Real Music & Real Estate . . .
Yiddishe Cup

Yiddishe Cup’s bandleader, Bert Stratton, is Klezmer Guy.
 

He knows about the band biz and – check this out – the real estate biz too. So maybe he’s really Klez Landlord.
 

You may not care about the real estate biz. Hey, you may not care about the band biz.  (Uh, see you.)
 

This is a blog with a gamy twist. It features tenants with snakes and skunks, and musicians with smoked fish in their pockets.
 

Klezmer Guy was a reporter for Sun Newspapers. He has written for Rolling Stone, Downbeat and The World. He won two Hopwood Awards.


 
 

COLD NIGHT IN A BAR

by Bert

Yiddishe Cup played its one and only bar gig at Wilbert’s in downtown Cleveland.   It was winter and we didn’t have much going on, so I figured why not.  We promoted the show, got written up in the Plain Dealer “Friday” magazine, and had our name listed in the Wilbert’s ad.  I had always wanted to be in a laundry-list bar ad: Feb 10 Lil Brian and the Zydeco Travelers, Feb 11 C.J. Chenier and the Red Hot Louisiana Band, Feb 12 Yiddishe Cup Klezmer Band.

Our crowd — East Side Jews — didn’t make the trek downtown.

After the show, the club owner said, “You don’t really expect me to pay you X thousand dollars, do you?  How’d we come up that figure?  We grossed X-1000 at the door.”

I said, “OK, give me what you want.”  So he started handing me single dollar bills.  Singles.  Those are worth a quarter.  I said, “How about a check?”

He said, “You wouldn’t want a check from me.”

True.

He eventually got out some $50s and $100s, plus 100 singles.

At least it felt like a lot of dough.

No more bar gigs, unless they’re bar mitzvahs.

Until now:

Yiddishe Cup plays Nighttown Sunday (Feb. 28, 7 p.m. $15).   But Nighttown is not just a bar, it’s a renowned restaurant, and according to Downbeat, one of the top 100 jazz clubs in the world.

We could open with “I Got Flanken (with Horseradish on the Side).”

First, somebody has to write it.
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2 of 2 posts for 2/24/10

1 comment

1 Bill Jones { 02.24.10 at 10:01 am }

How about some nice Irish-Jewish music so Nighttown’s owner feels comfortable?

And with St. P’s day coming up, you’d be thought of as being very topical by the non-Irish in attendance. Others might think you eco-friendly by playing “wearing of the green,” etc.

So you’re wondering what is Irish-Jewish music? Think of “Belz-fast”; Statman’s “Flatbush Waltz” (Irish lived there too); the Klezmatics’ “Many and the Few” (just sounds Irish-folky, and you can tell the audience that while the tune sounds like Hanuka, it’s really a reference to the British, not the Syrian-Greeks); and finally the ever popular “Killarney, Killarney” (as in “Romania, Romania”).

I live nearby and would be glad to help you home, if you get kicked out when this doesn’t work.

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