right above your neck -- we received loonies and toonies (Canadian dollar and two-dollar coins) when we sold Yiddishe Cup CDs at the concert intermission. We also got to write "USD" on several MasterCard charge slips.

Windsor is south of Detroit.

Feel free to quiz somebody with this one: "What foreign country would you reach first if you drove due south from Detroit?" 

Enough chit-chat . . . Ladies and gentlemen, please stand up at your computers, put your hands together, and welcome the internationally acclaimed Yiddishe Cup.

SOUTHERN BAR (B-QUE) MITZVAH

Actually, it was fried chicken, grits and cornbread.  Plus, barbecue beef ribs.

The bar mitzvah party was at the Decatur (Ga.) County courthouse.

The kids used chocolate-fountain skewers to stab each other.  The kids also played bumper cars with the musical chairs setup.  And they jumped on and off window ledges in the room. One guest, from Mississippi, explained it this way:  "They like to party hard down here. It's a Southern tradition." 

Another guest, from Sylva, N.C. in the Smoky Mountains, said he frequently blasts Yiddishe Cup music from his Ford pickup truck, just to give his neighbors something to ponder.

Yes, Yiddishe Cup rises in the South.

Next Yiddishe Cup plays a bar mitzvah party in Virginia. Will we get grits again?  Not likely. "Virginia" means suburban D.C. here.

Yiddishe Cup has a tentative  -- very tentative -- booking in Nashville for a bar mitzvah in 2011. The dad called the band six years ahead and asked us to hold the date.  He said, "Mickey Katz is dead and you're the next best thing."

COLLEGE COURSE, PR 101. HOW NOT TO DRAW A CROWD

When Yiddishe Cup plays a small college, we promptly go to the student union to check out the school's feel.  It's all about the student union at a liberal arts college. Usually there's a poster of Yiddishe Cup on the bulletin board, and a blurb in the school's paper. 

At Mt. Union College, Alliance, Ohio . . . nada.

We proceeded to the school's auditorium to set up for the concert.  Wow, an old downtown theater with a marquee.  The marquee said .  . . nada.
 
It was a Monday night -- a Monday  -- in the middle of Ohio. 

Would we have a minyan?  (Ten people.)

We got 90 people -- almost all Jews who had heard about the concert through the international Jewish grapevine (Yiddishe Cup's emails).  And about 10 students showed up.

The professor / concert organizer explained he was on sabbatical, lived 45 minutes from campus, and hadn't made it to town lately to promote the concert. 

On stage, after I introduced the band I said,  "And now I'll introduce the audience."

SAX PARTS

At a recent Cleveland party, a father-son duo asked if they could borrow Yiddishe Cup's guitar and drums to play "La Bamba." 

I said no.

The dad said, "'La Bamba' is only three chords."  Meaning, he and his son wouldn't wreck our precious instruments.

I said no again. And I said, "Look at my saxophones," which were strewn around the bandstand like odd muffler exhaust pipes.  An hour earlier a 50-pound PA speaker had fallen on my saxophones.  An elderly lady had lost her balance during the "Hava Nagila" dance set, and she had tumbled into our sound system.

That father-son duo had no idea how bad its timing was.  The "falling PAs on sax" thing happens only once every 19 years.

FROM THE JEWISH DESK AT GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS

How to set the record for the world’s longest Jewish wedding ceremony . . .
 
Invite a rabbi from out of town -- fly him in; put him up in a hotel; and pay him a lot.  Then, for sure, he will talk a lot.
 
Or hire two rabbis -- one for each side of the family.  They will compete against each other.
 
Yiddishe Cup has played weddings where people have fainted from standing so long at the chuppah (bridal canopy/altar).  The swooner is often the bride’s mom, who has been on a month-long starvation diet to fit into her new dress.
 
Yiddishe Cup played a wedding that went 55 minutes.
 
For Catholics 55 minutes might seem pretty normal, but at a Jewish wedding, the bridal party stands at attention the whole time.  No communion-line stroll, no kneeling.

After Yiddishe Cup’s record-breaking ceremony, I asked the bride’s father how he was doing.  He said he was fine.  He said, “I was in ROTC at Ohio State.”

THE DIRT ON KLEZMER

I occasionally go to performing arts conferences, which are like plumbers’ conventions, except I don't sell pipes and nipples (that’s plumbing talk), I sell klezmer.
 
I get a booth; I hang up a “Yiddishe Cup” banner; and I smile at people I don't want to smile at.  These people I smile at are bookers, who represent Carnegie Hall, the Oshkosh (Wis.) Opera House, or points in between.  In the music biz, these places are "soft-seat auditoriums."
 
My conference booth is typically sandwiched between a puppeteer’s, a classical pianist’s, and a “mentalist” -- a guy who bends spoons.
 
This, just in: there are too many artists out there.
 
At a recent Midwest Arts Conference, a portion of the exhibit hall was devoted specifically to “New Music.”  So when I saw a bunch of bookers hanging out there, I said to the convention administrator, “Yiddishe Cup does new music.”
 
She said, “Klezmer isn’t new music, is it?”
 
“We do nude music,” I said.
 
Still, she wouldn’t let Yiddishe Cup in to the special section.
 
Enough.  Yiddishe Cup has management.  That’s music-biz lingo for “we have an agent.”  The G.G. Greg Agency, www.gggreg.com, will represent Yiddishe Cup at arts conferences from now on, thank you.

GIG DREAMING ON SUCH A WINTER'S DAY

An Australian named Ralph is supposed to call.
 
Ralph is a classical composer, a big Yiddishe Cup fan, and a part-time concert organizer.  Also, Ralph’s children know all Yiddishe Cup’s funny lyrics.
 
Here’s the problem . . .  will Yiddishe Cup’s synthesizer will be compatible with the electrical system in Australia?  And should I purchase the airplane tickets or let Ralph.  He might route us through Greenland to save a buck.
 
 . . . Yiddishe Cup’s violinist wants to go back to Florida.
 
So I called down there and got the lady who books the mega-condo circuit.  She said, “We’re not doing Jewish anymore.  It’s all Latin.”
 
. . . Well, there’s always Michigan.  The Upper Peninsula is cool. We once played a town there that had street signs: “Do Not Plow Snow on this Sidewalk.”
 
Next month – for the fourth year in a row – we’ll play a Michigan institution, The Ark in Ann Arbor.   Lock us in.