Random images from my the cell phone, 2.0

Ah, show business!! The marquee for a Ridgetop Syncopators gig on 6th Street.

Best damn Gorditas, ever.
I'm am not a huge fan of the Tejano meat stuffed "Lard Cookie," but at $2.75 per I had to try 'em. It's a new joint on far East 6th street and I forgot the name, but I reckon my belly could drive straight there.

So amazing a meal at the Walburg Restaurant, that I literally forgot to stop and take a picture. I go to southern German and Austria more often than I'd like to admit, but in my humble opinion, this is the finest squarehead grub I've been served. Well, not really served, as it's an ALL YOU CAN EAT buffet. Homemade kraut and cabbage, Weiner schnitzel and local brauten. Washed down with a Warsteiner Heffe Dunkel. I play there regularly with either a bluegrass band made up of German expatriates, or a Polish polka combo lead by a guy best known for Tex-Mex and Cajun music. Its true, lead a very interesting life.

The "Hercules" plate at Niko Niko on Montrose in Houston TX. Long my favorite paper plate Greek joint in Texas, I stopped by the recently remodeled (and always packed to the gills) joint and noticed a new menu item. "We dare you to finish it.." A poor bet indeed. Besides playing killer real-deal Greek music over the house speakers, they have the best advertising graphics as well, mostly cartoon images of the owners ever increasing stomach.("We're expanding...")

OK, I have raved about Fuegos Authentic Mexican for many months. The local papers recently picked up on them as well and gave them what I can only characterize as an appropriate description of this Mom, Pop and Daughter operation. I get the same thing every time I go, but in a fit of curiosity, I went for their "Fat Burger." It is just as the review says: the best burger in Austin. (I can't believe I said that, but it really is so.) The perfect marriage of chuck and ground, I could not get my ample maw around it.

Here's a fine Polish Gorale ensemble that appeared at the Houston Polish Festival last week. They were accompanying a large folk dance dance troupe that had come down from Chicago (Góralski Zespół Pieśni i Tańca "Holni" pod patronatem parafii Św. Krzyża). The local Poles really didn't know what to make of them, as they are mostly descended from the Lowlands and share the traditional Polish distrust of the hillbillies of the Tatras Mountains. Like the dancers these boys here are are FOB (fresh off the boat in the local vernacular) and didn't speak a word of English. Brian Marshall and his boys waited patiently for them to clear out so they could crank up the Texas Lowland fiddle sound.


Me? I thought they were ASS kickingly good. What's hard to see in this picture is the "maly bassy," or small bass; a three string cello actually played with clubby underhand bass bow. The dude could rock it and along with the twin rhythm fiddle section it was a mighty. mighty skronk. You can hardly make it out but one of them is playing a regularly tuned fiddle left handed. (Follow this link for some nice pictures from the event.)

Reality - do you think maybe too much?

My friend Andy Moritz, lately bassist with Cadillac Sky and a great bass educator forwarded me this little exchange with a 14 year old who wanted his advise on how to "go pro." Kids who ask me usually have to go home and find a thesarus and a history book to devine the message I give them. Andy, a much nicer fellow than me, did the following:

"A kid sent me a message on Myspace about wanting to be a pro bass player. I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t resist a reality check, especially after his getting such an off-hand remark about going pro from another road guy.


From: >XXXXX< style="font-style: italic;">[he’s 14 now] and everybody says I could go pro. XXXXX XXXXX also told me this but I don’t think so could u please give some advise so I can get better? I really would appreciate...
=]

And here was my response:

Hey XXXXX,

Great to hear from you! If you just want to play for fun and profit, then work on your intonation, be familiar with the basic bluegrass keys, and work with a metronome. If you want to be a pro, certainly go for it, but you'll want to want to have a bit more backing up your playing -- such as...

TO START WITH...

Learn all your scales, learn all your keys, learn common practice theory and jazz theory and how to apply it to your playing, learn how folk music styles are different and how to apply that to your playing, learn how to play jazz standards and folk standards in multiple keys, learn about time and how to play in it and with it and around it, learn to play with the metronome on beats 2 and 4, learn how to make your bass sound like several different players, learn how to solo in various standard styles (in every key), learn as many tunes from memory as you can and then learn a whole bunch more, listen to as many records and songs from as many styles and genres as you can and STUDY THE PARTS (who's doing what, when, and how), learn how to play your way out of a paper bag so that you can save the tune if you or anyone else completely messes up, learn how to amplify or plug in and get your sound for at least two different applications with a couple of backups in case something breaks, and be able to do all of that without ever hearing yourself in case the stage sound is terrible.

AND THEN...

Learn how to do anything on little or no sleep, food, or during illness; learn how to sleep anywhere; learn how to wash your clothes in an ice bucket and dry off with a wash cloth; learn how to get along with anyone, when you won't be able to, and when you shouldn't get along with them; learn to fix your own stuff with a butter knife, string and a paper clip, and learn how to pack 7 days worth of clothes into a backpack.

WITHOUT FORGETTING TO...

Make sure you have your schedule, itinerary, routing, gig clothing, gear, back-up gear, contacts, contracts, financing, and provisions taken care of at all times.

AND FINALLY...

Learn how to listen and learn from those who have been there and done that before you. We're all just dwarfs standing on the shoulders of the giants who came before us...

Make sure you REALLY want to do it before you do it. It's an awesome and amazing job, but WILL BE your job.

Best wishes!
Andy Moritz"

No word yet if there was any response.......

"Sure, you were Jewish in New Jersey...."

..but you won't find out what that means until you get out here."

- Robert H. Rubin, Stillwater OK, 1970

Seems my old man gave a good interview, so I come by it honestly I guess. Here he is in a publication called JPSP, explaining the Jewish Experience at at an Oklahoma Ag-Tech College. Those who know me well will here echoes of his verbiage in both my language and my attitudes today.

Dig it:





Bonus: My first public appearance as a Jew, age 5. And they got my name wrong, presaging my relationship with journalism and writers for many years to come.

Everybody should have a hobby...

..and here is mine. Yup, that's me on fiddle, the first recorded evidence of such, Lord help us.

It started out innocently enough when a pal of mine and I both took delivery of wood bodied instruments from the wizards at National Resophonic Guitars. We got together at the house to see how they sounded played together, and then a beer or two and then a "hey, let's get a gig." It's either a band that's a very bad joke or a very bad joke that's a band. Nevermind, how can we suck less than what graces the stages of Austin these days.

Here's a sample press release:

"Introducing a rare performance by Fat Man & Little Boy; the Atomic Duo, this town's finest (and hopefully only) mildly pederastic Folk-Blues duo, featuring Austin's beloved Kike-of-the-Blues Mark Rubin and his fetching ward, Silas Lowe..." and even more extended hyperbolic folderoll.

Hard to fathom, but we've invited to play quite a few dates locally, which means something but I'm not quite sure what yet...

It bears repeating

My old pal Dale Watson sent me a link for an interview he gave recently for Atlanta's Creative Loafing. As usual, he was eloquent in his assessment with what is lacking in not only Country music as it is practiced today, but music in general.

Of particular resonance with me was this observation about the singers working the cuircut today: "A lot of these guys don't even know the country standards, the songs you always heard and had to know," Watson says, calling in from his Austin home. "You couldn't get onstage anywhere in any honky-tonk and not know 'Your Cheatin' Heart,' but some don't." Watson says most of the new country boys and girls who came along during the '80s and '90s had no roots -- they just started doing country music a year before they had their record."

In the very same issue, I noticed another interview with Bob Mould, one of the small fraternity of musicians who used to crash at my house in Norman Oklahoma during the mid-80's punk rock explosion. Like Watson, he is touring behind a new release and he too spoke to the shift in culture that has lead to the state of affairs music finds itself in today:

"The current state of the business is enough to get a man all worked up, but today's Mould discusses it calmly, with a sense of humor. "Music used to be a religion to people, and now it's simply an accessory," Mould said by phone from his Washington, D.C. home.

The singer/composer recalled the sacred ritual of procuring vinyl records in his youth. First, you saved up your money from the crap job you hated, caught the bus to your downtown record shop where you frantically perused all the hip music magazines to see what was worth a listen. You took hours making your selections before working up the nerve to see if your selections were good enough to escape the disdain of the hip employees who rang up your purchases. Even then you wouldn't know if you had wasted your hard-earned money until you unwrapped the cellophane and put the platter under the needle for the first time.

Now, the journey is only as far as a keyboard. "It wasn't as easy as walking to a laptop and going, 'Look, an MP3 blog with 38 new songs that aren't even out yet,'" says Mould. "I'll just download all of those. I have no idea what the artwork is, I don't care anything about the band, maybe there's 15 seconds in here that speaks to me. If it does, I'll drag it into my iTunes library and maybe I'll remember it's there tomorrow.

Mould says he wouldn't have made it in the current marketplace. "If I was coming up now, I'd just throw my hands up and go 'This is nonsense,'" he says. He thinks he'd be better off as a graphic artist, a painter or perhaps in social work. "I think that's always a good alternative to music, to get out in the community and help people less fortunate," he says. "You're actually gonna have a much richer life than if you try to be a musician."

Now, the casual reader, a younger music fan perhaps, might think from these riffs that these guys are complaining or are bitter or even burnout. But in reality they are simply reporting accurately on the field they find themselves in. Both Watson and Mould are about my same age and experience, albeit with quite a lot more commercial success than I've had, and both are cats I respect a whole lot, though in completely different ways.

Personally I find it encouraging that even in the current atmosphere of "good-enough" that they strive to continue to make "great."

Report from Klezmer Festival Fürth

Last month I had the great pleasure of joining the teaching staff of the bi-annual Klezmer Festival Fürth in Germany. It's a lot like the other Klez Kamp knockoffs that have sprung up around the world, but this one is only a weekend long and hyper intensive. Josh Hororwitz leads the staff and I was tapped by Alex Kontorovich to perform with a German Goldenshteyn tribute ensemble.

It was a LONG flight from Austin to Atlanta, then Paris, finally to Nurenburg and then a short drive (with a wonderfully pleasant driver) to the old town of Fürth. Lucky for me, the event was run with typically European efficiency; a mixture of respect, conviviality and payment in a currency that isn't tanking a little bit more every day. I was also pleased to find a bar with a fine selection of Cuban cigars, which I relished smoking at every free moment. Yup, they really are that much better than the Dominicans we poor Yankees get now.

High lights for me included playing and hanging out with the Hungarian members of Budowitz, who by the way sounded simply amazing at their Thursday night concert. Along with the estimable talents my old pal Cookie on fiddle and Christian Dawid on reeds, Josh's early music approach to Jewish music was made all the more relevant and vibrant by this "Mutt & Jeff" trio of Tanzhaus musicians. Besides being some of the finest players I've been around, and I'm referring to the rest of Budowitz for instance, these cats bring a joi de vrie to their playing, on stage and off, that is simply inspiring. I sat in on their workshop when I wasn't teaching and as per usual learned more myself than the students, maybe. (Their names are Tamás Gombai, Sándor D.Tóth and Zsolt Kürtösi in case you were wondering No, I can't pronounce them either.)

For the first day I was teaching ensemble performance along side Aaron Alexander and Dan Blacksburg who as usual did most of the heavy lifting. They had to split the next day, so it was left me to to rehearse the student ensemble. These students I found to be at turns eager to learn and techincally quite advanced not only on their instruments, but in style and repertoire. Jewish music has really made deep inroads in Germany, with repercussions I can hardly imagine.

Well, after a day of teaching from 8am-5pm, it was back to the hotel, and quick bite at the venue's own restaurant and then straight to a performance. The German Goldenshteyn ensemble featured all but 2 folks who played on his CD, and in their absence the addition of all the members of Budowitz. It was a mighty big band, but with almost no rehearsal (adhering to the Frank London school of "it's all in the casting" style of band leadership) young Kontorovich did an admirable job of intoning German's material. Hard to do when the tuba player was weeping uncontrollably between sets.

OK, so the next day it's more 8-5 teaching offset by a lovely lunch with a new best friend, Vira Lozinsky . She was born in Moldavia and raised in Israel, she came as vocal instructor. She's a "keeper" as we say back home, a fine combination of wit, skill and talent. This is deep praise, as many of you know how much I don't normally care for singers. But I hear she cut a record with Toronto's Beyond the Pale, and I'll be looking for it.

So then there was the student concert. I'll let the local press take it from here:

Ok, so it's in German and small, so here's a translation from Josh:

"The eleven teachers gave their all to take the 55 students under their wing. The spontaneously formed combos sounded as if they had already been playing for ages with each other. Perhaps the secret was to choose pieces that lay well, often ones in slower tempo, but in the completely full hall of the Klangforum (Culture Hall,) one didn’t notice that. Mark Rubin, one of the few musicians who waves the klezmer flag high in Texas, distinguished himself virtuosically amidst his students...."

The smiling clarinet player from the newspaper photo, Katrin, is who sent me the clipping. After the show, she told me she felt terrible and that she and her fellow students didn't do a good job. I assured her that nothing could be further from the truth, and I promised her I wasn't lying. I very glad to see the local reporter backed me up on that point.

With any luck I'll see some of these same folks at the Klezmer Week in in Weimar, where I'll be on staff as part of the Other Europeans' project.

Canadians at SXSW

So out of the blue the other day my old buddies Katie Moore and Josh Doglin (aka DJ SoCalled) give me a ring to tell me that they at the SXSW Conference site and are literally begging to be picked up and "rescued." This is not an uncommon experience for me actually, so I have a game plan all laid out for the out of town guest who has become overwhelmed by the crush of the conference. I haven't see either of these folks since they were on the bill with me in Krakow last summer, so we have a lot to catch up on.

The enchanting Ms. Moore wrote of the evening's hi jinks at her blog at the Montreal Gazette entitled "Drive By Mariachi" and Josh at "Austin Heats Up."

For the record, it's Sam's BBQ, Mariachi Relampago, and James Invelt sat in for the ailing Dale Watson.