Old and New Memories
By David Budin

A lot of the things I did and the concerts I saw this past week brought back memories. I saw three shows at Cain Park, just this week. Actually, that’s not exactly true. I saw two shows and I was in another one. When you’re doing a show, you don’t get to see it. I saw the audience. It’s an interesting way to view a show. With the bright lights in your eyes, you can see only the first few rows most of the time, and you can’t see anyone very clearly.

But I was up on stage singing and talking for two hours and I saw people smiling, sometimes laughing, nodding to the music and, in at least one case, nodding off, and right in the front row, too. Well, I’m sure he must have been very tired from a long, hard day. I can’t really think of any other reason …

Anyway, that was Tuesday, and it was the reunion, after 35 years, of a folk duo called David and Denise. I’m David; she’s Denise. And as I said at the show, unlike many of those other old groups that reunite for concerts after many years, Denise and I are both original members of David and Denise. If you missed it, and the vast majority of the population did, we’re planning to do an anniversary-of-our-reunion concert in a year or two. Please make a note of that. Thank you.

Then on Friday, I played another gig, backing up my brother, also a folk-pop singer-songwriter, Noah Budin, and Cantor Kathy Sebo in a monthly Friday evening Jewish service called “Rock My Soul Shabbat,” that incorporates folk, pop, rock, traditional, klezmer, Middle Eastern and other styles of music with a 10-piece band at The Temple—Tifereth Israel in Beachwood.

I stopped playing music professionally – or thought I had – in 1980, and started doing other things, like music journalism, and then regular journalism. Back when I was a rock musician and sometimes-folk musician, I never thought that one day I’d be playing a regular monthly gig at Friday night services in a temple. And I certainly didn’t think I’d be playing two regular Friday night services at two temples, which I do. I also play in my cousin Cantor Ilana Wolpert’s “Friday Night Chai” services at Congregation Bethaynu. Between the two places, that means I attend 24 services a year. Last year alone doubled my lifetime attendance.

After last Friday’s service, I headed down to Akron to hear a band from New York called Griffin and the True Believers at Annabell’s Lounge on West Market Street. I don’t know Akron too well, but it’s kind of small and fairly easy to find your way around.

And it’s not that far from Cleveland. Does that mean it is Cleveland? I’m sure that people from Akron would say no. But, for instance, I was recently asked to write about Cleveland’s music scene for a company in Massachusetts that publishes area guides for college students. They assumed that I was going to include Akron and Kent. I hadn’t planned to do that because they said “Cleveland,” but they thought that meant Akron as well. And most Cleveland newspapers and magazines include Akron clubs and events in their arts and entertainment listings, so it does feel – at least to me, a Clevelander – like Akron is melding into Cleveland.

The reason I went to hear this band at Annabell’s is that the bass player is my nephew, Sam Budin, my brother’s son. Not Noah’s son – they live in Orange. Not Orange, New Jersey – Orange, Ohio (which is considered Cleveland). Sam is the son of my other brother, Howard, who lives in New York.

It’s a good band – different and unusual, kind of folk-punk, with quirky, catchy songs. They’re driving around the country booking gigs as they go. I don’t know how they got a gig at Annabell’s, and, in fact, “gig” may not even be the correct word. Annabell’s is a bar, kind of a funky bar; and downstairs is another bar, a funkier bar. I read someone’s blog, in which they mentioned visiting Annabell’s and said that it was the kind of place where when you wash your hands in the bathroom, it feels like they’re going to end up dirtier than when you started. I didn’t think it was that bad.

It’s in what seems like a pleasant neighborhood, with a couple of blocks filled with restaurants, bars and a good coffeeshop called Angel Falls Coffee Co. Across the street are nice old houses and apartments. But the basement of Annabell’s looks like someone’s rec room from the early ‘60s, with a low ceiling that’s painted black to make it feel even lower, and linoleum floor tiles in geometric patterns. Of the10 people down there, two worked there, one was the performer going on after Griffin and the True Believers, two were a young couple playing pool, and four were drunk young people at the bar. I was the only one there who had come specifically to see the band.

It was a last-minute booking, there was no publicity, and even if there had been, no one around here has heard of the band. When the band played, for the most part, the four drunks at the bar yelled to each other at least as loudly as the music, which was coming out of speakers that were two or three times larger than the small space required. For a couple of songs, the band – acoustic guitar, electric bass, drums and glockenspiel – played really loudly, which momentarily earned them the respect of a couple of the drunks. Then when the group went back to its quirky softer songs, the drunks yelled louder than you might think possible, or, at least, probable.

The next night, Saturday, I went to Cain Park to hear The 5 Browns, the young piano-playing siblings. I thought it would be really interesting and exciting to hear five people playing grand pianos at the same time. It wasn’t. They all play well, but – I don’t know – I guess I thought that five grand pianos would sound like more than it did. I mean, they opened with Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and they were all wailing away on their pianos, but, you know, Gershwin played it all by himself on one piano. If you know what I mean.

Most of their selections were as hackneyed and overdone as Rhapsody. The Browns seem like wonderful kids, and obviously super talented, but something was missing. And contributing to the overall disappointment of the evening, the sound, as always, almost everywhere, was not too good – in this case, muddy and uneven. Cain Park is the number-one best place to see a concert in this region, but it often – along with just about every other venue these days – has sound problems. The Beachland Ballroom and the House of Blues are consistently the best in that regard; everyone else needs work.

Opening the show for The 5 Browns was the local children’s chorus the Singing Angels. Except for seeing the group on a few TV shows, I have successfully managed to avoid actually attending one of its shows since its inception 42 years ago. I remember reading countless interviews with its founder and longtime director, Bill Boehm, about how much he hated rock music. Well, I figure rock music has been around for more than 50 years now; and while you don’t have to like it, you might as well accept that it’s obviously here to stay and, because so many millions of people have enjoyed it for such a long time, there may be something worthwhile in it.

The Singing Angels’ Cain Park performance, I believe, included only half, or maybe one-third, of the whole group. They sing fairly well, like most decent school choirs. They are obviously well trained (at times they reminded me, a lot, of performing dogs or other animals) and quite disciplined. But what’s with those super-hokey “dance” routines and skits? This group began in 1964. I remember 1964. These routines would have been considered hokey back then. Seriously.

And where can learning these routines lead these kids – I mean, now that The Lawrence Welk Show is long gone? The dancing and skits are a major distraction. I know that all the kids’ grandparents will disagree with this, but they should just let the kids sing.

They did, however, let the cutest kid in the world – a little boy named Luke – sing a solo (“Edelweiss” from The Sound of Music – what else?). He did a terrific job. But, Luke, listen to me, try to resist the dancing thing. Get an agent. Put it in your contract: No dancing. Instead, take dance lessons and later on, when you’re good at it, get into some shows. But, you know – kids … will he listen to me? Probably not.

Anyway, despite what I think about it, I understand that the group has provided good training for a lot people, including many who have continued on as professional musicians. In fact, one of them, Celia Hollander Lewis, performed with me last week at Cain Park, as part of David and Denise’s backup group. And another member of that group, music educator and founder of Roots of American Music, Kevin Richards, has a daughter who performed with the Singing Angels in the performance I saw on Saturday.

The night after The 5 Browns and Singing Angels concert, I was back at Cain Park, but – and this is one of the great things about Cain Park – it was like being in another world from the previous night. A mini-festival of ‘60s and ‘70s country-rock artists – Poco, Pure Prairie League, New Riders of the Purple Sage and Chris Hillman – brought out hundreds of old (former and current) hippies. For this concert, the sound was excellent. Plus the weather was perfect and the music was nice. It brought back memories. And I saw a lot of old musicians I used to play with in bands. That brought back memories, too.

The whole week brought back memories. When I saw the young musicians – my nephew’s band, The 5 Browns and the Singing Angels, it reminded me of starting out in music. But then, when I saw the old, reunited bands, it made me think that maybe I could do that again. And so did the fact that I actually did it again this past week, with my reunited duo. And so did the fact that at the old-bands concert, I ran into Bob Sandham, whom I met 30 years ago when we both backed up Alex Bevan, and then Bob and I played for a while as a duo. Bob said he thought we should resurrect that duo, and this time call ourselves the Elderly Brothers.

See, for those of you too young to remember, the most popular and influential duo ever, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, was the Everly Brothers. If you heard them it would bring back memories – even if you never heard them before. It’s hard to explain. It’s like what Scott Lax, the writer, said to me after my concert last week. He said, “That brought back memories I never had.”

I knew exactly what he meant. And a lot of things happen in Cleveland – which may or may not include Akron – that let you have that experience. And that’s another thing that makes Cleveland a cool place to be.

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