Metro Pulse/Music/Eye on the Scene

Trancelike Tuba

The New Yorker publishes few photographs, but when the Sept. 4 issue came out, featuring a calendar-pages portrait of an avant-garde trio called Drums and Tuba, some alert Knoxville readers took notice. The photo shows three guys out in a field, one of whom is longtime Knoxvillian Neal McKeeby, son of the late UT printmaker Byron McKeeby. The trio, then playing at the legendary Knitting Factory, is reviewed thus: "The band—which includes a guitar in addition to the two nominal instruments—laces its loop-filled songs with New Orleans-style grooves. The resulting soundscapes are long, intricate, and often hypnotic; the bellowing of the tuba and the ferocious, trancelike drumming become pleasantly overwhelming." Maybe they'll play a show in McKeeby's hometown sometime.

Local CD Review

Tennessee Schmaltz, Old Country Klezmer

Klezmer is infectious. Klezmer is intoxicating. Klezmer is here and now. On CD.

It's not toe-tapping music, exactly, and it's certainly not foot-stomping music. What it is, in the highest and best Eastern European Jewish tradition, is the kind of music that gets your ordinarily staid uncle up on the dance floor in a silly hat, grinning and twirling his ample frame and generally making a fool of himself, with or without the stimulus of strong drink and with or without Jewish heritage.

And that's the music Tennessee Schmaltz, the 5-piece Knoxville klezmer band, is doing for the most part on its CD, Old Country Klezmer.

For the most part. There's also the "Tennessee Schmaltz Waltz," a semi-cover of the state's classic, and there's the "Reconstituted Orange Blossom Special," an assault on the country standard that Efrath Shapira's cunning licks with her violin-turned-fiddle almost turn into victory.

Those are included, says Rob Heller, the group's washtub-bassist, clarinetist and publicist, because they are "Old Country." Get it? The rest of the 13 cuts are devoted to Jewish or European tunes of the genre that makes for a rollicking bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah in any land.

Klezmer, which means something in Yiddish like "bearer of song," is so popular among the Ashkenazim that it is said, "A wedding without klezmer is worse than a funeral without tears."

Knoxville's band banded together in 1995. Judy Megibow, a community worker and flute and piccolo player, who had been to the prestigious "Klez Camp" in the Catskills, founded the Schmaltz. She got Heller, a photojournalism teacher at UT, Manny Herz, a piano-pounding architect, and Dan Shapira, a nuclear scientist, and his daughter and violin teacher Efrath, to conspire in the klezmer mode. Shapira, who also plays with the neighboring Oak Ridge Klezmer Band, is a master of the ungentlemanly art of the accordion (so said because a gentleman is defined as a man who knows how to play the accordion and doesn't).

He's terrific, as is Herz, whose command of the ratchety resonances of 2/4 time gets the whole joint jumping when the CD is cranked up. All that's really lacking for Tennessee Schmaltz to do gigs in Krakow or Lodz is a squealing, nay shrieking, clarinet. Heller, whose woodwindery is pretty mellow, says he's working up to that level. The disc is on sale now at Knoxville's McKays and will soon be available at the Disc Exchange and Border's, Heller says. You buy it; you play it; your eyes roll back in your head and you spin to it.

How Much is Too Much?

When four bands from Nashville's Disgraceland Records roared through Patrick Sullivan's last Friday for the label showcase Disgracefest 2000, it was exactly what you'd expect from some of K-town's best homegrown talent (even if much of that talent has been sucked westward): the Cheeksters were catchy as hell, earning clamorous applause for a loving tribute to "getting high in the summertime;" admiring college kids nodded sleepily to Jag Star's semi-exotic folk-rock; the Opposable Thumbs went right through their hit list with typical energy and onstage hi-jinks; and John Paul Keith debuted a bunch of new hard-rockin' tunes (and a sporty new mod haircut).

Unfortunately, stretching as it did until well past 2 a.m., it was a little too much of exactly what we expected. There was none of the urgency or expectation that makes a club show exciting; none of the dim hope that those guys on stage are heading straight from their parents' basement to the cover of Rolling Stone. Instead, it was a long celebration of bands who are already pretty celebrated around here. Every single one of them deserves it—but maybe just not for four straight hours.

Go.

Emma here. The Zipster looks like he'll be out of commission for the indeterminate future—someone mentioned an extended holiday at Brushy Mountain—and I'll be filling his oh-so-large (and smelly) shoes until further notice or jailbreak. I'd like to see a kinder, gentler Eye in which every band, regardless of skill or talent or chops, gets rave reviews just for getting onstage. 'Cos we all know how horribly hard it is to be a musician, and they deserve kudos even if they don't know how to sing or write or play! My only goal is to protect their fragile, sensitive little egos from the slings and arrows of an uncaring world.

Keep those cards and letters coming, folks. I'll pass any along to Zippy as time permits. Or, if you've got a comment for me, just mark your envelope with the words "Ms. Poptart." Thanks!

And now, on with some possible ideas for your week.

Thursday: B.B. King Blues Festival at Chilhowee Park. Blues so deep they're indigo.

Friday: Lovejoi at Manhattan's. Grunge is dead. Long live grunge.

Saturday: Dent with The Fairmont Girls at Pilot Light. Welcome back, oh rockers of Dent. We've missed you.

Sunday: Yo La Tengo at Moose's. Of course I'm going. Why aren't you?

Monday: Shells: Gems of the Sea at McClung Museum. You'll be amazed. No, really.

Tuesday: Einstein Simplified at Manhattan's. Five years old and still producing fresh, fun improv comedy.

Wednesday: Mountain Soul at Borders. Appalachian tunes done with funk, spirit, and soul.

—Emma "Sarcastic? Moi?" Poptart