The Jewish Week Loves The Macaroons!
The NY Jewish Week is running a great article about new JDUB KIDS band the Macaroons! The piece finds Jewish Week writer George Robinson in conversation with Macaroon Dan Saks. Check it out HERE, with full text below the cut.
“The band’s Passover EP (cunningly titled “The Macaroons’ Passover EP”) is a good example of the approach the group has taken. It opens with big booming bass drum beats and some nifty Ray Davies-style guitar skronk, and then slips effortlessly into witty power-pop with more than a hint of Davies and the early Kinks. The lyrics are both silly and funny, a good combination for reaching an audience of children and their parents, and the end result is catchy fun.”
A MUSICAL FIFTH QUESTION - GEORGE ROBINSON
Dan Saks says his 5-year-old niece likes “grown-up” music as much as she does the kid-oriented pop that is probably a more prominent part of her musical diet.
“There’s no differentiation for her,” he says, “So there shouldn’t be for us either.”
“Us” is the Macaroons, the latest addition to the burgeoning number of bands specializing in music tailored to Jewish children (and their parents), who are performing in town on March 14. Saks, 31, plays guitar and bass and sings in the band, moonlighting from his “grown-up” gig with Sephardic rockers DeLeon.
“We’re all big music fans and a lot of the ‘grown-up’ music is also perfectly suitable for a kid,” Saks says, speaking from his home in Brooklyn. “[The Macaroons’ music] is all child-appropriate. These are rock songs. The stories are simple enough for a kid, but these are songs we would write anyway.”
His words seem to be plucked from a famous interview with the great Warner Brothers cartoon creator, Chuck Jones. He was asked if the wild men of the WB cartoon unit wrote and directed their films for children or, given the considerable sophistication of the humor, for adults. Neither, Jones replied, “We made them for ourselves.”
Saks chuckles on hearing this anecdote and agrees emphatically with the sentiment. All four of the Macaroons have “adult” gigs, too.
In fact, one could say with justification, the Macaroons are really a spin-off of a spin-off band.
“Our four founding members are also in the LeeVees,” Saks notes. That band was a Jewish-themed side project for members of Guster and the Zambonis, and put out a Chanukah record a couple of years ago. After some discussion among the LeeVees of doing another holiday record, but one aimed at children, the band got together with JDub Records and, as Saks casually puts it, “we went for it and there it was.”
“None of us are children’s musicians,” he explains. But we specifically wanted to make a Jewish kids’ record. There was a hole there. Our friends are at the age where they are having kids; one of the guys in the band just had a kid. People say it’s hard to find kids music that we also can listen to all the time. And that was even more true of Jewish kids’ music. We wanted to do something that would fit in with the Jewish parents we know.”
Given the penchant for repetition that young children possess, that meant creating an album that would be catchy enough to keep a young listener involved, but sophisticated enough that — on the 20th hearing of the day — a parent wouldn’t be ready for a strait-jacket.
The band’s Passover EP (cunningly titled “The Macaroons’ Passover EP”) is a good example of the approach the group has taken. It opens with big booming bass drum beats and some nifty Ray Davies-style guitar skronk, and then slips effortlessly into witty power-pop with more than a hint of Davies and the early Kinks. The lyrics are both silly and funny, a good combination for reaching an audience of children and their parents, and the end result is catchy fun.
“We want to reach people like my friends who are just starting to have kids, who are not Chabadniks but also not completely removed from Judaism,” Saks says. “It’s a way to share the fun cultural side of Judaism with their kids. These are same people we’re trying to reach with DeLeon.”
Where will the Macaroons go after this Pesach blitz of gigs, and album and EP releases? Saks admits he doesn’t know.
“We’re just getting started on this,” he says. “The record [“Let's Go Coconuts”] comes out soon; we’ve enjoyed the gigs we’ve played and had fun writing the songs. I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t keep doing it.”
The Macaroons will be playing at the Museum of Jewish Heritage (36 Battery Place) on Sunday, March 14 at 1 p.m.; doors open at 12:30. For information, go to www.mjhnyc.org. The band’s Passover EP, which features four songs from the first album and a bonus track, will be available online on March 16; the first album, “Let’s Go Coconuts” will be out on March 23. Both will be available from JDub’s site, http://jdubrecords.org.