Category — Klezmer

Yiddishe Cup sidemen show up promptly and don’t complain. Years ago we had a player who was late all the time, and it drove me nuts.   My band has never been late, or missed a gig, in 20 years.  We run like the Tokyo bullet train.  Next stop, Pinsk.

I like to start early.  I tell the client the band is like a taxi; the meter starts running right at the downbeat.  That way when we quit, nobody is pissed or misled.

Sometimes we get “undertime,” which means we quit early because almost everybody has gone home.  We don’t usually play for less than 10 people.  Well, once a client made us keep playing while she wrapped up centerpieces.  She wanted her money’s worth.

Jews — or  at least this one — have a thing about 10 people.  I won’t play till I see 10 people in a room.  Otherwise you blow your chops out for a gaggle of teens inspecting the gift table.

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Tomorrow:

SIR DANCE-A-LOT . . . He plays the duck whistle.  That’s about it.  He dances.

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A sideman — a guy who just shows up for the gig and toots — has it easy, because if the gig is a flop, the onus is entirely on the bandleader.  Sidemen are invisible.

One party planner said to me, “Your musicians are eating all the hors d’oeuvres.  Why aren’t they playing [the cocktail hour].”  (They each had two hors d’oeuvres,  and they were playing.)

That’s the sort of kvetching I get from the party planner.  I told her we needed to get fed a lot earlier. We anticipated eating at 10 p.m., so we needed a couple hors d’oeuvres.  (We eat dinner at 6 p.m. in Ohio. Used to be 5:30 p.m. in Jack Paar’s day.)

My guys were very keen on the phyllo dough spinach triangles and egg rolls.  So was I.  Kind of hard to play the clarinet with a mouthful of phyllo dough and spinach.  Doable though.  It’s just the first few notes that don’t come out. You need at least a couple hors d’oeuvres to make it through the night.

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TOMORROW:

HORA-PAIN INSURANCE . . . We’ve seen a couple hora-induced broken ankles.

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It’s always stressful to negotiate a contract. I do a few per week. Real estate biz or the band. The lowest number you mention, that’s the one that sticks. If you say, “It’ll be between $6,500 and $6,800,” the customer just hears the $6,500. Never casually bandy about a low number. That’s the one that sticks.

You can do a million negotiations and never get used to it. Just like going on stage. You go on stage, and if you’re not nervous, you’re screwed up. I’m not saying you should be a nervous wreck — which is often the case the first couple years — but you should be a bit anxious. Even if you’re playing for seven people. We drove all the way to Grand Rapids, Mich., to play for about 30 people. Yeah, yeah, we’re pros and the show must go on, but it was a disappointment – that small number and such a long drive.

We did a show in Middletown, Ohio, for seven people. I told our singer to do a Beatles song in Yiddish just for fun. Big hit. Ohio premiere.

“Home hospitality” — that’s another negotiating tactic promoters use. “Would you please stay in a house, rather than a hotel?” Don’t do it.

I once put a band up in one of my vacant apartments. The band was Eli “Paperboy” Reed and the True Loves. Eli was just starting out. About nine of his guys barreled into the empty apartment. It cost me $50 to clean up after them. Not that they trashed the place. They didn’t. But nine guys overnight — the tub had some hairs in it the next morning, and there were foot prints. I knew what I was getting into. I knew that upfront. Support the arts.

Yiddishe Cup did a home hospitality where the host family didn’t show up. The festival volunteer took us to a flophouse near a paper mill. Looked like some rundown student housing. One bed, one cot, a couch and three sleeping bags. One bathroom.

So instead we went to a hotel, which wasn’t easy to come by because parents weekend was happening at a nearby college.

The next day I got half our hotel expenses back from the festival organizer. That encounter was like the real estate biz — hocking and negotiating. The music biz is 90 percent fun; this was the other 10 percent.

I told her the flop house was “not habitable.” Also, I mentioned my guys were 46-years- old and up. “We’re not college kids.”

She said, “We didn’t know you’re that old.”

Look at the photo in the brochure then! I asked her if she’d put her own family up in that dump. She said she would.

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At about one-third of my gigs, the client forgets her checkbook. These clients are all wound up in the simcha (wedding or bar mitzvah) and don’t have “paying the band” on their minds. According to the Talmud, day-laborers are supposed to get paid the same day they work. Doesn’t always work that way.

I pay the band anyhow. Like clockwork, twice a month.

Money and music go together, particularly with a bunch of middle-aged musicians. If you have kids, you don’t have the luxury of starving to death. Nobody in Yiddishe Cup is a doctor. Everybody thinks a klez band is full of dilettante musicians who are doctors and lawyers. Not true.

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The main deal with the band is showing up. If you miss a wedding, there’s no second chance.

Plumber: Ma’am, sorry I couldn’t make it yesterday. I’m here to fix your toilet.

Musician: Ma’am, sorry I missed your wedding yesterday. OK, kill me.

Weddings are the Rolls Royces of working-musician gigs. Nobody wants to be a wedding-singer except real musicians. They die for wedding gigs. The money is good and there’s usually good food. Now, we’ll occasionally get “wraps,” but 90 percent of the time we get the same food at the guests — which is always salmon. Can’t be in a Jewish band without liking salmon.

I had one guy in my band who used to bring baggies to all the gigs. Particularly useful at buffet lines.

The band always eats after the guests. That means we need to bring snacks — or eat a ton of hors d’oeuvres — to tide us over.

I always write “client will provide staff meals” in the contract. And I underline: “This must be arranged ahead of time with the caterer.”

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I know a union leader who plays mandolin in a folk band. He’s a hyphenated guy. Musician-union honcho. And I’ve read about a lawyer who writes hit pop tunes. No, I heard him on Terri Gross’ show. And who can forget Mark Warshavsky, the famous Polish Yiddish songwriter/lawyer.

All hail Charles Ives, Wallace Stevens and Denny Zeitlin — the jazz piano-playing  shrink.

Just about everybody in my band is a don’t-quit-your-day-job guy. Exception, our violinist, Steve Ostrow, who teaches and/or plays music all day. He doesn’t do anything that isn’t musical. Even his wife is a musician. His whole life is music. He also plays trombone, trumpet and classical guitar. He went to Eastman on a performance scholarship and saved up when he played seven years in a Venezuelan orchestra. Then he decided not to have kids and live happily ever after.

It helps not to have kids in the music biz.

I have another friend — a single guy — who is one of the best klezmer violinists in the world. He has played all the festivals: Cracow, Weimar, Montreal. He lives in Cleveland and makes it on music alone too. He used to be in Yiddishe Cup. Then he went out on his own to make it internationally. Everybody in the klez world knows him. Steve Greenman. (Well, everybody in the klez world knows me too, so I guess that ain’t saying much.) The klez world is slightly bigger than a 12-inch pizza.

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The thing I do with my hands — no joke — is play the clarinet.  I have the same clarinet I had when I was 13.  Selmer Signet X.  I like pushing the keys and hearing the pads snap shut on the black wood.  My clarinet is pretty indestructible.  I once heard an expert say clarinets “get blown out” after a couple years.  Not mine.  It works fine.

Landlord and musician . . . I’m a hyphenated guy.  Depends what kind of cocktail party I’m at, whether I say “landlord” or “musician” first.

I don’t try to hide the landlord part.  I should!  Everybody hates landlords.  Nobody paid rent as a child, so people think they should live free as adults too.  The walls, heat and water — that should be free, like the wind, rain and baby food.

I used to feel guilty about charging rent.  I hadn’t really done anything to deserve the rent, other than to maintain a building —a building which I hadn’t even built. Now I’m middle-aged, and, hey, I feel fine collecting rent.  Somebody has to keep these old buildings from falling down.

Landlord-musician.  I know one more in Cleveland.  He’s a self-described “dago.”  Tough guy.  Wears a toupee, plays accordion and trumpet, and tells dirty jokes.  He’s got a strip center on the West Side.

Strip center — weird term.  Short for shopping strip center.

I don’t have any strip centers.  I have about 25 storefronts: Main Street-style.  The stores are on street level, with apartments above.  Like Disneyland’s Main Street.  But with mice.  Not Mickey.

There’s no money in the arts: I’ve rented to art galleries.  They all go under.  Things that don’t go under: bars, beauty parlors, tanning salons and flower shops.

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There’s no money in the arts. My old clarinet teacher told me that.  He used to eat salami sandwiches while I took lessons.  That stunk.  Mr. Golub.

He bought a building across from his music store; named the building after his daughter, The Joyce Manor; and sold it years later.  He said he regretted he didn’t move with his brother to D.C. and make an even bigger killing there in a real boom town.

Golub’s Music Center.  He had a neon saxophone on the sign.  That, alone, drew the customers.  Inside, there were bongos and guitars.

Mr. Golub couldn’t play by ear. That mystified him.

Mystifies me — playing by ear. But I can do it —  somewhat.

I’m the klezmer guy.  I go to shivas (funeral wakes) and tell the mourners that, and, yeah, they recognize me. They say, “Oh, you’re the klezmer guy.”

Everybody needs to be some kind of  “guy” (or “gal”).  Cable guy.  Computer guy.  Pool guy.  I became the klezmer guy because I put together the longest-lasting Jewish band between Chicago and D.C.  Yiddishe Cup.

No mega money in this but it keeps me from going nuts.

My day job is real estate.  I’m a landlord.  I own and manage apartment buildings.  People call me up about low-water pressure, mice, clanging radiators.  I generally don’t fix the stuff; I usually hire repairmen.  My father used to say, “I didn’t send you to college to paint walls.”  Well, I painted a few walls anyway and pointed some bricks,  but that’s not my calling.

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