June, 2021
Ben Schenk: I know, everybody thinks I’m Jewish, but I’m a Quaker—I just dig the music.
The first time I heard klezmer was in DC on the radio, and I didn’t know what I was listening to. It was on the public radio station, Sunday folkloric show. I eventually met the guy who was being interviewed that day, and he actually came and rolled with my brass band, The Last Mardi Gras. Henry Sapoznik… he’s from Brooklyn.
[…] Anyhow, I was really into Jewish music, and then Jonathan [Freilich] had this album that I had, and I was like, “I’ve never met anybody else who even knows about this music.” We were like, “Let’s play some of this shit.”
I had already transcribed some things, so we had like eight klezmer melodies and then a few trad tunes. Then I was also really into Creole music from Martinique that also features the clarinet. That’s great, and a totally different party. We worked in a couple of those, and we had a trio, and we got a gig at Kaldi’s.
And yes, it was $30 in tips. If that—you walked with $5 more than once.
Then, we heard about Glenn Hartman because he was a student at Tulane. I think he was a grad student at that point maybe. He was a keyboard player. I heard Glenn with a band called, I want to say, the Vince Behrman Trio, but it was this frat boy funk band… Arlene Horowitz was my modern dance teacher [in high school]. She totally saved my life when I was 15 years old and put me on my path; I had this cadre of Jewish women who had been looking out for me my whole life. She was with me that night that I heard Glenn and the Vince Behrman Trio at Café Brasil.
I looked up Glenn; I worked in the dance department at Tulane, and I walked over to the music department and found his cubby and put a note: “Here’s my number, we have our klezmer band and would you be interested in playing?”
It turned out he owned an accordion but had never played it. …He was a piano player and he’s like, “Well, I got this accordion.”
I was like, “Well, fuck it. Bring it out, just do your best. You’ll find the left hand, but I know you can find your way around the right hand.”
He started bringing that out, so now we’re clarinet, accordion, guitar, and bass. That was this huge moment because I didn’t have to play every single melody. Accordion is a great blend for the clarinet. It’s a very hospitable blend.
Then Jonathan’s friend Ben Elman moved to town and he played sax, so we got him in on tenor sax. Then this guy, Bill, joined on drums and then we started to–word was getting around.
Then we got a gig at Café Brasil. We got a weekly gig at Café Brasil. I want to say it was Thursdays. I remember that—I think after us was Banda L’Ogun, which was a big Brazilian percussion thing. That was really cool. Ogun is one of the deities—one of the orishas—and Banda, so, “Band of Ogun”.
[Read Wanda Joseph’s memories of the Klezmer All-Stars and Banda Logun here.]
This woman Angela would just get up there and sing over with the drums, and then Sid Snow was on guitar. He would just follow Angela. Wherever she went, he would follow her, and everything else was drums. It was singer, drums, and electric guitar.
That was a great band. Then I would get up there and play a Jewish melody over the top of the Samba drums once in a while. That was super fun. That was like ‘92–at that point, Café Brasil was selling alcohol and it was pulling big crowds. The Iguanas had a weekly there.
[Read the full-length interview here!]
