Real Music & Real Estate . . .

The Lakewood, Ohio, police chief offered me 20 percent less than the going rent to put in a police mini-station.  Fine.  No, Great.  There were apartments above, and single women love living near a police station.  Some women are fixated on intruders crawling through their windows.

A Jewish museum wanted to change a date, but I couldn’t accommodate them because one of my guys was leaving town for vacation.

Then a private garbage hauler wanted me to lock in for another year.  Not great.  The city was making all landlords pay for hauling; it used to be free.

A nurse wanted to rent an apartment. Great.  Nurse is top of the line.  Once every five years I’ll even get a doctor — usually a 28-year-old doc without a ton of cash.  My apartments have no garbage disposers or dishwashers.  Barebones.  But at $500 a month, or so, that’s the deal around here.

A woman from the Boca Raton, Fla., JCC called me “darling” and said we were her favorite klezmer band, so I gave her two comp tickets to our South Florida show.

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Happy Memorial Day
Tomorrow:
MY CLARINET NEEDS TILEX . . . How to keep your axe smelling fresh.

One day you’re a real estate slumlord, and the next you’re signing autographs at a concert.  The first time I signed an autograph, I couldn’t fathom it.  I am not Bob Feller.

About 10 percent of CD-buyers want your autograph.

They are the well-wishers after the gig.  “Great concert” is the standard greeting.  Some of these people try to hog the musicians’ time with stories about their grandkids’ clarinet playing, or their memories of Mickey Katz – which is actually interesting.

Sometimes I’m the autograph hound. I was talking to Josh Dolgin (Socalled) of Klezmer Madness after a concert — and I know the guy, I mean he has stayed at my house — when a concertgoer cut in front of me and started flashing his business card, and I backed off.  I was looking forward to going out for a drink with Dolgin maybe.  Who knows.  Maybe David Krakauer, the star of the show, would have come along.

Instead I went to a coffeehouse with Irwin Weinberger, Yiddishe Cup’s guitar player,  and we rehashed the Klezmer Madness show.  We decided Krakauer was a clarinet player beyond belief, but 90 minutes of non-stop clarinet — no matter how good — was too long.

Keep it 30 minutes or under.  We’re in a hurry.  We grew up on Sesame Street.  (Howdy Doody in my case.)

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Tomorrow:
PO-PO AS RENTER . . . The police pay on time.

Jazz improvisation is fun to do and not fun to watch.  I’ve taken four-minute solos and wondered if anybody was still alive afterward.

The good thing about klezmer is there isn’t much room for long solo flights.

Most of the guys in the band can play in any key at any time.  Not me.  That’s why I’m the leader.  Then again, most musicians don’t know how to negotiate.  I do.  I think my whole adult life has been one big negotiation.

I have sat at the negotiating table with wildlife. Years ago I played avant-garde sax licks in the Rocky Mountains for birds.  “Avant-garde” because I didn’t know what I was doing.  You blast an alto from mountaintop to mountaintop, and you feel like Joshua with a shofar.

Consider your audience.  I jammed on the first few notes of “Hatikvah.”  It’s natural minor.

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Shabbat shalom
Tomorrow:
I AM NOT BOB FELLER . . . Signing autographs at a concert.

The numbers on running a band: you can’t make a living at it.  At least not a decent living.  The Klezmatics former drummer, David Licht, had a business card that read “percussion, painting, plaster,” and he was with the top band.

Real music, real estate, real numbers . . .

The Consumer Price Index has averaged 4 percent the past 30 years.  The Dow Jones, 8 percent; U.S. bonds, 6 percent; and my real estate, more than those.

What’s a measly percent point or two? A lot.  This has to do with large numbers.

People think, “Wow, I got a 40 percent discount at Marc’s.”  Yeah, 40 percent on a loaf of bread.  Big deal.   If you can get 40 percent off on a piece of property — that’s something.  Doesn’t usually happen.  But if you can get an extra percentage point or two on a large number, over, say, 30 years, you’re making thousands and thousands more dough.

You can’t get more than the Dow Jones without a lot of risk.

My father took a lot of risks. He had postal machines, a door-to-door cosmetics company and a foot powder company.  He went broke on all of them.

I was an artiste. My father dragged me into the real estate biz; he blindfolded me and led me before a firing squad of prima donna plumbers, pissed-off tenants and youse-guys garbage haulers.

Hey, no biz is all fun.  You do certain things to eat.  You do other things so you’re not just eating.

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Tomorrow:

ONE BIG NEGOTIATION . . . My adult life.

The band rarely plays for famous people. There is nobody famous around here unless you count Harvey Pekar, the comic book guy.  Take that back . . . LeBron James.

Once we played for the president of Tulane University.  At another bar mitzvah, Flory Jagoda, the queen of Sephardic music, was there.  At another simcha (celebration), we ran into Max Herman, a trumpeter who used to play with Mickey Katz in Los Angeles.

Nobody has heard of these people. That’s the Rust Belt.  We’re OK with it.  What’s our option?  Move to Florida?

We like it here.

At private parties, we’re asked if we travel.  Will we come to Minneapolis?  Yes, pay us 7 grand and we’re there.  These folks never come through; they’re just caught up in the excitement of the party.  Well, one time we missed a for-real gig.  That was from the frozen chicken king of California.  A Mr. Zacky.  He saw us at a wedding in Akron and asked us to play his wedding in L.A.   Too bad we were already booked.

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Tomorrow:

LARGE NUMBERS . . . How to beat the Dow Jones.  Gamble.

Garbage men and coin-op laundry men . . . the biggest sleazeballs.

Particularly coin-op guys.  Some of these men are descendants of mobsters.  (Landlords use coin-operated washers and dryers in apartment laundry rooms.)

I got locked into a 20-year contract with a coin-op guy and could never get out of it.  The opt-out clause was to send a certified letter 60-90 days in advance of expiration, with a $2 ochre stamp with sprinkles on it, or something.

Contracts — with my band and in real estate — they’re basically worthless.  If the client is a creep, you should figure that out in advance.  (Easier said than done.)

An upholstery-shop owner told me he was going to rent forever and die there, and then he bailed in two years.  He left several truck loads of stinky, stained foam in the store.

Immigrant storeowners, that’s what I often deal with.

The Korean man is raising his kids at the dry cleaners.  Maybe he has beds in the basement.  One of my Chinese guys put a shower in his basement.  I caught him but let it go.  Against city code.  He said he was a descendent of  nobility.

A lot of foreigners say they’re nobility. One man from Azerbaijan had a last name with 17 letters in it.  I told him to change his name.  He didn’t like that.  He said he was royalty.

My father changed his name in 1941 from Soltzberg to Stratton.  He couldn’t get a job even though he was a Phi Beta Kappa chemistry grad from Ohio State.

Immigrants, in negotiations they’ll bring their wives and  kids — whatever it takes to get a low-ball price on a lease.  The archetypal Korean wife . . . ballistic – basically histrionic – in negotiations.  But once the lease is signed, the Koreans are golden.

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Tomorrow:

WHERE HAVE ALL THE FAMOUS PEOPLE GONE? . . . About Harvey Pekar, Flory Jagoda and LeBron James

And as the rabbi danced . . . not always.   (That’s a song lyric: “And as the rabbi danced . . .”)

And if the rabbi dances, the congregants will.   If he doesn’t dance, nobody dances.

At a private party — bar mitzvah or wedding — if the immediate family doesn’t dance, nobody dances.

We have our trade secrets — ways to motivate people to dance, though.  We play Fiddler on the Roof music; the guests stand up, sway side to side, link arms; and then we speed up the music.  And we have a shtickmeister, dance leader Daniel Ducoff , also known as Sir Dance-a-lot.   (He goes by many names. He also has a variety of business cards and eyeglass frames.)

Yiddishe Cup was possibly the first klezmer band to have a dedicated dance leader.  Daniel plays the duck whistle and that’s about it.  He dances.

Daniel leads a lot of  wild-and-crazy dance sets.

It’s not hard. We run into people who are in good moods.

Then again, in the band biz, the party always ends.  And I’m reduced to discussing fender dents with the band’s van rental guy.  Daily slice-of-life stuff.  Not all glamour.

The glamour . . . I tell locals we play out of town.  Oh really?  You mean you go to Columbus? Yes . . . and Texas and Florida and New York City.   Some day, kayn eyn-ore (no evil eye), we’ll play Australia.  And don’t forget we’ve played Canada.  The internationally acclaimed Yiddishe Cup.

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Tomorrow:

STINKY, STAINED FOAM . . . What tenants leave behind.

Yiddishe Cup sidemen show up promptly and don’t complain. Years ago we had a player who was late all the time, and it drove me nuts.   My band has never been late, or missed a gig, in 20 years.  We run like the Tokyo bullet train.  Next stop, Pinsk.

I like to start early.  I tell the client the band is like a taxi; the meter starts running right at the downbeat.  That way when we quit, nobody is pissed or misled.

Sometimes we get “undertime,” which means we quit early because almost everybody has gone home.  We don’t usually play for less than 10 people.  Well, once a client made us keep playing while she wrapped up centerpieces.  She wanted her money’s worth.

Jews — or  at least this one — have a thing about 10 people.  I won’t play till I see 10 people in a room.  Otherwise you blow your chops out for a gaggle of teens inspecting the gift table.

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Tomorrow:

SIR DANCE-A-LOT . . . He plays the duck whistle.  That’s about it.  He dances.

I had my clarinet’s tone holes undercut, which means the clarinet repairman shaved some wood out of the clarinet’s bore.  Repairman . . . technician . . . the guy was my neighbor.  He spends his workday looking down clarinets and saxophones.  Like a coal miner.  He has a little light he drops down the clarinet shaft, looking for leaks.

So my axe has a very wide-open sound.  You can put a lot of air through it.  That’s the trick — to put as much air through as possible.  (The champ of  “big air” is Gary Gould from Los Angeles.   He’s plays a Claude Lakey 4* jazz clarinet mouthpiece — a loud and uncontrollable thing, like a two year old in a restaurant.)

But it’s not all about the bike, or horn.  The player needs to maintain a thin stream of air, like blowing a Superball across a table.  Not a golf ball or ping pong ball.   It has to be a Superball.  (Ilene Stahl used the Superball analogy at KlezKamp two decades ago.)

On a sax, you can put tons of air through because the physics of the sax are different than the clarinet.  All the sound of a sax comes out the bell; on a clarinet, only a bit of the sound comes out the bell, and the rest pops out the fingering holes.  There is a reverse air pressure on the clarinet.  Air coming back at you.

In the real estate biz the “back pressure” is water leaks.  Property management is all about water problems — roof  leaks, pipes bursting, or some guy flushing potatoes down his toilet.

I have a trio of plumbers: Ron, who goes in with a pneumatic pump.  If that doesn’t unclog the drain, we go to Bob, who has an electric snake.  He’s picky, though;  for example, he’ll say, “I’m not going in there.  There’s a ton of feces and the guy is a fat slob.”  If  Bob can’t — or won’t — fix the mess, we go with Bill, who charges 50 percent more than Bob and has a howitzer in his truck.

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Tomorow:
NEXT STOP PINSK . . . How to run your band like a train.

For our D.C. gig, the hotel wanted to see our band’s liability insurance policy.  We didn’t have one.  Same request came from a temple in Boca Raton, Fla.  Must be an East Coast thing — the band must have an insurance policy.  In the Midwest nobody sues anybody else.  We’ve had a couple broken ankles over the years — people falling in “Hava Nagila”s, or getting spiked by another dancer’s high heel.  Stuff happens.  But nobody sues.

Contracts are almost meaningless.  If there’s no trust, you’re wasting your time.  Who you going to take to small claims?  I’ve done a couple rounds.  Maybe one a decade.  Not for the band, the real estate.  Only do small claims when you know the person is collectible.  Like when they work for the Cleveland Clinic.  Even then, the person might quit his job when he gets the garnishment letter from you.

Best to check out the person on the way in — not the way out.  Call the previous landlord if you have to.  Run a credit check.  If the previous landlord says the guy is a psycho, believe him.  And refuse to comment when the prospective tenant asks, “What did my landlord say to kill the deal?”  Be glad the landlord leveled with you.  Often the previous landlord will mislead you just to get the psycho out of his building.

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Shabbat shalom
Tomorrow:
THE CLARINET SHAFT . . . How to make a clarinet sound decent.

A sideman — a guy who just shows up for the gig and toots — has it easy, because if the gig is a flop, the onus is entirely on the bandleader.  Sidemen are invisible.

One party planner said to me, “Your musicians are eating all the hors d’oeuvres.  Why aren’t they playing [the cocktail hour].”  (They each had two hors d’oeuvres,  and they were playing.)

That’s the sort of kvetching I get from the party planner.  I told her we needed to get fed a lot earlier. We anticipated eating at 10 p.m., so we needed a couple hors d’oeuvres.  (We eat dinner at 6 p.m. in Ohio. Used to be 5:30 p.m. in Jack Paar’s day.)

My guys were very keen on the phyllo dough spinach triangles and egg rolls.  So was I.  Kind of hard to play the clarinet with a mouthful of phyllo dough and spinach.  Doable though.  It’s just the first few notes that don’t come out. You need at least a couple hors d’oeuvres to make it through the night.

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TOMORROW:

HORA-PAIN INSURANCE . . . We’ve seen a couple hora-induced broken ankles.

Another negative in the music biz: party planners.  (Not to be confused with event planners, who are typically business-like, big-time and helpful.)  These party-planner ladies poke into my freylekhs (hora) time, giving me hand signals like quarterback Frank Ryan, as they scream: “The soup is getting cold! Stop the music!”

I ran into a party planner in D.C. who was flashing so many fingers, I thought she was trying to land an airplane.

I try to ignore these women.  I know how long “Hava Nagila” should last, and screw the kitchen staff and their perishable salads they want to “plate.”  Basically, listen to the person with the checkbook.  If the client wants a 20-minute hora, she’ll get 20, even if the party planner says 15.  One time the dad wanted 45 minutes; the mom wanted 30; and the party planner called an audible at 15.  Naturally I followed the dad.  He was writing the check, and he loved the set.

Party planners, in real estate terms, are “tenants from hell.”  Do the math:  The party planner = the tenant who paints her walls turquoise and brings in four cats and then lobbies for a skunk. “But it’s denatured,” the tenant says.

Go buy your own apartment building and fill it up like the Cleveland Zoo.  Not everybody wants to see a skunk walking down the hallway.

Rewind:  Party planners are frequently hard-working, talented people. They dress chicly in black and know something about everything, from lighting to matzo balls.  Musicians think the party revolves around the band.  Actually, the party revolves around the newlyweds or bar/bat mitzvah.  Note to wedding musicians: You are not on stage at Nautica.  You are in a service industry. You can be replaced by a DJ in a second.  In fact you’re fired.

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Tomorrow:

WHAT SIDEMEN? . . .When the gig is bad, the client comes to the leader, not the sidemen.   Sidemen are invisible.

It’s always stressful to negotiate a contract. I do a few per week. Real estate biz or the band. The lowest number you mention, that’s the one that sticks. If you say, “It’ll be between $6,500 and $6,800,” the customer just hears the $6,500. Never casually bandy about a low number. That’s the one that sticks.

You can do a million negotiations and never get used to it. Just like going on stage. You go on stage, and if you’re not nervous, you’re screwed up. I’m not saying you should be a nervous wreck — which is often the case the first couple years — but you should be a bit anxious. Even if you’re playing for seven people. We drove all the way to Grand Rapids, Mich., to play for about 30 people. Yeah, yeah, we’re pros and the show must go on, but it was a disappointment – that small number and such a long drive.

We did a show in Middletown, Ohio, for seven people. I told our singer to do a Beatles song in Yiddish just for fun. Big hit. Ohio premiere.

“Home hospitality” — that’s another negotiating tactic promoters use. “Would you please stay in a house, rather than a hotel?” Don’t do it.

I once put a band up in one of my vacant apartments. The band was Eli “Paperboy” Reed and the True Loves. Eli was just starting out. About nine of his guys barreled into the empty apartment. It cost me $50 to clean up after them. Not that they trashed the place. They didn’t. But nine guys overnight — the tub had some hairs in it the next morning, and there were foot prints. I knew what I was getting into. I knew that upfront. Support the arts.

Yiddishe Cup did a home hospitality where the host family didn’t show up. The festival volunteer took us to a flophouse near a paper mill. Looked like some rundown student housing. One bed, one cot, a couch and three sleeping bags. One bathroom.

So instead we went to a hotel, which wasn’t easy to come by because parents weekend was happening at a nearby college.

The next day I got half our hotel expenses back from the festival organizer. That encounter was like the real estate biz — hocking and negotiating. The music biz is 90 percent fun; this was the other 10 percent.

I told her the flop house was “not habitable.” Also, I mentioned my guys were 46-years- old and up. “We’re not college kids.”

She said, “We didn’t know you’re that old.”

Look at the photo in the brochure then! I asked her if she’d put her own family up in that dump. She said she would.

At about one-third of my gigs, the client forgets her checkbook. These clients are all wound up in the simcha (wedding or bar mitzvah) and don’t have “paying the band” on their minds. According to the Talmud, day-laborers are supposed to get paid the same day they work. Doesn’t always work that way.

I pay the band anyhow. Like clockwork, twice a month.

Money and music go together, particularly with a bunch of middle-aged musicians. If you have kids, you don’t have the luxury of starving to death. Nobody in Yiddishe Cup is a doctor. Everybody thinks a klez band is full of dilettante musicians who are doctors and lawyers. Not true.

The main deal with the band is showing up. If you miss a wedding, there’s no second chance.

Plumber: Ma’am, sorry I couldn’t make it yesterday. I’m here to fix your toilet.

Musician: Ma’am, sorry I missed your wedding yesterday. OK, kill me.

Weddings are the Rolls Royces of working-musician gigs. Nobody wants to be a wedding-singer except real musicians. They die for wedding gigs. The money is good and there’s usually good food. Now, we’ll occasionally get “wraps,” but 90 percent of the time we get the same food at the guests — which is always salmon. Can’t be in a Jewish band without liking salmon.

I had one guy in my band who used to bring baggies to all the gigs. Particularly useful at buffet lines.

The band always eats after the guests. That means we need to bring snacks — or eat a ton of hors d’oeuvres — to tide us over.

I always write “client will provide staff meals” in the contract. And I underline: “This must be arranged ahead of time with the caterer.”

I know a union leader who plays mandolin in a folk band. He’s a hyphenated guy. Musician-union honcho. And I’ve read about a lawyer who writes hit pop tunes. No, I heard him on Terri Gross’ show. And who can forget Mark Warshavsky, the famous Polish Yiddish songwriter/lawyer.

All hail Charles Ives, Wallace Stevens and Denny Zeitlin — the jazz piano-playing  shrink.

Just about everybody in my band is a don’t-quit-your-day-job guy. Exception, our violinist, Steve Ostrow, who teaches and/or plays music all day. He doesn’t do anything that isn’t musical. Even his wife is a musician. His whole life is music. He also plays trombone, trumpet and classical guitar. He went to Eastman on a performance scholarship and saved up when he played seven years in a Venezuelan orchestra. Then he decided not to have kids and live happily ever after.

It helps not to have kids in the music biz.

I have another friend — a single guy — who is one of the best klezmer violinists in the world. He has played all the festivals: Cracow, Weimar, Montreal. He lives in Cleveland and makes it on music alone too. He used to be in Yiddishe Cup. Then he went out on his own to make it internationally. Everybody in the klez world knows him. Steve Greenman. (Well, everybody in the klez world knows me too, so I guess that ain’t saying much.) The klez world is slightly bigger than a 12-inch pizza.

Never take less than the equivalent of two months’ rent on move in. If a person can’t pay that, you’ll be chasing that person from the get-go.

I once had a custodian who took a ring instead of a security deposit. The renter was an elderly retired nurse from Houston. Also, a felon. But we didn’t know that. She conned her way into the apartment with a dime store ring.

I did a little “self-help” — legal-talk for evicting her without the court’s permission. I got a couple guys, and we moved her stuff into the basement. Her lawyer took several thousand from me. That was my last self-help.

I’m not “mom and pop” — I have a layer between me and the tenants: my on-site building managers/custodians.

How did I get to be bigger than “mom and pop.” First off, it helped my father was Toby Stratton. He bought a six-store, 21-suiter in 1965. He put down 8 percent and got two second mortgages. That’s heavy leverage. Gambling.

The band biz — we’re not “mom and pop” either. “Mom and pop” in the music biz would be a bar band — $100 per night per guy. Yiddishe Cup is above that. We’ve played the soft-seat auditoriums. That’s what the music biz calls the college auditoriums with cushy chairs.

For example, we played Loras College in Iowa and ate at the Ground Round afterward — the only place in Dubuque that was open after 10 p.m.

We’ve played Mt. Union College, Beloit College, Michigan State, UNC-Greensboro, Chautauqua Institution, City of El Paso (Tex.), Kenyon, Wabash, Cottey College in Nevada, Missouri. That’s the gateway to the Ozarks. A lot of places.

The thing I do with my hands — no joke — is play the clarinet.  I have the same clarinet I had when I was 13.  Selmer Signet X.  I like pushing the keys and hearing the pads snap shut on the black wood.  My clarinet is pretty indestructible.  I once heard an expert say clarinets “get blown out” after a couple years.  Not mine.  It works fine.

Landlord and musician . . . I’m a hyphenated guy.  Depends what kind of cocktail party I’m at, whether I say “landlord” or “musician” first.

I don’t try to hide the landlord part.  I should!  Everybody hates landlords.  Nobody paid rent as a child, so people think they should live free as adults too.  The walls, heat and water — that should be free, like the wind, rain and baby food.

I used to feel guilty about charging rent.  I hadn’t really done anything to deserve the rent, other than to maintain a building —a building which I hadn’t even built. Now I’m middle-aged, and, hey, I feel fine collecting rent.  Somebody has to keep these old buildings from falling down.

Landlord-musician.  I know one more in Cleveland.  He’s a self-described “dago.”  Tough guy.  Wears a toupee, plays accordion and trumpet, and tells dirty jokes.  He’s got a strip center on the West Side.

Strip center — weird term.  Short for shopping strip center.

I don’t have any strip centers.  I have about 25 storefronts: Main Street-style.  The stores are on street level, with apartments above.  Like Disneyland’s Main Street.  But with mice.  Not Mickey.

There’s no money in the arts: I’ve rented to art galleries.  They all go under.  Things that don’t go under: bars, beauty parlors, tanning salons and flower shops.

There’s no money in the arts. My old clarinet teacher told me that.  He used to eat salami sandwiches while I took lessons.  That stunk.  Mr. Golub.

He bought a building across from his music store; named the building after his daughter, The Joyce Manor; and sold it years later.  He said he regretted he didn’t move with his brother to D.C. and make an even bigger killing there in a real boom town.

Golub’s Music Center.  He had a neon saxophone on the sign.  That, alone, drew the customers.  Inside, there were bongos and guitars.

Mr. Golub couldn’t play by ear. That mystified him.

Mystifies me — playing by ear. But I can do it —  somewhat.

I’m the klezmer guy.  I go to shivas (funeral wakes) and tell the mourners that, and, yeah, they recognize me. They say, “Oh, you’re the klezmer guy.”

Everybody needs to be some kind of  “guy” (or “gal”).  Cable guy.  Computer guy.  Pool guy.  I became the klezmer guy because I put together the longest-lasting Jewish band between Chicago and D.C.  Yiddishe Cup.

No mega money in this but it keeps me from going nuts.

My day job is real estate.  I’m a landlord.  I own and manage apartment buildings.  People call me up about low-water pressure, mice, clanging radiators.  I generally don’t fix the stuff; I usually hire repairmen.  My father used to say, “I didn’t send you to college to paint walls.”  Well, I painted a few walls anyway and pointed some bricks,  but that’s not my calling.