Driving Mr. Brandwein

I love it when I run into a local (to the North Coast) band playing Jewish music. Today's find is DJ Paradiddle, of the "salsa, klezmer, rock, Motown, samba, TLC" band, Groove Spoon. The track that caught my attention is "Yale", DJ Paradiddle's remix of Naftule Brandwein's "Terkishe Yale V'Yove Tantz." It's a fun remix, layering Brandwein's clarinet over a contemporary base groove with some guitar squawk leading up to car crash ending. While it feels like a freshman release, a bit over-reliant on the original sample for both tone and tempo, I've listened to it a dozen times today and am still digging it. I'm looking forward to what comes out of DJ Paradiddle next.

Hopefully I'll get to see him live soon. As I mentioned he's a local guy, at least during the school year. He and Groove Spoon play at a local Ann Arbor, MI, restaurant, The Heidelberg, once a month. The next one will be on April 28th, 2008, though he's also playing at the Michigan Theater on April 11.

DJ Paradiddle's "Yale"

Myspace Reviews: Shtreiml and Khevre

One of my favorite time-wasters is going Jewish music social-networking on sites like myspace.com. What will happen is that I get a pointer to a band with a myspace page and then follow their "friends" links to other bands I might be interested in. Today the originating band was Shtreiml and the source was the Jewish music mailing list hosted by Shamash.org. Shtreiml was announcing a few upcoming shows all, sadly, MMFH (Many Miles From Here).

So, I was off and wandering. Like most bands, Shtreiml's myspace page let me listen to some of their songs and get an idea what they're about. And I was delighted. Shtreiml has a great sound, combining "klezmer, gypsy music and jazz" with a focus on the unusual combination of the oud and harmonica. I've never heard anything quite like it, but I was quite enchanted. Sadly for me, their albums are on cdbaby.com but not emusic.com. Cdbaby is one of my favorite online stores and deserves everyone's business, but I have a subscription to download albums from emusic and would have nabbed one of Shtreiml's on the spot if it had been there.

From Shtreiml I found Khevre. Khevre has an understated klezmer / jazz sound, with a fabulous upright base and a wonderful female lead singer. Khevre is based in my once home-town of Boston, MA, but I don't think they were active yet when I lived there. Now, Khevre does have their album on emusic and I grabbed it immediately and will listen to it on my commute home tonight.

That's all I had time for during today's wander. But I'll use both Shtreiml and Khevre as jumping off points for more myspace wandering sometime soon.