ANDY STATMAN ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY:This is Christa Whitney, and today is July 17th, 2017. I am here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, with Andy Statman. We're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do I have your permission to record?

ANDY STATMAN: Sure.

CW:Thanks. So, first of all, can you tell me where your family came from before America?

AS:Before America? On my father's side, they were from two cities in the Ukraine. One is called Khmel'nitskiy now. It was called Proskurov. And the other's Kamenets-Podolsk. And on my father's side, going way back, it was 1:00[Fardham?]. But they probably wound up in Holland or something like that. I mean, Statman is, I think, more of a Dutch type of name. And on my mother's side, they were from a town called Tomaszów Mazowiecki in Poland. But we can certainly trace it back to Vilna. And families were moving around, and --

CW:And do you -- what do you know about the professions in your family lines?

AS:On my father's side, other than when my grandfather and grandmother came here, beyond that I don't know what they -- you know, there were certainly rabonim in the family. Particularly on my mother's side. And on my father's 2:00side, where there's a whole masorah [Hebrew: legend] that we -- he had a whole yikhes [ancestry] thing, which my grandfather lost, is that we're descendents of the Rambam. So, that would be in Cordova, in Spain, and then he went to erets-yisroel [land of Israel], in Tveria, that's where he's buried. And my grandfather was a -- his father had left early on to come to America. And I believe his name was Avrom. And he -- they led a very impoverished life. I know there were certain areas where Jews couldn't be there at night. We're not 3:00talking about long ago. And they would go into a cemetery to sleep overnight so she could -- so anyway, he first went to England, and then he came to America as -- Menachem Mendel was his name, Max. And he was a tailor. And he wound up in his later years running a laundry.

CW:Is this your mother's side?

AS:This is my father's side.

CW:Father's side. Okay.

AS:Their name was Shtatman, and my father changed it to Statman. Not officially, but that was -- and he was with us -- I grew up with him. He died -- he lived with us from the time I was born until I was about eight years old.

CW:What do you remember about him?

AS:Oh, he was great. (laughs) You know, we were very tight. And he was -- we used to play a lot, and -- but he was great. Really great.

CW:Was he frum [pious]?

AS:No. No, no, no, no. No. His wife was frum, but he wasn't. And I'm named after his wife, who was Anya, Chana. So, that's -- Chana. Yeah, he was great. He was a really nice man, really nice man. Very proud. He was inducted into the Russian army, and there was a sort of a Jewish Underground Railroad. And I think he was 5:00on the way to Siberia to fight in the Russo-Japanese War, and there was a sort of a bathroom stop at some point on the train there. And he went to the bathroom, and he climbed out the window, and there was a wagon there with hay, and he buried himself in the hay, and they -- it was something that was -- I never -- I was too young to really know a lot of this stuff. And he spoke to some degree to my father and my uncle and my aunt about it, but I don't -- I just have bits and pieces of information. But that's how he escaped and went to England and then to America. So, he was great, and his wife I didn't know. My 6:00grandfather, he was very sort of military posture, very orderly, neat, b'seder [Hebrew: in order], everything was in order, everything was -- he was great. Really great. And I understand as a father, he was a very strict disciplinarian. He used to line the kids up and make sure they were -- all the nails were clean. Everything had to be -- but with the (laughs) grandchildren, complete opposite. And then, on my mother's side -- they were from Tomaszów, my grandfather and grandmother, and they lived about a ten-minute walk away. So, when I went to school, I used to very often go there for lunch. And on my grandfather's side, 7:00they're descendents from the Vilna Gaon. Early on, around that time they -- I don't know for how much before -- they became khazonim [synagogue cantors], cantors. So, there was an unbroken chain of cantors for many generations until they came to America. And there's a -- Elen Melech Glaser I guess was the name, which was not the real name. They were part of -- they supported, I guess (laughs) the anti-Russian revolution in Poland, which failed. He was a composer and a khazn. And I know he came to America pretty early on in the late 8:00nineteenth century. And all my grandparents came around the late nineteenth century, early twentieth century. I remember he went back for my grandfather's bar mitzvah, I'm told, back to Poland. But he had a bunch of daughters, and all the daughters married people who were khazonim. That was his thing. So, Elen Melech was my great-great-grandfather. And my great-grandfather was Yehuda Leib Zhemanski. And he was the khazn in the sort of the large main synagogue in Tomaszów Mazowiecki. He was a composer as well. So, as a child, I know my grandfather went to kheyder [traditional religious school], went to -- had that 9:00education. I know for a while he was a follower of -- it was probably the (UNCLEAR) -- he became a Gerer Hasid for a while. And then, he became less interested in it, and he was drafted. And that whole family was very intellectual and very arts-oriented. All the cousins were -- they were all into music and art and acting and all this stuff. And my grandfather had a -- they had a plan to leave. He was the head of the production in the army for the Christmas pageant. And his plan was that -- he told the -- on Christmas Eve he said, "I have to go into town to buy stuff for costumes to make." And he went 10:00into town, and he had arranged, they got him out of there, and I believe he went to Danzig and then he came to America. And we already had family here. And my grandmother was -- they were both born -- supposedly the doctor and midwife delivered my grandfather and then went right to deliver my grandmother. So, they were born hours apart. And they were supposedly, like, boyfriend and girlfriend in Poland. So, he went first. So, my grandfather's Aaron Pinkhes, and my grandmother's Chaya-sora. And her mother died, and the father remarried. And the 11:00stepmother was not the greatest. And I believe she had had a dream where her mother told her, "It's time to leave." And there's a whole thing -- my mother had, like, sort of dreams that certain things were gonna happen. So, I think she was the first from -- they were the Skaropa family, the first of that family to come to America. And then her brothers and sisters came. I think one or two stayed. They were killed during -- in the war. But -- in fact, I played at a ceremony, I think on -- you know, where the Statue of Liberty is, for the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. And I met on the boat some Holocaust survivors from actually the same town. And I guess one of my uncles 12:00was in the camps with him, in the same barracks. And they said when he died, everyone really gave up hope, 'cause he was a real shtarker [strong guy], and he died a little -- not too much before the liberation. But so anyway, I grew up on my -- with my mother's family, they were all -- all the aunts and uncles and everything and my -- so there was -- they would -- my grandfather was not religious at that time, but he had a basic yeshiva education. So, we would have -- particularly on Pesach, use siddurim, and -- I remember when I started putting on tefillin, I'd put on tefillin arranged a little different than him. 13:00He was in his early eighties, and I remember he (laughs) knew -- he just took them apart and retied them and -- according to the way that -- his particular family. And he became religious in his last years again, so.

CW:So, did you hear any of the -- did you hear khazones [Jewish liturgical music] from that side of the family?

AS:Well, there's a whole bunch of melodies for Pesach that we sang that my great-great-grandfather wrote. So, my kids know them.

CW:Have you recorded any of them?

AS:No. No. No. I'm not a singer, and it's -- they're sort of chant-like. But they're very beautiful. And a lot was lost. One of my uncles, who moved to Łódź, is -- he was a -- wrote lots of waltzes and things like that. Just all 14:00this stuff is sort of gone. But when that family came to America, the Zhemanski family -- so these first cousins became -- one of them was the first families to settle in South Fallsburg. And so, my mother remembers all this -- tante [aunt] Bina, tante Chuma -- she remembers all these -- anyway, but these cousins, who my grandfather was very close with, they all pretty much became involved in the music and show business industry. So, I believe the first ones you hear were Willie and Eugene Howard. And they were all trained to be khazonim, and they all sang opera. But they were also -- Willie Howard was actually pretty well known. 15:00He was one of the first to break the Jewish stereotype in American theater and films but also -- but to do it in a dignified way with the accent. Or he would speak in dialects, but with a Yiddish accent. But supposedly, Marlon Brando was very influenced by him. He made -- do you know what shorts are in the -- yeah. So, he made a whole number of shorts. And I think he was the first person to do a one-man show on Broadway. And he was -- his brother eventually became his manager. And I've seen a bunch of the shorts he made, and they're -- it's from a different time and place, but they were really great. They were really talented and a really good singer. And another cousin was someone -- Feinberg. His name was Sammy Fain. Original name was Feinberg. His father was a khazn and a shoykhet [ritual slaughterer], and they were up in South Fallsburg as well. And 16:00Sammy Fain, very early on, became a Tin Pan Alley songwriter. And he was really good. And they brought him out to Hollywood as soon as they started having sound in movies. I used to go visit him when he used to play in LA back in the late '70s, early '80s. He was still alive then. And he had a few Oscars on his piano, and he was part of Hollywood in the heyday. But he wrote a lot of what they call standards. So, he wrote, like, "Love's a Many-Splendored Thing," "I'll Be Seeing You," "Secret Love," "April Love," he wrote the music to "Alice in Wonderland," he wrote a lot of standards. And really, really great guy. (laughs) And when -- he used to take me out to -- there was a famous restaurant back in LA in -- I 17:00guess on -- near Hollywood and Vine, I believe, called The Brown Derby, which was a -- I don't know if you've ever heard of it. It was a very famous -- it was where all the stars went. So, he used to -- I wasn't religious then. It was a treyf [not kosher] restaurant. He used to take me there and -- whenever he was in LA. And he would come to some gigs and -- he was really, really a ni-- he got me into ASCAP and -- when I started writing my own music. He was great. He had his own national radio show back in the '40s, and he occasionally would do gigs. He wasn't a great singer, but he did -- in that old -- the way they used to speak -- he used to say he knew how to put over a song. And he was great. So, my grandfather -- all these people were very tight. And --

CW:So, where did you grow up?

AS:So, I grew up in Jackson Heights. So --

CW:And what was that neighborhood like when you were growing up?

AS:Jackson Height-- it was originally an -- it's funny. The building that I was in -- Jackson Heights was sort of developed probably in the '20s. The building that I was in originally didn't allow Jews in the building. But it was a very ritzy building initially. And Benny Goodman moved his mother in there, and that was fine, 'cause he was a big star. And then, when he found out that they didn't allow Jews in the building, he moved her out. But I guess around little maybe right before World War II, my aunt and uncle on my father's side moved in there. My mother and my father's sister were best friends. And then, my parents moved there. So, the building was not what it once was. But Jackson Heights was -- it 19:00was a great neighborhood. I would say it was about a quarter Jewish, a quarter Italian, a quarter -- or a third Jewish, a third Italian, a third Irish. But there was also Chinese and Mexican, you know, other people. But it was a really neat neighborhood. And by and large, sort of ethnic identities were almost meaningless. You know, you wear them, but it was just no one really cared, no one really -- the main difference was what school you went to. So, a lot of the Catholic students went to parochial schools. But other than that -- but the people who went to parochial schools in my apartment building, they were my friends. Everyone got along well.

CW:What languages did you hear growing up?

AS:Well, in the house, English and Yiddish.

CW:Who spoke Yiddish?

AS:My father and mother. My father was a really good Yiddish speaker. My mother could understand everything, but didn't speak as much. Her father was somewhat of a Yiddishist. He belonged to an organization called Sholem Aleichem. But he was a real-- these people really wanted to be Americans. And my grandparents, they would -- as the old stories, they would lapse into Yiddish sometimes, or if they wanted to relay some information that they didn't want me to hear, they would do it in Yiddish. And my daughter and her husband, sometimes they'll speak in Hebrew to relay certain information. But that's what I heard growing up.

CW:And can you describe the home a little bit? What was Jewish about your home growing up?

AS:Well, my father very strongly identified with being Jewish -- positively -- and I know certainly as a child, I know he used to get into fights all the time. Of course, he was Jewish and he was in the army. They would think he was Italian 'cause his family was sort of darker. And he would get in (laughs) also -- this was actually the Air Force. Or the Army Air Force, to be specific. But in the house there was -- Jewishly? We'd celebrate Hanukkah. I remember loving that. And like I say, I just had, on both sides, people from Eastern Europe there. So, 22:00they're of the generation that if they weren't religious, their parents were religious. So, they grew up in an intact Jewish culture. Meaning religious culture. And that's where the whole thing comes from anyway. But that's what -- so there was always that feeling there. And there were a bunch of -- we had a bunch of cantorial 78s in the house. And we had some, you know, what's called nowadays klezmer, we had some of those in the house. And I remember at the family gatherings with my aunt and uncle on my father's side, we'd put on the klezmer records and dance around. And I know my grandparents on my father's side, they would have these lafmenshafn [landsmanshaftn, association of immigrants originally from the same region] gatherings. And they probably had people like Dave Tarras or Naftule Brandwein playing at these things. And they would do -- and they would dance and -- my aunt used to tell me about this. So --

CW:You said you remembered Hanukkah. What did you do for Hanukkah, for example?

AS:Well, we'd light the candles. And we had this one thing of a menorah. It was like a plastic thing with a light behind it, so it would illuminate the menorah with all eight candles lit. And I remember putting it in the window, being very proud. Yeah, so there -- the --

CW:Did you do Shabbos?

AS:No, I didn't know anything about Shabbos. No. I don't -- it's interesting. I know my grandmother was religious, and religious to the point of where I know my father and his brother, they wore tsitses [tassels worn on the prayer shawl]. And I know my aunt was, like -- she wouldn't hear of her brothers having something that she couldn't have, so she made her mother have for her -- wear 24:00tsitses. But the melamdim [Jewish teachers in a traditional school] who came over, they really could-- they weren't prepared to deal with American youth by and large. And my grandfather was sort of on the fence. So, it didn't really take hold. So, in terms of a Jewish education, both my father and my mother really didn't have a real Jewish education. They really -- assuming my father more than my mother. But I don't -- my father could read Hebrew. I don't really know exactly what he knew or didn't know. But I think he probably had the equivalent of -- like a kid in yeshiva -- well, today they have even more of an edu-- I don't -- he didn't really get that much of a Jewish education other than 25:00probably being able to make brokhes [blessings] and things like that. I don't know if he ever was -- I don't know if he had tefillin at one point; I really don't know. But --

CW:And you were bar mitzvahed?

AS:I had a bar -- sort of a -- it's interesting. My parents sent me to sort of a shtibl [small Orthodox house of prayer], which eventually became Young Israel. It was opened up when I was around five, a few blocks from us. And so, they sent me to that, which was really so -- so I wanted to start keeping Shabbos and all the -- it didn't work; I wanted to do this or that. And the thing that really sent me was the rabbi would sing some of these melodies to teach us the alef-beys [Hebrew alphabet] and other things. And I remember everyone would be 26:00in a state of ecstasy singing these songs, which I -- which later I found out were nigunim [melodies]. So --

CW:Do you remember any of them?

AS:Yeah, sure, I mean -- yeah. Yeah. Well, so, like, as a child, I remember hearing -- some of the first songs I remember, Paul Whiteman songs -- do you know who Paul Whiteman was, I don't know? But also, there's a Yiddish folk song became a theater song, it's called "Oy oy oy Yosl." So, I used to listen to that over and over and over and over. And the "Grine kuzine [Greenhorn cousin]" on the other side. So, I had all this stuff happening. But there was so much music in the house, everything from Broadway show music, jazz, classical music -- I remember when rock and roll started becoming popular, with "Hound Dog" and 27:00"Great Balls of Fire" and (UNCLEAR) -- I was just a little kid. But I have a brother who's eight years older than me, so he was listening to this stuff. So, I just -- there was all this music just happening in the house. And on my father's side, my uncle, my father's brother-in-law, was a classical piano player. So, I remember listening to him play. And he also -- they had a book of American folksongs they used to play and sing for him. So, there was always music happening constantly in the house.

CW:So, who were your favorites, who were your musical heroes growing up?

AS:You know, I took piano lessons, but I didn't -- I'd had the tunes memorized. I didn't really want to do a recital. And I used to just fool around with sounds 28:00and colors on the piano, make up my own music. I fooled around with trumpet. But the first music that I really got into was bluegrass, very seriously. I was around eleven years old. And my brother was in college, and that was the -- there's a big interest in folk music then. And he was listening to the Kingston Trio and the Limeliters and then Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and people like that. And he started to bring home some -- there was one record in particular on Folkways called "Mountain Music Bluegrass Style," which was sort of a compilation Mike Seeger put together of the bluegrass scene in Washington and Baltimore in the late '50s, early '60s. And that was a real hotbed of some incredible, incredible bluegrass. And I remember really loving it. And I also discov-- I was listening to -- there's this thing called QXL cards, which are -- if you listen to an out-of-town radio station and you send them certain 29:00information to prove that you listened, they'll send you a postcard with their -- like, WWVA Wheeling, West Virginia and a picture with (UNCLEAR). So, I started collecting these. So, all of a sudden I heard on WWVA -- it was, like, a Grand Ole Opry type of station. They had their own really major country music show on Saturday nights, and they had country music all night, live and pre-recorded. And so, I started listening to that and having these records, and my brother played guitar, so --

CW:How'd you get the radio from West Virginia in New York?

AS:Well, it's -- they're fifty-thousand-watt stations. You could probably get WABC here, probably even during the day, but certainly around sunset you can -- you know, the signal bounce, this is called. So, WWVA would come in, now there's a station, [WOWO?], from Fort Wayne, Indiana, a little bit higher on the 30:00frequency that you would get. CKLW, from Windsor, Ontario -- I mean, there were all these stations you could get. And if you were lucky, sometimes you'd get stations really far away. Depended how late you stayed up and what the weather conditions were. So, I remember there was a guy named Doc Williams. He had a guitar method called the big note method. I sent away for that and started learning his method. But I really wanted to play banjo. And after my bar mitzvah, I used the money to buy a banjo. My brother was in jug bands, and they'd rehearse at our house. And so, I'd just hear all this music live. And then, I began going down to --

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AS:-- there used to be live music played in Washington Square around the fountain. I don't know if you know Washington Square -- yeah. So, people would break off into groups, and one group would be doing topical songs, one blues, 31:00one -- and there'd be a bluegrass group. And you'd have a lot of well-known musicians coming down and playing. And so, I started doing that every Sunday. And at one point I decided I really wanted to play mandolin. And the guitar and banjo had been preparation for that. And things sort of started coming together then.

CW:So, can you tell me about David Grisman, how you connected with him?

AS:Yeah. My brother used to play these hoots, hootenannies, at Hunter College, and David was in a group called the Garret Mountain Boys. So, David's about -- he's a little younger than my brother. So, I saw him, and I really liked his playing. And he was sort of a protégé of Ralph Rinzler and then the iconic bluegrass mandolinist Frank Wakefield. So, I started taking lessons from David. 32:00And David had sort of a do-it-yourself method. Which was great. And all this stuff is -- it's really an oral tradition. So, he would show me something, and I would say, Oh, if you do this this way, then you could do this -- right. And he would say, Listen, I gotta leave. He had a huge archive of tapes of -- like, Bill Monroe and other bluegrass great -- 78s and 45s, which you couldn't get, and all these really rare live shows. So, he would say, Why don't you record these few things, I'll lock the door when you leave, and gimme a call when you can't figure things out. So, I'd shlep my tape recorder in, reel-to-reel, and -- it had two speeds, so at the high speed I'd record a few hours' worth of music and go home and play hooky and just spend all day trying to figure out exactly 33:00-- exactly -- and try to sound like what Bill Monroe or Jesse McReynolds or Bobby Osborne, Frank -- you know, whatever these people were doing, I'd try to figure it out. And when I got stumped after a month or two, I would call him up and come over. And I'd say, How do you do this? Oh, you do this --- why don't you record this stuff. So, in the course of about two years, I took about five lessons from him. And around the time I was -- but already through him I was listening to people like Stéphane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt, and then Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti, and I began starting listening to people like Mingus and Jackie -- my brother had a Jackie McLean record and a Cannonball Adderley record. I started listening to that. I started -- I literally learned hundreds 34:00and hundreds of solos that -- and that's the way to learn the musical language. You have to be able to speak it. So, I could play like these -- the three founding fathers of bluegrass mandolin, plus the next generation -- I could play like all these people. And I could do it fluently, and I was developing my own language. But I realized at that point that I was ready to go down to Nashville and try and get a job with one of the bluegrass bands there. I was seventeen. But one thing I realized was that, as great as the instrumental tradition is, a lot of the deepest things in bluegrass is really -- has to do with the singing. And I'm not a singer. And I realized that there were certain cultural differences, although I'd been down South already a bunch, and I had no problems.

CW:Were there -- did you encounter a lot of other Jewish young people in the 35:00bluegrass scene, do you remember?

AS:Yeah, yeah. In New York City, most of the -- the bluegrass scene in New York City started as early as 1948, '49. And the sort of big bang in bluegrass supposedly happened around '45, '46. So, people were playing that style of banjo by 1948, '49. And pretty much everyone was Jewish.

CW:Did you ever think about that or talk about that with anyone else?

AS:There's several reasons for it. First of all, they were probably -- because of the general leftist leanings in the sort of more secular community, they would've been exposed to probably people like the Weavers or Pete Seeger, and that already was getting -- they were celebrating American folk music. So, that 36:00would be in the air. Pete Seeger played banjo, and he was aware of all the different banjo styles and -- so I think that's one of the main reasons that was happening. But it wasn't until the early '60s that -- in Boston there were -- the musicians who were Northern, they were mainly not Jewish. In New York, they mainly were Jewish. But the early '60s was when musicians from the North started going down South, working with the Southern bands, and then Southern musicians came up to work with the Northern bands. But yeah, there was a whole 37:00--particularly from Brooklyn, where there's a large Jewish population, a lot of Jewish musicians were really into bluegrass. Some really great musicians. And there was always the thing of sort of pushing the envelope also in the music. I mean, I've heard certain Ukrainian or Romanian fiddle music with a [chimblin?] behind it. And some of the backup is almost identical to the way a bluegrass banjo player might back up a fiddle tune player. But I just think it had to do with really exposure to the music and being open to it. Also you have to realize is that there was a great romance to it. Particularly to the older music. A lot 38:00of musicians, the traditional musicians who were not, say, from that particular culture, they have a -- there's a whole initially romantic involvement with what they think the music is and where it's coming from. For people in their teens and -- it's very compelling. So, that's probably why a lot of Jews were involved in that.

CW:Did you have that feeling, a romantic feeling about it?

AS:Well, yeah, when I was eleven, I bought a farmer's hat, I wanted -- I started growing plants in my apartment building in Jackson Heights and stuff and started watching the farmer's show and, you know, I didn't know anything, and I didn't realize that bluegrass is -- it's really commercial music -- but yeah, sure, I had it. And I remember -- oh, anyway, so when I was around seventeen, I was 39:00having doubts about bluegrass already. And I remember hearing on radio -- it was a record called "Albert Ayler Live in Greenwich Village." And when I heard that, I said, "This is really what I want to do." And Albert Ayler, on this particular record, was sort of playing folk-like melodies. And then going into sort of improvisations based on sound, sound textures, screams, honks, very -- they used to call it playing free, but it's not really free; it's a style. And it has its own logic within it. But for a seventeen-year-old in 1967 with everything going 40:00on, that was -- I said, "Wow, this is it." And I was listening to blues, and I remember I saw David Grisman. I hadn't seen him in a year or two. He moved out to California, then to Boston. And he and another former bluegrass boy -- or a former bluegrass boy, David never was -- formed a band called Earth Opera, which was -- they were looking for a Boston or Bosstown sound. So, they were based out of Boston. And I remember meeting David, and he said, Yeah, he got rid of all his bluegrass records, and he was playing electric mandolin and had been living out in San Francisco. And I remember we went to, I think it was Peter -- I don't know if you know Peter [Segal?] is -- yeah, so we went to Peter's house. I think he lived right off Sixth Avenue and around Fourth Street. And I remember -- I think it was the -- could have been right when "Sgt. Pepper" came out, I believe. And I remember those were the first music headphones I ever saw. So, I 41:00said, "Yeah, this is great." So, I got rid of my bluegrass records. I had an expensive mandolin I sold and just had a cheap mandolin around. I started taking saxophone lessons from a guy named Richard Grando, who had worked with Art Blakey, and he learned from Sonny Stitt. And he was sort of part of that whole sort of Coltrane-oriented jazz scene. So, he was very into Carl Jung and different types of world music and spirituality and things like this. And a brilliant, brilliant man, great, great player, made archaeological discoveries, was very into the American Indian -- you know, the whole bag. And I became very close with him and spent lots and lots of time at his house.

CW:Not just music lessons, then.

AS:None of the people I studied with had any way of -- they had no real way of teaching music. With David, what -- by directing me what to listen to, it developed a sense of aesthetics and what to look for in music. And it all developed my ear, 'cause I had to listen to solos over and over and over to figure out, like, how many strokes in a tremolo Bill Monroe did at a certain point. And I realized that, while he might have been improvising it, there's a difference in feeling if he does five strokes as opposed to seven or eight strokes. It has a different feel to it. And even though it's spontaneous, he's going for the feeling. So, in order to express that feeling, I had to get it exact. And you know, I was sort of very strict with that. So anyway, so with 43:00Richard I began -- I remember the -- he said -- one of the banjo players that I was in a band with, his brother was a -- and is -- a great jazz pianist and composer. And I wanted to play wind instruments, 'cause I felt with the breath I could express things I couldn't on the mandolin, and it was a legato instrument, and also I felt that -- I didn't want any of the bluegrass ideas sort of creeping into what I did. I wanted a new vocabulary. And I felt if I played guitar or violin, I'd start using the same string ideas. So, I remember Richard said, "Why don't you come over, I'll see if I'll take you on as a student." And I remember the first lesson I was there for about three or four hours, and we just discussed whether God existed or not. And he said, "Okay, I'll take you as a student." And then, that was it. So, through him, I began sort of getting into 44:00spirituality and starting to explore my own identity, who I was, where my family was from. You know --

CW:What was your Jewish identity before that point?

AS:Well, I was completely secular. I had dropped out of -- I never really cared for school, and I mean, I had fun there, but only when I had to do well did I do well. But it really wasn't for me, so to speak. And so, I dropped out of Hebrew school, 'cause it was just, you know, I'd come home from school and then go to school again. So, I stopped going -- probably by the time I was seven or eight, I stopped going to the Talmud Torah. And then, it was time for bar mitzvah, so I knew I had to be bar mitzvahed. So, there was a Reform temple. I remember going in there, the person saying, "Oh, you have to wear a yarmulke?" It was really strange. But they would bar mitzvah me. My birthday's in the -- towards the end 45:00of the summer, and no one would be around to remember the -- the leader of the congregation says, "Well, you can do it before school ends so you can have your friends there." So, I learned the haftorah, this and that, and I remember chanting the haftorah and seeing -- my grandparents in the -- crying and this and that. I was interested in some of the philosophical things back then, but I didn't -- I always had a strong feeling for Yiddishkayt, for Judaism. And like I say, when I went back to the Talmud -- if my parents were religious then, I would have gone all the way. So, it's -- but at that point I really didn't know anything. Other than sort of barely to read Hebrew, I knew nothing. Most people in -- of my generation really were given no education, really bereft of an 46:00education. Or maybe the equivalent of a kindergarten or first-grade education. I mean, I see -- my grandchildren, basically -- Mason, one in particular, he's five years old. He knows more than most adults who were -- who grew up secular. And the truth is a lot of them are just not even really interested; they don't relate to it or whatever. I think it's on an individual basis. But by and large, I think Jewish education in America has been a real disaster.

CW:So, how did you get -- so tell me more about how you got --

AS:I started --

CW:-- with Richard, right?

AS:Yeah, so I started thinking about this music that I heard as a child, the Jewish instrumental music and learning some of the tunes, and I thought I would 47:00play those and then do like Albert Ayler and go into this other stuff and -- and I began going to different synagogues. I went Reform, Conservative, and reading their books. And what really clicked for me was Hasidic thought and -- so anyways, so I went back to see this rabbi, Rabbi Pollack, who was -- Yaakov Pollack -- who was in Jackson Heights at that time. He later went on to be -- moved to Borough Park and had a huge congregation there. And he married me and my wife, and he was involved in the marriage of all my children at the ceremony. So, he's a great, great guy. He's still alive; he's quite old, but really --

CW:So, where -- what -- is he Hasidic? Which --

AS:No, he's not Hasi--

CW:No.

AS:No. No, no, no, no. But he's -- you know what a "hashgacha pratis [Hebrew: 48:00divine providence, lit. "private supervision"]" is, right? Okay. So, the hashgacha pratis with him is something that's really unbelievable. Of course, years later, when I moved to where I live, he was friendly with the rov [Orthodox rabbi] of my shul as a kid. And he and some of my neighbors and I was very close with the Bostoner rebbe of New York and Ramat Beit Shemesh in Israel. They were all friends, and they all went to Torah Vodaath, which was one of the early big yeshivas. And it's just strange the way the whole thing connected. 'Cause I was involved with him, and then years later I was -- I was involved with people who were his friends, deeply involved. But anyways, so he -- I went to see him. And I said, "I really want to learn to read Hebrew again, really --" 49:00-- and he sent -- he wrote a letter for me, and -- this was 19-- maybe '68, '69. He sent me out to Crown Heights, to Lubavitch. And it was a Friday. I didn't think anything of it. And it was in the winter. So, Shabbos starts quite early, you know, four fifteen, four thirty. So, where my parents were living in Bayside at that time, so I had to take a bus to a train, then a trai-- and it took me about two hours to get there. So, I went to what they call 770. And I spoke to someone there, whatever. And I think I didn't -- I put on tefillin. And they 50:00were talking to me. I don't -- but I remember at one point it was they said, What are you doing for Shabbos? I said, "What do you mean?" They said, Well, what are you doing for Shabbos? And I said, "Oh, I'll be going home." They said, How far away do you live? I said, "About two hours." They said, You can't go. It's too late. (laughs) So, I didn't know what to do. So, I remember calling Rabbi Pollack; I was a little freaked out. And he says to me -- he didn't even deal with my question. He says this: "Andy," he says, "keep your eyes and ears open." And that was it. (laughs) So, I remember they took me -- they arranged for a place for me to stay. They took me to the yeshiva and got me some tsitses to wear. And then, I remember they took me to a mikveh [pool for ritual immersion]. It was for some reason a mikveh. And I came out of the mikveh. And then, we went to daven --- mincha maariv -- I didn't know -- I knew very little 51:00about davening. They had sort of an English-Hebrew siddur there for me. And as we were doing this, I realized there was -- when I was a kid we used to go up to Lake George, and I remember going swimming, then coming out, and then watching the sun set. And there's -- you feel this -- I realized, they're really setting themselves up for this incredible experience, you have this -- they're feeling clean and purified, and then they're going to a shul to pray with their community, to a God who they love and they're involved with, and a rebbe who they love. And I remember the Lubavitcher rebbe walked in. It was like the yam suf [Hebrew: Red Sea] split. And everyone just -- you know, in awe. And he came in. And we davened and whatever, and I spent the Shabbos there, and I came home. And I remember my closest cousin, Dovid, who was sort of getting interested in 52:00Judaism at that point also -- I guess through Shlomo Carlebach. So, we both went out there about a week or two later and bought tefillin. And so, I would put on tefillin occasionally, and nothing -- but I was starting to read books and -- so things moved very, very -- at their own pace. And --

CW:And what about the music side of it?

AS:Well, at that point what I was playing was -- I was playing a lot of free improvisational music. And I started getting calls to play in bluegrass bands. And I was playing in rock and roll bands and blues bands, and there were a bunch 53:00of -- this guy named Peter Wernick and Tony Trischka, Russ Barenberg, they had a band that was, for lack of a -- very innovative, developing their own music. And all of a sudden, they wanted me to record with them. So, things were happening. And I couldn't make a living as a musician. I was working as a messenger, and then I was working in a delicatessen. But I was started -- I realized I had to be part of a scene in order to get work. Still living at my parents' house. So, I would be going down to the Village, and I'd meet musicians there. And I started -- I ran into this guy named David Bromberg, who was -- I'd known from a few years earlier. And he was recording for Columbia Records, and he developed a reputation -- he was on -- as a sideman on Dylan records and other records and stuff. So anyway, I started sitting with him, playing mandolin and saxophone. And after one or two times he said, "Why don't you join my band?" It was mainly 54:00him and a bass player, guy named Steve Burgh. And I was the first other than that regular sideman. Although people would sit in sometimes. So, all of a sudden, I'm on salary and touring with a guy on Columbia Records who has a lot of support behind him. And I remember the first gig we did went out to Chicago. And I remember there was a great group back then called Mother Earth -- I don't know if you ever heard of them -- with a singer named Tracy Nelson. Great, great singer. So, we saw them. And anyway, we -- I was really green. And I remember her and her manager, guy named Travis, they sort of took me under their wing. And we saw John Hartford, who -- I don't know if you know who John Hartford was. 55:00But he had a fiddle player named Vassar Clements, who I met when I was fifteen, who was an absolute genius, like one of the best, I think, improvisers of the late twentieth century, early twenty-first century. He's gone. Anyway, so I started doing these -- playing these gigs night after night with David. And I always saw that there was this sort of, like, imaginary, invisible screen between being sort of a very good amateur and a professional. And after being on the road for a week or two, I saw myself as having sort of gone through that screen. And then, I was with David for about a year, and then started forming my own bands and things. Yeah, so it was with David Bromberg that I got my sort of real first professional job.

CW:And at what point did you get interested in Dave Tarras and sort of studying 56:00with him?

AS:Okay, so, (sighs) um -- I should mention as a side, like, with David, I did lots of sessions. So, I remember we did sessions that Dylan was on, and Dr. John. We actually rehearsed with Dylan and were his backup band for -- we did a bunch of sessions with the Grateful Dead and a whole bu-- so I was all of a sudden from playing in local bands to having my name in "Rolling Stone" as a (laughs) -- it was crazy. Anyway, so what happened was the fiddle -- there's a band that we formed called Breakfast Special, which sort of played on the 57:00bluegrass circuit. And the folk club circuit. In fact, we -- Steve Martin opened up for us a number of times. Lindsey -- the people from -- what's the group? Buckingham -- what's the -- I forgot the name of the group. Anyway, we had a lot of really well-known people open up for us. We were a combination of a group playing everything from crazy bluegrass to traditional music to Hawaiian music to Western swing to -- I would bring in some Jewish music. Klezmer music, a few different things. When I was in high -- after high school, I remember -- I'm just throwing these things out, 'cause -- listening -- friends had parents who had 78s, so I remember listening to Aaron Lebedeff do "Rumanye" over and over 58:00and over. I was about sixteen. And really being sent by that. And then, around when I was seventeen, eighteen, another friend gave me a bunch of 78s, and as it turns out it was Dave Tarras's first record, the "Dem monastrisher rebns khosidl [The Monastrishe rebbe's follower]." Dave came from a Hasidic family, the Monastrisher Hasidim. And some Abe Schwartz things and stuff. So, I was just sort of learning these tunes on my own, like I -- anyway, I wound up meeting -- a mutual friend was a friend of Zev Feldman. And I got talking to Zev. And I had been listening to a lot of music from all over the world. And he said, "Let's get together." So, we got together, and we worked up a repertoire of Irish music and some Persian and Turkish music and -- I had learned the famous "Russian Sher" on the mandolin. And through him, I was exposed to -- I met Martin Koenig 59:00and Ethel Raim, and so I got very into Halkias and -- anyway, we developed -- we started playing Azerbaijani music. I bought a tar and we started studying with people. I started studying with Periklis Halkias. All this stuff was happening. But I remember, there was no one playing this Jewish instrumental music. 'Cause at this point, I was a professional musician. I had traveled all over, I had been (UNCLEAR), and I said, I just -- this is my own heritage, I just sort of want to keep this alive. No one else is doing it. So, I'd just like to sound like I had -- I'd been born in Europe a hundred years earlier. I just want to be able to keep that alive just for myself. Just 'cause it's part of my own heritage, if I hadn't been born in America. So, I started learning these Dave Tarras things. And I looked up Dave in the union book. And he lived out in 60:00Canarsie then with his first wife. And I went out there. And he was sort of blown away that I -- (UNCLEAR) tenor saxophone and a mandolin -- that I could play a bunch of his songs.

CW:What was your first impression?

AS:Of what?

CW:Of him.

AS:I mean, I grew up with people like him, so I was very fa-- my grandparents, my great-uncle. It was just like going to my grandfather's house or something like that. It wasn't -- so I remember it took forever to get out there. And I also brought a little tape recorder. Anyway, so first he was amazed that someone in his early twenties would want to learn this music. And then, he was amazed 61:00that I actually could play the tunes accurately, that I transcribed them accurately and -- he liked the way I played. So, I said, I don't really -- I'd had a bad ab-- I said, "I really don't have a clarinet," whatever. Anyway, so I remember, I said, "Can you teach me a song?" So, he says --- Dave was really amazing -- he says, "You come to me for a lesson, you want I should make a recording? You come for the lesson, you want I should make a record?" he said. (laughs) Perfectly set to throw me off balance. I said, "No, no, I'm not gonna --" 'Cause I had teachers who wouldn't let me record what -- the tunes they taught me, and I'd have to keep in mi-- so I had a good memory, but I -- this would be much easier. So anyway, he played a tune for me. I left, and then about three weeks later I got a gig with Vassar Clements to play saxophone and 62:00mandolin to move down to Nashville. And Vassar was -- he had recorded with the Allman Brothers, and he was in this movie called "Nashville," and he was -- so he was having -- he had a -- he was a pretty big deal back then. But he was just an amazing, amazing genius, Vassar. I can't say enough great things about his playing. And so, I was down in Nashville for a while. And when I came back, I'd moved in -- to Brighton Beach, and -- as it turns out, in that course Dave's first wife died. He had remarried and was living on the Brighton Beach/Coney Island border, about a ten-minute walk away. And I told Zev, "I really wanna -- let's play this music. No one else is doing it. Let's do it. Just keep the thing 63:00alive." And all this just for ourselves, having nothing -- whether we gig or not, it had nothing -- it was just a personal thing. So, I called up Dave, and he said, "Oh, I'm your neighbor, I just moved to --" You know. So, I went over, and he gave me a clarinet. And I became like a ben bayis [son of the house] there. I was with him. He had no way of really teaching. So, I would just go over there. What I learned from David Grisman about slowing down records and getting everything exact, and other things from Richard Grando -- so I applied all that to him, and I'd go to Dave, I'd say, "Dave, how -- can I come over?" He said, "Yeah." Or he would call me and say, "Come on over," he says. And it got to the point where I was taking him to the hospital, getting medication, taking 64:00him to the haircut, whatever. The typical thing is I'd go over there. And we'd sit down and talk about family, whatever, and then his wife Adele would make some tea and some homemade cookies. And he had his tefillin out there. He still -- when he lived in -- he came from a khsidish [Hasidic] family, the Monastrisher Hasidim. And he used to be the bal-tfile [leader of prayers] in the shul in Canarsie, where he lived. So, he had this sort of ambiguous yes/no relationship sort of with Yiddishkayt. But he had a big picture of golden Miriam on -- but he had his tefillin there, I remember. And so, we would sit and talk and have something, and then he'd go out and come back with his clarinet, and he'd just start playing for me whatever he felt like playing. And I said, "Boy, 65:00Dave --" -- I'll learn this tune and that. I didn't even take out -- I said, "Dave --" -- or I took it out, I said, "Do you play this this way or that way?" He says, "No, you do this, this is how you do this," certain technical things on the -- we were playing Albert systems, which is the old system that all the old-timers play, and that's what I wanted to learn on. And then, I'd ask him basically aesthetic questions, Would you do this or that?, and he said, "No, you never do it that way, you do it this way." And he had very strict rules about ornamentation and phrasing and variation. And a lot -- so he would just play for me, maybe forty-five minutes, an hour. And whenever he reached certain poignant -- a poignancy on the clarinet, he would look me in the eye and shake his head -- he'd move out his hand in an expressive gesture. And I sort of learned more 66:00from these expressive hand movements than (laughs) almost anything. And years later, I realized these hand gestures -- when I started davening in Hasidic shtiblekh, that's what -- they were making the exact same hand gestures. 'Cause that's really where their music is coming from, it's coming out of -- it's an outgrowth of Hasidic music. So, we just became just really, really close. And when I started my own band, Zev got more into academics, and I was starting having my own bands in different styles and doing different things. I always knew that Dave was a great writer, so I wanted -- he wasn't writing for years. So, I was able to convince the record company to give him some money for him to write songs for us to record. So, that sort of got him back into writing. But 67:00prior to that, Zev had gotten a grant for us to produce and record Dave's last record and to do a whole bunch of concerts, some of which were filmed, most of which were not. And particularly when we played to the old-age homes. And I remember -- he told me a lot of things, which I'm not gonna say in a interview. But we were really tight. If I didn't call him often, he would get upset. And once I started having a family and kids, it got harder and harder. I'd bring my kids over. He wanted to play at my wedding. And what happened was that he would 68:00hire me for some of his gigs in case he didn't feel well enough to play. So, I'd play mandolin, and then he would play -- if he felt he couldn't play the clarinet, I would play. I remember times when he was sick, I would sub for him with his band. But the most dramatic was when he received the Heritage Fellowship Award. He used my band to play behind him. And he wanted me there in case he couldn't play clarinet. So, I remember we started out -- you know this story?

CW:Unh-uh.

AS:It's wild. So, we were outdoors. So, we were out there, and then -- waiting to go on after us I see Ralph Stanley. And I was playing on bills with Ralph 69:00Stanley for about five years, and -- ten years earlier, whatever. It was, like, Ralph Stanley and the (UNCLEAR) was another person who I was really into but I didn't know. But it was like having Ralph -- anyway, so Dave is playing. He's opening up the show. And I was playing mandolin, and Bob Jones was playing guitar, and Marty Confurius was playing the bass. And he's playing this doina. And I knew his facial expressions, and he's playing, and then he starts looking at me, like sorta like this. And I'm -- I say, What is -- this is something I've never seen. What's going on? What's this? And all of a sudden, he collapsed. He had a heart attack. And Bob Jones did CPR, which really saved his life. And then, they just took him away for the hospital. So, I had to play -- it was in Booth Theater. Not Booth Theater, the theater where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated; I forgot -- Ford's Theater, I think. So, I had to play for him 70:00that night. And thank God he recovered. And he had a number -- I remember visiting him another time when he had these illnesses. He was so weak he could barely walk from one end of the room -- he overcame a lot of physical adversity. But he told me he sort of -- he says to me, he says this: he say, "Andy, there'll never be another Dave Tarras," is what he said to me. But he says he wants me to carry on for him, but do it in my own way. Because he was an individualist, and he realized that this is the way things go, and should go. And he didn't want me to be a carbon copy of him, and alrea-- I was at least as 71:00much influenced by Naftule Brandwein and Halkias as Dave, but he -- and he said to me, he says, "You can do it," he said, 'cause he thought I had a lot of heart. And he said his criterion for being able to play Jewish music well was really -- had to do with heart. He liked technique, he studied technique with classical clarinetists, and he was always -- he had some aspirations of being a classical musician, but he -- for Jewish music for him, aside from technique was always, "Have heart." Like they talk about great boxers, they have a lot of heart. So, that's where he was coming from. You really have to have the heart to be able to bring it out. That was his vote of confidence. That's what he said to me, a number of times. And that was it. But I'm -- I played on a number of his 72:00clarinets for many years until they got burnt out, and I continued developing the music in my own way. And --

CW:Did you ever talk to him about Yiddishkayt?

AS:Yeah. Yeah. Like I say, he put on tefillin every day. He was a proud Hasid of his rebbe. But he was of a generation that --- (pauses) I think things were starting to fall apart in Europe, Jewishly. And he left around the time of the revolution. But already in the Ukraine, also, if you see their -- some of the 73:00Beregovskii transcripts I've seen of the music, the music is really -- it's becoming overly technical and losing a lot of the guts of what really would draw me to the music. In fact, for many years, I preferred Dave's early recordings, 'cause they were -- he was playing nigunim -- and if not nigunim, he was playing in a more -- his playing changed over the years and grew. And it took me a number of years to realize that it was equally emotional, it was just sort of a bit more hidden. He began experimenting with different things, and -- but the real Jewish -- and the Hasidic-oriented coming out of those feelings -- that's what I always really related to. That's what really drew me to the music. I didn't know it, but now I do. There were some religious people who we knew who I 74:00think he didn't really want them to know that he wasn't as observant as he might have been. But I think for him, it's -- he was in a very difficult situation, just coming out of the chaos in Europe around the revolution and coming to America and people not being allowed to work on Shabbos and then just the whole crazy scene with the musicians and -- it was difficult for him. It was difficult for him.

CW:And what about for you? Once you became more observant, did that have any -- has that had an effect on --

AS:He was very happy.

CW:Yeah. But what about on your musical career, has that had an effect on that?

AS:Well, immediately I stopped -- I became religious slowly over the course of a few years. It's like going through a decompression chamber, you have to really -- but not being able to work on Friday nights or most Saturday nights is -- can be a difficulty, in terms of getting certain types of work. But my feeling is if they want to hire me, they'll hire me. But in terms of musically, I got very involved in Hasidic music.

CW:How did that come about?

AS:Well, I remember hearing some of the early Hasidic records at -- there was -- Donnell Library in Lincoln Center, they had some of these early Hasidic records for some reason. And I wound up davening in the Modzitz shtibl, which was right 76:00near me. And little did I know that these people were friends with Rabbi Pollack, who -- so Modzitz is known for its music, and the great khazn, Ben Zion Shenker, was there. So, Ben Zion, aside from being sort of the foremost interpreter and retainer of all these thousands of melodies is also a -- incredible composer in his own right. So, we became very close, and I wound up producing, recording his last two records and a third one, which we're gonna finish up now. He died a few months ago. But I began getting close with the Modzitzer rebbe and friends. I was into Breslov. I began learning all these other nigunim, Lubavitch nigunim. And then, I became very close with the 77:00Bostoner rebbe. And Boston has an equally deep catalogue of melodies, but they're also descendents of the Baal Shem Tov and the [Zidichov?] and they have a wealth of all sorts of different -- what they call "velt nign [worldly melodies]" and different types of nusekh [variations]. I began -- what would happen is, particularly with the Modzitzer -- not with the Mo-- with the Bostoner -- is I would just get together with him and his son Yona, who's a great, great singer, great composer, as well. And the Bostoner's a great singer, a great composer. And I'd play mandolin, and they would just sing. And we'd just do this for hours. And I began playing functions for them, and I began playing functions for Modzitz, and -- on clarinet -- and began doing this same thing with Ben Zion Shenker at these different yortsayt [anniversary of death] 78:00(UNCLEAR) they would have. So, I began getting very involved in the music. And of course, the connection between what's called klezmer music today and Hasidic music is -- became completely apparent, that it's just an instrumental offshoot of that music. And most of the great klezmorim came from Hasidic families as well. In fact, Naftule Brandwein was a Stratin. And the Bostoner's wife is from -- is a Stratiner Hasid. So, there's all these connections. Anyway, and the Bostoner, as it turns out, (laughs) was friends with this Rabbi Pollack when he was a kid, teenagers and stuff, and they -- and with my other neighbor, who's a Modzitzer. So, all this -- crazy connections are happening. So, I began to really be interested in this music. And I always had in my mind that -- I 79:00discovered that modal music is very -- it's powerful but it's also very fragile. And once you start messing around with the chords and/or the rhythms, particularly with the chords, it can totally change the meaning of the melody. And I know, like, in Irish music they put a thousand chords to some of these tunes. And if you just hear 'em with a fiddle and a bagpipe, it's incredible. But once you put these chords into it, it sort of becomes -- I always describe it as, like, on 78s that have vocal with instrumental accompaniment is, it had to describe the song. Whatever it was. Bing Crosby thi-- vocal instrumental accompaniment. So, I felt with some of these Irish things, I understood why they did it, but it sounds to me like chords with melodic accompaniment. And the 80:00chords can really change the feeling of a song. It really can change the internal meaning of what the song is about. Is it helping it or hurting it? Is it just making it something different? These are individual aesthetic judgments. But many cases, it wasn't -- for the Jewish music, I thought some things should work by and large. I thought for a long time that maybe sort of a more modal approach of -- like a more McCoy Tyner approach of stacked fourths and fifths with no thirds, really. Which is -- a lot of the music that Bill Monroe writes as is ambiguous and the guitar players don't play thirds. You're not sure if it's a major or minor. I thought that approach would work. So, I began experimenting with that, and that sort of came to a culmination when I did this 81:00record "Between Heaven and Earth." And that was sort of a big -- a groundbreaking record. I think one critic of the "Times" says it's one of the top ten things, and it --

CW:What year was that?

AS:Sometime in the --

CW:I think I can find out.

AS:-- in the '90s. Around the same time I was --

CW:Ninety-seven.

AS:Yeah. I had started fooling around with this stuff, recording things like that with different musicians, in the early '90s. So, I had been -- but this really came to fruition. The band clicked. And great musicians, and -- actually, Bob Weiner, who was here last night, who's the drummer in that. We had Kenny Warner and Harvie Swartz, I guess who now goes by Harvie S. But it was really great music. We wound up doing town hall concerts -- all of a sudden all these 82:00things were happening. This thing with Itzhak Perlman started happening. And that's a whole other story with what happened with that.

CW:Before you talk about that, can I ask on a more -- I guess maybe more personal note: I know you went to visit the -- to Eastern Europe at some point.

AS:Yeah, yeah.

CW:When did that happen, and what was that like for you?

AS:I think the -- I got invited to the -- Janusz asked me to come to play in Krakow. So, I was pretty scared. I said, "If you have a bodyguard for me I'll do it." So, this is right around Shavuos. The Ukraine had just become free of the Soviet Union. And I said -- I decided a friend of mine who had been to Uman once 83:00or twice before would go to Uman for -- you know, by the care of Rabbi Nachman, for Shavuos. 'Cause I never knew if I'd be getting back to any of these places. So, we went to the Ukraine. It was pretty amazing being there, particularly because my family was not far from -- and also, Dave Tarras learned how to play clarinet in Uman. And his family was right at Teplyk we went to, which was right near there, which was where his family was from as well. (UNCLEAR) in Teplyk. And there were a lot of Breslover Hasidim there. So, we traveled around the area. So, I remember seeing -- the place basically looked like (laughs) probably when Dave left. And I just remember it was -- everything there, even if there were new homes over in the Russian projects, they were built in this old way. 84:00And I remember seeing all these horse-drawn wagons with slanted sides and people farming with scythes and all these -- and it was pretty amazing. And I had introdu-- I remember coming from shul, home from shul on Shabbos. We were staying with a Jew there who eventually went to Israel. And they turned off the water at night and -- it was just crazy. I remember we passed by a bunch of sort of slightly hostile teenagers. And we had already had some experience with the corrupt policemen. And I realized that the situation of Jews there was so precarious. 'Cause you couldn't really go to the police, 'cause they were against you, and you couldn't really reason with these -- the rabble, 'cause 85:00they were -- you realize you were in a no-win situation. It was really quite interesting to experience that. And from there, we went to Poland. I remember they didn't -- for some reason the guy didn't want to let us out, and there'd just been an article for me in the "New York Times," which my friend had brought. And they weren't gonna let me out of the Ukraine -- or into Poland -- I forgot what it was. I think out of the Ukraine to go to the -- Poland, I didn't have some paper. And he said, "Here, look at this." And so, he showed him this thing. It's a picture of me and a nice article in the "Times" about something I did. And the guy said, "Is this a real paper?" He said, "Yeah." He said, "Okay. Go." (laughs) He got scared. So, I remember I went into Poland -- you know, I had my hat, and I was a frum Jew. And I remember -- it was interesting. So, I 86:00remember -- I met up with the rest of -- other people in Warsaw. I remember we went to the -- they were gonna take us to a restaurant that was supposedly kosher. And it didn't seem kosher to me. It seemed really treyf. And the guy came out and was arguing with us, and there was no real mashgiach. This is all stuff from a former -- so we didn't eat. We wound up going to the nearby shul to go to the mikveh. And we met -- I forgot his name -- who's not the chief rabbi now; this was one of the original chief rabbis from Poland. And he said, "Yeah, come on to the mikveh." We went to the mikveh there. And I remember -- so we came back. We got on the bus. We met other musicians. And I remember we stopped somewhere, it was a bathroom stop. And I remember walking into this restaurant to use the bathroom. And the looks I got, I felt like I was a Black person walking into a white restaurant to use the bathroom in Mississippi in 1940 or 87:00something like that, you know? It was really, really weird. And people would be making remarks to us as we walked around in Warsaw. And then, I remember we got to Krakow -- we had this quote unquote bodyguard, but people would be yelling -- I was with me and my friend Dovid, who's another frum guy -- yelling things out of the win-- we experienced a bit of hostility. And I remember the bodyguard, he just -- he didn't want communism; Poland was free at this point. They didn't want communism. They just wanted a -- he just wanted to party, that's all, him and -- but it was a moving experience to be there. And I went to the cemetery there. There are a number of big tsadikim [saintly men] who are there. And I subsequently started going back and going -- in [Janusz?] (UNCLEAR), they 88:00performed the tsadikim, so I'd go to Bobov and Sącz and I'd go to Romanov and Leżajsk and all these other places. And I remember the last few times I was there, the atmosphere had really changed. And I remember I was -- there was some guy who was semi-involved with the police, of mixed Jewish heritage. He drove me around. And I remember we'd go into these truck driver stops and have a beer or whatever, and no one thought a thing about it. And so, the atmosphere had really changed. And then, the last time I was there -- that was a number of years ago. It was a few years after that -- it seemed to be -- I remember seeing at the market, people selling a poroykhes [curtain over the ark holding the Torah scrolls in the synagogue] from a safe -- from a aron kodesh [Hebrew: ark where 89:00the Torah scrolls are kept in the synagogue, lit. "Holy Ark"] and just all -- and just getting really slightly hostile vibes. They were selling pictures of stereotypical Jews with big noses holding coins and stuff. And I started getting some really negative feeling just from being around there. And that was the last time I was there. But, you know --

CW:When was that?

AS:I don't -- at least eight, nine years ago. And I would've gone back, but it -- the finances weren't good for what you put yourself through, and he -- they'd asked me to play -- for them, the height of the festival is this big thing they do, they end out in the street, where there's just this sort of masses of inebriated teenagers and dancing and this and that. And they love it. It's not for me. I said, "I just don't want to do this. This is not --" and we always 90:00went over really well there, but they were saying, Well, I want you -- if you come over, you have to have this amount of musicians, I want you to play there -- I just said, "Forget it." It's not for me. So. Maybe sometime I'll be back there, maybe not. I'm glad -- I'm thankful I was there, and I had a good time when I was there, more or less. I was treated very well. So.

CW:I'm curious about what your take is on the current Hasidic music scene.

AS:Well, it's not just Hasidic --

CW:I mean, the scene as it is and whether you feel like you fit into it or not.

AS:No, I don't -- I did the Hasidic weddings for a while back in the early '90s. And I learned a lot, but I stopped. 'Cause it's really functional music. If 91:00you're playing a wedding and you have an -- and you can -- occasionally I'll do a wedding. And I do it on my own terms, and I just say, "I play what I play; I don't take songs or lists. This is what we do." If you hook up with the dancers, there's an exchange of energy, and if you change from a major to a minor or a certain different mode, it's like throwing a rock into a still pond of water, and you see the way the movement changes. So, I've played all sorts of different types of dance music throughout my life, so I enjoy it, but those weddings become more functional types of things. The music is primarily vocal-oriented. And if it's not vocal-oriented, it's become very rock and roll-ish. What had happened is, from my understanding of it, is that the Jewish instrumental music 92:00was associated with secular Jews. So, even though -- like, Dave was the first to play for Chabad, and -- they sort of lost the whole masorah of the instrumental tradition. And it was replaced by sort of mainstream pop and then rock and roll. And the rock and roll has a certain vitality to it. And now you have Hasidic musicians who are really schooled in pop music. They've studied -- they can play the Beatles songs, Rolling -- the Satmar Hasidim. And yeshivish people as well. So, what's happening now is there's some very -- it's really a pop music form. It's not the traditional. Because in the Hasidic world, not everyone is into it, 93:00and there's a small group of people who really just are into really the old stuff who will get together and sing on different occasions and things like that. I usually -- I play a lot of those things, either during a chol hamoed [period between Passover and Sukkos] or for a yortsayt or whatever -- of a rebbe. But in terms of the actual wedding situation and the music that people listen to, it's basically different types of rock and roll from very -- heavy metal and other things or Middle Eastern-oriented, to softcore pop. But the main 94:00--- der iker [the main thing] is the lyrics. So, the lyrics are usually in Hebrew, occasionally English, occasionally Yiddish. I know for a long time there's a whole thing whether or not the Hebrew would be pronounced with a Hasidic type of pronunciation. And now that's pretty standard, and whatever -- Sephardim do it this way, that way. It's all mixed up now. Everything is sort of mixed up. Because of the expenses of weddings, which are a fortune, the one-man bands have become ubiquitous. And some of them are quite good. But I remember I played with -- there's a very busy Satmar choir that I played during chol hamoed sukes at one of their things. And it's three or four singers, really, really great singers, and a keyboard player, with all these rhythms. And the music 95:00rhythmically was somewhere between Middle Eastern music and Caribbean music. It was this own thing. It was this wild mixture. And it was great dance music, and ridiculously loud. So, there is creativity there. It's just, I'm not -- it's something -- I've recorded with a number of these star pop singers and stuff, but it's not music that I really relate to. But it's sort of -- that's the mainstream music. And a lot of these things, they may be Hasidic, they may have lost some of the feel or the -- they can do histrionic interpretations of Hasidic nigunim. And when it comes to instrumental music, they don't really know 96:00-- in klezmer, I always found people don't usually know if someone can really play the style or not. As Henry Sapoznik was saying, "You know, they do a kvetch or this or that. They evoke a feeling." But styles have evolved in the music, which are really technically incorrect ways of playing the music, but they've become sort of mainstream. So, people don't know. And I don't think they know 'cause it doesn't really matter. 'Cause it's -- if something evokes something or gives it feeling, then that -- does it really matter? I don't know.

CW:Well, does it matter to you?

AS:Well, I can't listen to it, so it matters to me. But for a while, I was doing KlezKamp a little bit 'cause I felt that I sort of had a responsibility to sort 97:00of pass on to people what I know. But a lot of people are really not receptive. And styles that are really -- to my way of hearing, that are not really the correct way of playing the music are accepted, by and large, as being the style. So, you can't really -- it doesn't really -- to the few -- to the people who really like their traditional music played in a traditional way, to them it might matter. But ultimately it doesn't matter. And I really don't know. I can hear it, I can appreciate it for what it is, but it's not something that I would listen to. It doesn't really grab me. And I can hear that they're trying to do this and that, but they're not really schooled in the style. It's like a -- I 98:00can hear it immediately if someone has really studied the style or not. I can hear almost within a note or two, it becomes obvious in terms of the sound, the tone, the phrasing, the use of ornamentation. And --

CW:Is there anyone in the younger generation that you feel is carrying on the tradition?

AS:I don't know. I haven't heard a lot of -- I'm not really so much part of the scene, so I don't know. A lot of people have used the music as a basis of expanding their own musical vision. But I always sort of feel is that you really need to be able to speak the language fluently before you start messing with it. But since the '70s, '80s, that hasn't -- people really don't care about that so 99:00much. That's coming out of bluegrass, where you really had to learn the language before you did something else with it. So, I have -- at my root, I'm very conservative with the traditional styles. But when I -- like with the trio, I play them my own way and I do my own thing with it. But it's based on the knowledge of understanding of how to play in a traditional manner. So, I like to think that that gives it a bit more depth and keeps it within a certain boundary. But that's really up to the individual, and I think for most people it doesn't really matter. (laughs) I know in Yiddish there's a sort of a high Yiddish, a more common Yiddish. And that -- does it matter to most people who speak Yiddish what type of Yiddish is -- probably not. So, I think mainly only 100:00to musicians, and then it depends on the type of musicians. Some musicians feel that they can just take from anything and have no responsibility to a tradition or at least to learn it. And that's one approach. I come from the opposite approach, where I feel like you really need to be able to speak a language fluently before you start messing with it. So, what you have is a lot of musicians who have a certain technical fluency -- they might have had classical training, whatever -- and then they'll learn to play a little Irish music, a little bluegrass, a little jazz, a little klezmer. And they can all do sort of well, but they don't -- they're not grounded in any one style. They can't really go deep into any one particular type of thing. Of course, they ultimately don't 101:00understand really how to make the -- what makes the style click. It'd be like if you were learning English, German, Italian, and Chinese at the same time. And you could speak sort of decently in all of them, but if you wanted to read a great novel or a philosophical work or so-- you can only go so far. I think if you speak one language well, then you can go to another language, and you understand what to look for in the language, and you know how to be fluent in one language, so you understand how to -- you're either consciously or unconsciously trying to get that fluency in another language. So, it's the same thing with a style in music. I did for a company, they -- sort of like a "Learn 102:00how to play klezmer music," quote unquote. You can't really learn through an instructive video, but you can learn something. But in klezmer, there's a series of -- and Dave was very big on a lot of this stuff. He would go wild over when he heard some people play, you know, over-ornamented or this or that. You want a certain sound on the instrument to be in that -- in the sound that's part of expressive of that language. You have to understand how to phrase and how to ornament. And the phrase and the ornament, it's like this -- it's almost like in Baroque music, but it really can't be written down, but everything becomes inevitable. If you ornament this way, that means that the next one you'll ornament that way, and the next you'll ornament that. It's almost like dominoes. 103:00It becomes inevitable. But you have to sort of learn by heart how to do it. You have to just learn -- with the 78s, just because they're 78s doesn't mean all the players were great, but you have to learn how to speak this language. And once you can speak fluently, you'll understand how to ornament this, how to ornament that, what not to do, what to do. And then, if you're starting to incorporate -- like, Dave Tarras would -- I asked him how much he was influenced by American music and stuff. 'Cause he made most of his living playing "The Great American Songbook," Gershwin and Cole Porter and stuff. And he said, "You have to know what you can bring in and interpret it correctly." So, he would take ideas, and he spoke the language fluently, so he could bring in outside ideas and bring them in seamlessly but use them to further his expressiveness. 104:00I'll tell you a funny story; when we did the first big Dave Tarras concert, Sammy Fain came down, and when I told Dave that Sammy Fain was there, he frea-- says, "Why did you tell --" -- he was nervous -- "Why did you tell me that? I'm not gonna be able to play now." I was just laughing. 'Cause these were the -- he played all that stuff. He probably played much more saxophone than clarinet as a professional musician. And he played up through the Beatles. He even played Beatles songs, Elvis songs -- he knew all that stuff. He played some bass, a little bass, I remember. And I remember seeing him play --- physically, he couldn't -- some of the American type of rhythms he couldn't really feel that well, I could tell by his body language. But he played all that stuff. And he 105:00was influenced by it, and -- these great musicians and composers, they know how to bring something in and use it in a manner that -- like Bill Monroe would say, "You have to know what notes are gonna hurt the music and what notes are gonna help the music." So, Dave had the exact same attitude. So, sure he was influenced by American music. So, yeah. Dave was something else.

CW:Yeah. Well, I had kind of one more question I want to ask. Sort of tying it together, what has been the connection between gaining this fluency in the Jewish music traditions and then getting more deeply into Yiddishkayt, for you? What's the connection there, if any?

AS:Well, first of all, through playing slow, contemplative Hasidic melodies, 106:00some of them are unbelievably lyrical. And I really have a great measure -- a greater understanding of how to play a melody, how to bring out what's in a melody. Really how to play with it, how to express myself through it, and what to do with it. The other thing is also that in shul, davening, singing some of these melodies, that are basically wordless, I've had some very profound spiritual and emotional experiences. Which really can't be put into words. And that's with the -- the nigunim are really set up as a little spiritual bomb, so to speak. They're meant to take you from one place to another place, if they're 107:00sung with the right intention and the right conditions. I know one of the composers in -- I think it was the first Modzitzer rebbe -- or the rebbe before Modzitz -- I think he stopped composing. He said, "So much thought went into each melody that I'm scared I'll do damage if I sing it incorrectly." So, he stopped composing and singing. So, there's a lot of very specific intentions that go into a lot of these melodies, and -- but it's really part of a package. Anything can exist by itself, but it's part of a living body. Like, you can have a heart, but a heart that's not in a body is -- you're not really benefiting 108:00from the heart. Maybe you're benefiting from studying it and seeing the amazing things that it does, but unless it's -- so the nigunim are just a part of a whole body. It's part of a package. And they're used at certain times to induce certain experiences, but you can also have those experiences without them. They're not -- you don't have to have them. Sometimes the singing is -- if it's during the davening, sometimes for me -- as a rov I know put it, he says, 109:00"There's davening and there's singing." And sometimes the singing gets in the way of the davening. Even if it's a beautiful melody, or the singing becomes sort of -- can also become a -- rather than just a way of enhancing the davening, it can also become a sing-along type thing, where just people are enjoying themselves singing -- which is great, but that's really not the focus of what the davening is about. It's a seemingly subtle line, but it can be a really big thing and get in the way. But the Baal Shem Tov sort of brought this type of thing into the music as a means of uplifting people and achieving sort of contemplative states. But I think early on, the music was not used during the 110:00davening. I think later on, it became used as part of the davening to help attract people and keep people interested.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

AS:Becoming fluent in this style is -- then it becomes just like talking. It's just from a different -- a nonverbal form of talking. And it becomes very improvisational. You understand what to do with the melody, how to do it, and it -- you sort of go on a journey with it. And a lot of times, when you're talking you can get an idea, and you can see the train of thought where it's leading to, and you sort of know what you're saying and how you're gonna lead up to it and where it's gonna go. So, if you're improvising and playing a song and music, 111:00it's the same thing. You can see what's happening way before. It just sort of happens, just like talking. It's just nonverbal. But that's sort of the fluency a musician needs in any style. And it really takes a lot of work and dedication to do it. And they have to be a little crazy to do it. But that's where you really get the payoff with the music. People who generally go into music is because it makes them feel good. And the way to really get that is by gaining that fluency, and -- fluency in learning styles and then fluency in your own style coming out of that. Most people have some sort of -- everyone talks a little bit differently, and we have fluency in our own way of expressing things, hopefully. So, that's what you're looking for in music. And like with the 112:00nigunim, if you're singing or playing it, it's really of the moment, and how you're gonna phrase it or express it, it happens. It just happens. Or else you see it happening, and you know how you want to shade it or move it. There's always choices to be made. So, it's a great thing, a pretty amazing thing. So, that's basically what I wanted to say.

CW:Sure. Can I ask just to --

AS:Yeah.

CW:-- go back to what you were talking about before; how has -- I don't know if you can put this into words, but how has really living the full Jewish life --

AS:Yeah.

CW:-- affected your music?

AS:Okay. So, I'll tell you -- this is interesting. (pauses) Playing the Jewish 113:00instrumental music was really a way of expressing my own Jewish feelings and identity. The music really reflected something that existed inside me, and that's why I was drawn to it. It expressed certain -- it acquainted me with feelings that I think were already there and just helped bring them out. Made me feel Jewish. And from a religious point of view, it's sort of -- your neshome [soul], your pintele yid [essence of a Jew], is expressing itself. You're experiencing your own Jewishness; you're experiencing your own soul. That's what 114:00the music is about. And what happens is as I be-- when I finally became fully religious, I lost all interest in playing klezmer music. And I realized that the music was making me feel Jewish and expressing my Jewish identity, and once I was living a Jewish life, I didn't need the music anymore to express that. And I sort of lost all interest in it. And for a while, I just -- I had been playing -- I had my own bands, I'd been playing klezmer for a number of years already and that was fooling around, but I just sort of -- I lost interest in it. And it was only through getting into Hasidic music I began to see the connection, and really that sort of got me back into playing. And now, at this point -- I write a lot of music, I might take other songs and interpret them my own way, but at 115:00this point I just sort of play. And I'm not so concerned with stylistic boundaries or whatever the style of music I'm playing; I'm more concerned with expressive and aesthetic boundaries. So, I might bring -- if I'm playing a Hasidic melody or a klezmer -- it depends on the setting. If I'm playing -- you know Pete Rushefsky, right? So, we get together and play. And with him, I'll play in a -- the cymbal brings out a certain feeling. So, we'll -- I'll play in that way in a different way than I play with the trio. And it just -- with him I'll play in a more straight-ahead, traditional manner and bring certain things in but gear it towards what's happening there. In the trio setting, I would -- I could take the same melody or Hasidic m-- and bring in other things and make it 116:00work because it's expressing -- it's a different style of expression. And each style sort of has its own aesthetics. So, I think a lot of the big problems is aesthetics. And to me, music is not on a timeline. Just because it's contemporary doesn't mean it's any better or any worse than what came before it. It could be better or it could be worse, could be less -- but I -- what I see in general across the board, I think a lot of a certain type of earthy and gritty depth has been lost in a lot of music. And people just don't, I guess -- they're not looking for that or they can't really relate to that, or most people. People 117:00are just -- the music sort of hopefully reflects the time, so different times bring forth different things. So, a lot of the, for lack of a better word, contemporary music that I hear, a lot of it just -- it's all done well. But it may not have the same depth as what preceded it. And the point of that is that music is really from a time and place. Bluegrass is really from a time and place. Dixieland was from a time and place. Bebop was from a time and place. Klezmer -- from a time and place. How to overcome those and keep it as a viable means of expression for yourself, it really takes a lot of work. I know in jazz there are people who -- you've heard of Bix Beiderbecke, I'm sure. So, there are 118:00people who just dedicate their lives to playing in that style. And some of them are absolutely great. And they're sort of living that music, but it's really from a different time and place. So, it's sort of a strange time warp, you know what I'm saying? Like, in many ways, klezmer is -- it's part of the world music scene now. But it's really from a different time and place that was probably -- I think klezmer really was -- by the teens or '20s was already going very, very quickly as a style. The other thing that I wanted to say also was that -- and I sort of touched on this -- was that -- I never liked being referred to as a revivalist. To me, it was sort of like an insulting term. And to me, either you 119:00could play the music or you can't. When me and Zev started doing this, we weren't trying to revive anything. We weren't -- we were just into the music 'cause it was great music, and it moved us, and we wanted to play it as good as we can. And it was a personal journey, having nothing to do with reviving anything or -- and it just wound up -- it was -- people needed to hear that music. Part of the klezmer revival, it was like -- to me, what does that mean? I mean, the music was from a different time and place. I was fortunate to be able to learn with Dave. But he wasn't -- no one had in mind this whole thing of a 120:00revival. But it just wound up that -- (laughs) I remember I'd be playing one night and playing tenor saxophone in a bar until four in the morning. And then, the next day I'd go and make fifty dollars in cash. And the next day I'd go and get paid a lot of money to play in really great conditions where people -- so it's -- I wound up -- it became the focus of -- I was able to make a much nicer and better living, (laughs) working in better places, playing klezmer, so -- but it was always -- for me music's always a very personal thing, and it never has an ideo-- it's just like -- other than an aesthetic ideology, it has no real -- I was never trying to be part of a movement or re-- it was a personal thing. And I think for most of the people who were playing it, it was a personal thing. I 121:00think it's only -- I don't know, maybe the academics, I don't know, called it the revival. It's just -- it's really not an accurate term, and to me, as a musician, it's a demeaning term.

CW:I'm curious from your perspective if you have any insight of why you think people needed to hear it at that point.

AS:Because I think that -- (sighs) I think Jews at that time were maybe one or two generations removed from their grandparents. And they were bereft of anything really Jewish. And I think their neshomes were basically screaming for something. So, it'd become -- there's an old term called "lox and bagels Judaism." And then, when I was becoming religious, I would start eating in 122:00Sephardi restaurants and this and that. It'd make me feel Jewish, eating Jewish food. Or for some people, having chicken soup or challah. Or for some people, Jewish humor. That's their Jewish -- unfortunately -- I mean, fortunately and unfortunately, that becomes their Jewish identity, is their neshomes are basically screaming for some nourishment, 'cause if you don't nourish it, it's just gonna die. So, I think -- one person said an analogy that our great-grandparents or our grandparents were the fire, our parents were -- no, our great-grandparents were the fire, our grandparents were the frying pan, our parents might have been the food in the frying pan, and we're not even in the frying pan. I think at that time -- first of -- it's something that allowed Jews 123:00to express pride in themselves as Jews. It was a time of when there was a big Black identity movement happening, ethnic identity movement. And people didn't know that there was this really sort of great Jewish music. It's interesting; if you see -- Ethel and Martin recorded this first Dave Tarras concert we did. And when Dave started playing dance music -- it was basically Israeli songs and things like that -- the place exploded in dancing. And it was this incredible expression of Jewish pride. And the soul really needs that nourishment. So, I think -- it's interesting. Most of the people who were playing this music early 124:00on had no contextual understanding for what the music was. And they looked at klezmer music as Jewish party music, okay? And their only real cultural connection was really having to do a lot more with Black street culture and hippie culture, counterculture back from the '60s. So, they looked at it as being -- as Jewish party music. Not Jewish simcha music. A simcha, be it a wedding or a bar mitzvah or something, there's kdushe [holiness] to that. There's even this thing that I think is crazy in the inner cir-- if you go to the inner circle of dancing, either the men or the women, you can feel something very, very deep going on there. It's like night and day from the outer circle to the inner circles. There was no understanding of that. So, I know, like, Naftule 125:00Brandwein quickly became a -- for some people, a counterculture figure par excellence: a boozer, a womanizer, this and that. So, I spoke to Dave about Naftule. So, Dave told me, and they made this whole -- this big rivalry thing. This is all -- it's all just drama. Dave said he had -- he told me a number of times he had great respect for Naftule's playing. And he also told me, he says, "Whatever you hear about Naftule, it wasn't as bad as any of what they say." And that was just part of -- I wouldn't be surprised if Naftule Brandwein sort of promoted some of these things himself, just to have that mystique. 'Cause Dave and Naftule, they were musicians who lived their musical lives in American culture, by and large. Even though it was an immigrant community, everyone was 126:00assimilating. So, when the people started -- you know, Giora Feidman did his whole thing with the Greek fisherman's cap and the sports jacket and a black turtleneck shirt, trying to invoke, like, a shtetl [small Eastern European town with a Jewish community] thing and this and that, and very dramatic theatrical things. Other bands dressed up in period costumes and -- others would dress up as Hasidim or -- it was just -- there was a great romance. But people basically -- secular people had no -- as myself -- had no real contextual understanding of what the music was, where it was coming from, what it was really meant to achieve. And so, the only available thing that they could express it is was in a 127:00type of American culture, which was the exact polar opposite of what the music really ultimately -- where it was coming from and what it was try-- it was trying to achieve a kdushe, a state of closeness with God, and induce this experience. But on the other hand, it was looked at as party music. You know, I'll have some -- get high, whatever, meet some women -- it was just -- the exact opposite is the way the music was portrayed, because that's what people really knew. And it might have to some degree -- I don't think it totally went to that place, though, to tell you the truth.

CW:It's interesting to hear you say, again, having this romantic idea, 'cause that's what you were saying also about bluegrass going in.

AS:Well, musicians are big romantics. And if you get into singers, particularly lead singers are -- they're basically like actors. I mean, it depends on the 128:00lead singer, but in -- the great Hasidic singers are not so much actors. They go into -- Ben Zion Shenker and other -- they go into certain states when they play. But the performers, whatever. I remember working in rock and roll bands and -- even -- I see the lead singers, they have to get into the role of what they're singing about. And the really good ones, in some ways, can become actors. Not always. But there's -- they can have a very --- so, yeah. Romance is a whole part of the musical thing. So, for me, I say, hearing this old music, it ju-- it got me back into my own identity, where my family was from, and I began 129:00exploring the feelings. And I began trying to understand who these musicians were, where they were coming from, what it was about. And like I say, I had -- since I'm a kid, I always could've been religious very early on. That's just who I am. So --

CW:Yeah. Now, I just -- before we end, maybe, I wanted to just ask, you know, you learned in this apprentice kind of model.

AS:Right.

CW:At this stage in your career, do you have any -- have you been able to be the mentor for anyone?

AS:Well, I've been very lucky 'cause I've been able to study with a number of really great teachers who had no way of --- teacher -- and I was sort of in the apprentice thing. And I still do it now. There are a number of really great 130:00Hasidic singers I know who I get together with, and they'll -- I'll accompany them, they'll teach me things, we can discuss ways of dealing with melodies and things, and -- so I still do that, yeah, yeah. But in terms of mentoring, no. (laughs) I occasionally get some students, but not -- no one has -- I'm sort of -- in terms of the Jewish scene, I'm not so much part of the scene, I'm sort of on the periphery. And in the bluegrass scene, I'm sort of on the periphery of that also, though I do play those gigs and go down to Nashville and work with those musicians and record occasionally and stuff. But I'm not really deep in anyone's scene. So, I'd be glad to teach, but no one's really interested. (laughs) I don't know why. I think a lot of people just don't know I'm around or who I am or what I might have to offer, so --

CW:Well, you clearly have a lot to offer.

AS:Well, hopefully, but -- yeah, so no. Yeah, so there's no -- I remember clarinet students I had, I would just say -- they would play a song for me, and I would say -- I said -- they would play the notes, but they weren't playing -- there used to be this wonderful band called The Incredible String Band. I don't know if you ever heard of them. Yeah, yeah. So, one of their famous songs is, "He knows all the words but he just can't sing the song." So, particularly for clarinetists who come to me, they know the words but they can't sing the song. I remember with some clarinetists I said, "Just phrase by phrase." I have to go over it and show them how to play the phrase. And for some of them it clicks, and the others -- some it doesn't. And a lot of them don't want to really put in that effort. They don't understand. I remember I was teaching at KlezKamp once, and some guy played a song for me. He said, "This is a Dave Tarras song, I 132:00think." I said, "That doesn't sound like a Dave Tarras song to me." He says, "I think it is, I'm not sure." I says, "Okay, so let's start out." So, we went over phrase by phrase. And after we played the -- after we went through it, I said, "It could be a Dave Tarras song now." But he didn't -- people don't know how to bring out the music. They don't know how to really feel it, or feel it in -- under a -- I don't want to say in the proper amount, but they just -- there's a lack of understanding and care. They'll read the music and they'll put a kvetsh [musical stress] in this and then it's -- but they don't -- to take it to -- like I say, how many people are really interested? And ultimately, does it really matter, other than to some musicians, the small amount of musicians? I don't know.

CW:Well, for someone who might be watching this and is inspired, what eytse [piece of advice] would you give? Where to start?

AS:Well, I would say once you have some basic command of your instrument, if you 133:00want to learn to pl-- you're talking about Jewish specifically?

CW:Sure.

AS:Okay. So, I would say not to listen to any Jewish music from after 1930. Maybe the last Dave Tarras record and maybe one or two other things. And I would say that what you need to do is understand it as an oral tradition, which it is, and learn it that way. And what you need to do is you need to -- they have all these devices now, which didn't exist years ago. You can slow down things in the right key and -- 78s sometimes fool around with the keys and -- whether we're playing -- if you're on, say, clarinet, a C clarinet or a B-flat clarinet or whatever, you need to really study it. You need to slow it down and learn exactly what the person whose solo you're learning is doing. And if you want to 134:00play Jewish clarinet, you should learn how to sound just like Naftule Brandwein -- tonewise exactly, but at the same time, understand how to sound exactly like Dave Tarras with the different tones he's used over his development, or [Shlomke Beckerman?] or in some of these -- like the [Hachmann?] ensembles or -- you wanna sound identical to these people. And if you feel it, you can do it. You can really do it. With the same mouthpiece and setup, you can sound more li-- but you need to understand exactly what they're doing, what their phrasing is, what their ornamentation is -- everyone has his own way of using the ornaments. But like I say, there's a correct way of doing it and an incorrect way of doing it. Once you start learning -- maybe if you can learn twenty Naftule tunes and 135:00Dave, but you can sound just like them, you'll begin to understand sort of what's happening. So, you really need to -- it's like learning -- going to boot camp. You just have to learn the vocabulary, but learn it correctly. And you need to stand on these people's shoulders. You need to model yourselves after them. And once you can basically play like them and sound like them, inevitably you're gonna start developing your own style, which will be a mixture of all these different styles in that one parent style. So, it'll develop your ear incredibly, it'll develop your technique, and you'll really under-- it's like going to music school. You'll get a hands-on understanding of how to take one of these melodies and really play it. And eventually you'll understand how to play it in your own way, but in that style. And it has to do with tone. Like I say, 136:00you want to get a certain sound. Dave had a certain sound. Naftule had a certain sound. You need to be able to do both. And you'll find out ultimately what works best for you or what combination or -- and you need to understand how they took the same melody or different melodies but similar (UNCLEAR) and how they would each deal with it, at what tempo they would play it. And like I said before, the phrasing and the ornamentation. And if you don't do that, I don't think you'll ever really be able to play the style really well. And the real -- I can say from experience that the real payoff is when you can really play the style well and express yourself freely in it, but in -- with all those stylistic rules. It's just fantastic. There's a tremendous payoff to it. But it just takes a lot 137:00of work. And I say, you have to be a little crazy to wanna do that. But I had already done it with bluegrass and to some degree with jazz, so it's -- and some other types of music. So, it can be done if you want to do it. I mean, now all the stuff -- all the sheet music is available, all the -- the ornaments are written in sometimes. But that's not the way to learn the music. You just gotta go tune by tune and learn it and memorize it and just be able to play along with the record exactly. And you will develop. You'll start hearing things that you didn't hear, or that you thought you had picked up on and -- so that's the advice I would give. It's just, listen to the old recordings, and don't listen to, like I say, anything really after 1930, I would say.

CW:Great. Well, thank you again.

AS:Sure.

CW:Thanks so much for taking the time. You have a lot to share. I really appreciate it.

AS:It's fun to be interviewed, so -- (both laugh)

[END OF INTERVIEW]