All posts tagged as: silver jews
Who is a Jewish Musician?
Jesse Rifking of The Wailing Wall has an article in the latest issue of The New York Jewish Week entitled “Who is a Jewish Musician?” He talks to a lot of people (including me!) to get at the heart of the question, without ever really giving an answer that would keep an aspiring JDubber from considering themselves a Jewish Musician. Anyway, the article is great, so read it HERE. Full text after the jump.
Sail On, Silver Jew
The Wailing Wall - Smith & Jones Forever
Hello everybody, this is Jesse from the band The Wailing Wall. I’ll soon be joining the JDub roster, and I couldn’t be any more excited about it! That also means I’ll be blogging here regularly about all the things my little band is up to. This week, though, I’d like to use this space to talk about about someone whose work has had a tremendous influence on me.
Almost exactly one year before I first performed under the name “The Wailing Wall” I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take part in an afternoon-long poetry workshop led by David Berman, best known as the lead singer and songwriter extraordinaire for the band Silver Jews, and author of Actual Air. My memories of the afternoon are actually pretty hazy – I’m pretty sure I spent the better part of those three and a half hours just debating in my head whether or not it would be lame if I asked him to sign a record. And honestly, Berman seemed like kind of a jerk. Each student had chosen the poem that they were proudest of, the one they had hoped would most impress their hero, only to find Berman dismissing any poetic aspirations they might have with an emotionless grunt and a limp wave of the hand.