This has been an incredibly interesting and thought provoking week of interviews for me, and I hope it is for all of you loyal blog readers out there as well. I don\u2019t usually do this, but I\u2019m going to give you a short preview of what\u2019s coming up tomorrow and Friday so you can get excited!<\/p>\n
I kicked off the week interviewing one of my favorite break out bands of 2011, Scars on 45 after their sound check for Star94\u2019s Jingle Ball show on Monday night. These guys (and gal) are quickly gaining momentum for their debut album in true millennium fashion\u2014 through television placements of their songs and the internet.<\/p>\n
Then I went on to interview the legendary leader of Hiroshima, Dan Kuramoto, about the band\u2019s recent decision to leave their record label and go indie. We discussed some of their changes in marketing strategy, the difficulties of crossing genres, and their quest to build an online community that\u2019s about more than selling their music.<\/p>\n
CP:<\/strong> Tell me about the new album!<\/em><\/p>\n FL:<\/strong> Well, we\u2019ve been a band for so long now, that it really felt like we deserved a little celebration. We have a lot of friends and fans that have supported us over the years, so we thought it would be really neat to put on this spectacle for all of them. We wanted to go through the history of our music. We played everything from the first song we ever learned as a band to the newest songs that haven\u2019t even been recorded yet. All of this was done in the midst of recording the documentary, and everything just came out so great that we decided to release it. We\u2019re one of those bands that just has this great energy live. We\u2019re essentially a live band. The whole thing just turned out pretty spectacular.<\/em><\/p>\n CP:<\/strong> How did the documentary come about?<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em>FL:<\/strong> Well, documentary films aren\u2019t something that can just get thrown together quickly. It started off with a documentary filmmaker, and they told us they wanted to do one on us, so the crew followed us around for years. They followed us around on our tours and did interviews throughout the years, in our homes, all of that. And then finally, they decide that they have enough footage to take it into the editing room and start putting it all together.<\/em><\/p>\n CP:<\/strong> The documentary is mainly focused on the struggles of the band and how the industry has changed over the years, correct?<\/em><\/p>\n FL:<\/strong> Yes, and you know what\u2019s funny about that is that we really had no idea that was going to be the focus of it as it was filming. That\u2019s what a documentary filmmaker does, they choose an angle and they go with it. I thought it was a really interesting focus, and so true. It\u2019s not something I ever really thought about. I never saw us as struggling to make a living in alternative music, it\u2019s just something we\u2019ve done for so long. But it was definitely interesting to see it all put together that way.<\/em><\/p>\n CP:<\/strong> Was there any one particular part of the film or process that was really important to you?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n FL:<\/strong> I think as a whole the experience is important to me. When I was a kid growing up, my Uncle Phil always had cameras. Everywhere we went, every holiday, he always was documenting it. He was the documentarian of my family. I guess with this film, I look at it like my old home movies. I\u2019m very sentimentally attached to it.<\/em><\/p>\n CP:<\/strong> Has the film changed your perspective on your career?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n FL:<\/strong> Not really, but it did make me see it through a different lens. The bottom line is that it\u2019s really difficult to play Yiddish music with a really progressive political focus mixed with Americana. We have incredibly dedicated fans, and to see the film\u2019s focus on the struggles really made me even more proud of what we\u2019ve done and the fans we have. It\u2019s just odd because that\u2019s just what we did all the time. You don\u2019t realize that that experience is going to be interesting to other people. I never even thought about that. It was also really refreshing to see the emphasis on the fact that we\u2019re not rich. I think a lot of people equate fame and awards and such with monetary success. They think \u2018Oh, you have a Grammy, you must be rich!\u2019 and that\u2019s just not true at all. We work very hard, and we have a very dedicated fan base. We are internationally known, but in a very small segment. I think it was very valuable to show that fame and musical success doesn\u2019t always equate to financial success. Especially in this time with all of the reality television shows and things like that- it\u2019s interesting to think about and show that side of it.<\/em><\/p>\n CP:<\/strong> With everything that has changed in the music business since you started 25 years ago, what do you see in the future for the Klezmatics?<\/em><\/p>\n FL:<\/strong> That\u2019s really a two-part question. I\u2019ll start with the business side of things.<\/em><\/p>\n The business is changing, and it has been rapidly changing for almost a decade now. I actually read an article recently about the rise of self-publishing happening with books and e-books and all of that in the publishing industry. I just thought to myself, \u2018Welcome! Join the club!\u2019 (laughs). We\u2019ve been dealing with this in music for so long, but now it\u2019s really expanding to other areas that have gone digital. But the music business is still in the midst of a really tumultuous change. I really can\u2019t predict what\u2019s going to happen, but I know that it can\u2019t settle where it is right now. It\u2019s too unstable. Who the heck knows what\u2019s going to happen? It\u2019s been very different to see the change over the last 25 years. We\u2019ve had to learn to negotiate the changes, and I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll learn to negotiate the changes to come.<\/em><\/p>\n But it\u2019s not just business we\u2019re talking about when we look into the future. It\u2019s always been first and foremost about the art and the music. We\u2019re rehearsing some new music, and looking to our next album. There are some old Yiddish socialist songs that really echo the \u201cOccupy\u201d movement that we\u2019re working with. They really deal with a lot of the same issues, so that\u2019s a bit about what we\u2019re going to be up to.<\/em><\/p>\n CP:<\/strong> Anything in particular you\u2019re looking forward to about playing Anthology?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n FL:<\/strong> We\u2019ve actually never been there, so I\u2019m excited to check out a new venue. For me, it\u2019s always exciting to go to a new place. When that happens, sometimes we\u2019ll meet people who have been fans since our first record but have never heard us live. That can be a really cool experience, so we\u2019ll try to play through a lot of our material from the beginning through the current stuff.<\/em><\/p>\n Special thanks to Frank London for taking the time out to chat with me! Be sure to take a listen to our Spotify playlist of Klezmatics\u2019 tunes, and don\u2019t miss them this Sunday!<\/p>\n The Klezmatics<\/a><\/p>\n WHAT: <\/em>The Klezmatics<\/strong><\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An Interview with Frank London of The Klezmatics by: Casey Pukl This has been an incredibly interesting and thought provoking week of interviews for me, and I hope it is for all of you loyal blog readers out there as well. I don\u2019t usually do this, but I\u2019m going to give you a short preview […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1442],"tags":[11512],"class_list":["post-4054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artists","tag-artist-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4054"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32968,"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4054\/revisions\/32968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Klezmatics5_110dpi_rgb.jpeg\" "\\"The")
<\/a>Following that lively discussion, I spoke with the focus of today\u2019s post\u2014 Frank London of The Klezmatics. The Klezmatics are celebrating their 25th<\/sup> anniversary as a group this year, and have released their 10th<\/sup> album, a two-CD set titled Live at Town Hall. The group was also recently the subject of documentary film, The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground. It\u2019s been a wild ride for the internationally renowned, Grammy award winning proponents of Jewish roots music, and watching the industry change over the years has sometimes been a rocky road to navigate. Keep reading to find out how the group has adapted to industry changes, London\u2019s feelings about the documentary, and what fans can look forward to for the future.<\/p>\n
\nWHEN: <\/span>Sunday, December 18, 2011, 6:00 & 8:00pm <\/strong><\/em>
\nTICKETS: $10-$49 <\/span>Buy Tickets<\/a><\/em>
\nMORE INFO: <\/span>Artist Profile<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n