Ok. Ok. We told you in the print version that there would be a longer interview available online. Well, there will be, we just didn't say when. Come back, uh, eventually, to read the whole thing. -ed

IN>Tim:  When I put on my boxers backwards I'm a girl.

Anna:  You think they would print an interview if there wasn't a godamned thing about music in it?

Eric:  They might. Why do they always put us together...booking people...we seem really different.

A:  Of course we're different but to the laymen. We do the same kind of weird old music that no one listens to.

E:  We really have one instrument in common, the bass.

A:  But we play in the same keys.

Tim:  We do share songs.

A:  Old folk music is old folk music, and it's old folk music from Eastern Europe and I don't care how you play...

E:  See I don't think of it as old folk music...

A:  I do...its fusion jazz klezmer.

T:  That's a problem too, people always say because a lot of our songs are klezmer songs we're automatically a Klezmer band...It's always klezmer klezmer klezmer...

E:  I'd say fifteen percent of our songs are Klezmer and the rest is original, Arabic, Turkish, but when I talk to booking people they always pair us up.

A:  I got it; the coffee's kicking in...Maybe they pick up on our dangerous subversive vibe...that we're punk rock.

E:  I love punk rock.

A:  Even though it's not really.

E:  But it is.

Dave:  But if you talk to someone who's older who’s Jewish and they like klezmer music they think we're the furthest thing from it, but to us playing the music it's like punk

A:  It's because we play aggressively

T:  And because that's how me and Dave learned how to play...fast sloppy chords.

E:  Punk music originally was partly a reaction to all this over-produced over intricate sounds coming out of the sixties, and it just got back to simplicity, and some of the stuff we do is the same way.

T:  People group us together because we're fairly youthful, it's a dying music.

A:  Made by dead people.

E:  You think it's a dying music?

A:  Well it's coming back around, but it was.

T:  I think it's dying music in the sense that times are changing, a lot of the traditional songs that we play were written in such a different time that they had different meaning, all the traditions they were written for are dying because of the way times are changing, that's what I mean as far as dying.

E:  They reference some cultures that aren't even around anymore.

T:  That's what I mean. So the songs themselves have different meaning to the traditions that aren't really being taught or practiced by the next generation.

E:  I envy you. guys because you're a couple, Tim and Anna, and Tim and David are friends.

A:  I often wish we had a clarinet or an accordion or a drum, something else.

T:  But then that's always a problem. We all get along so well and we've all been friends for so long, it's hard to think about incorporating something else into it.

A:  I feel like you two tolerate me

D:  You're worthy of tolerance! You do demand a certain amount of tolerance.

A:  The primadonna gets away with everything?

D:  Madonna's fucking rad. I don't know why you're talking about her but she's awesome.

T:  I'd like to ask how did you become involved in music, all those cheesy questions.

E:  My parents were part of a collective at an anarchist book and record store so I got to hear records from all over the world, and I didn't know anything about categories and I'd just pick up a record and thought it looked cool and took it home. I studied piano and I studied opera.

D:  Are you more of a singer?

E:  I don't know about that, but all I'm saying is that I very much wanted to be in that establishment and then at some point the anarchism came out. I was a teen in the eighties. I was Reaganified and disconnected from any sense of real history even though it was all there at the book store and in my parent's discussions, then here I find myself in this operatic establishment trying to work my way up the hierarchy and feeling alienated and not feeling that this had effect on the people, but I left and decided that I have my voice so I can use it for my own purposes instead of letting others use it and control it.

A:  I have a great voice, a huge voice. I sing all the time. But anyone I've ever sung for tells me to cut out that infernal noise. Nobody likes it. I don't even like it. My parents didn't like it. My choir teacher didn't like it.

D:  When I was growing up in church I used to sing out of key on purpose super loud so everyone could hear me because I hated fucking singing in church.

E:  But you still used it as a tool of suberversion by singing loud and out of tune.

D:  Yeah it was a way of expressing myself of saying why are we here, and fuck you.

E:  I co-founded another band, The Flying Bokhara Orkestah. It's an Arabic and Turkish music band. Klezmer and beyond is a cultural context I grew up in because I'm Jewish, but with the Arabic music sometimes I wonder if I even have a right to play this music, because it's not of my culture, and of course it's a little more charged because I'm Jewish. Do you ever have conflict with klezmer music...because you're not Jewish

A:  Only at shows when there's a bunch of Jews and they expect some kind of solidarity from us and they want to talk about bar mitzvah's and stuff. My dad's side of the family is Jewish. Sometimes I'm worried that a person expecting to hear klezmer music will be disappointed with our version. I like the recordings of the traditional style klezmer music from the 20's and 30's better than the style we play but we're not capable of playing the way those musicians did. I feel like we misrepresent to a point.

T:  I always have felt kind of weird about it because I'm not Jewish. I've always felt really good about playing it because I like it so much but half of me feels guilty for playing. Recently I've kind of started reading more and thought that if I educate myself about the music I'll feel better about playing it and I've also realized that tons of Jewish people I've met through playing this music don't even know what it is. They don't know anything about it. They don't know its origins, so that makes me feel better about it. But there's still the Jewish imposter or something like I'm a wannabee Jew.

A:  At the same time we feel we can relate to it and where it was coming from because of the downtrodden history of the klezmers.

T:  And all of the music that we play was music that was made from being repressed. It's from the gutter. In a way all the music that I really like has those roots. It's nice to play it and let peoplehear it who normally wouldn't.

A:  Then you take something and make it your own, you change the style and the feeling. There's nothing wrong with that.

D:  I feel like I'm out of place a lot of the time. But where everyone's at in this time period, it's more like stretching the boundaries out then bringing them closer together. We're playing the music for everyone to enjoy.

A:  Roots, schmoots!

D:  At the same time I respect where the music came from, the repressive part. It is just fun music to play, a good time for everyone, the listener and the player. <OUT