Eclectic Company: The Wheels of Karma Grind Exceeding Small — Wretched Refuse String Band and Friends at Brooklyn, New York's Jalopy Theater, Gospel Tent, Economy Hall Tent, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival

I was in Brooklyn, New York a couple of weeks ago, waiting for a concert to begin and wondering how we decide which music is appropriate for funerals and memorials, thinking back over services I've attended over the years, because I'd just been to a funeral in Lake Charles where we heard recordings of Frank Sinatra and an instrumental version of "Let There Be Peace On Earth And Let It Begin With Me," which felt wrong, and was a total bummer. Right after that funeral, I left for New Orleans, and in both the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival's Gospel tent, where everything sung by Sherman Washington and the Zion Harmonizers was uplifting (yet made me weep spontaneously), and in the Economy Hall tent, where Dr. Michael White et al held forth in memoriam for jazz soprano saxophonist and clarinetist Sidney Bechet, which pulled a tentful of second liners to their feet to joyfully bob and weave their umbrellas indoors while a thunderstorm raged outside, I'd felt what I would hope to feel when celebrating the life of a late loved one.

Back in Brooklyn, I was sitting on a folding chair in a tiny theater (legal occupancy 74 souls) to hear members of the Wretched Refuse String Band send the departed soul of their bandleader, fiddler, singer, and raconteur Richie "Citizen Kafka" Shulberg onward on the wheel of karma. When he died back in March, Shulberg left behind an already-booked Wretched gig at the Jalopy, so the band along with family and friends decided to use the date to celebrate the musical life of the wonderfully crazy man who'd brought them together nearly 30 raucous years ago. As I sat in the Jalopy, amid friends and acquaintances and other Wretched and Citizen fans, it turned out that the right music for this memorial were the songs that conjured up warm, clear memories of the departed.

When I thought about traveling to Brooklyn for the Jalopy date, I had not only wanted to wake Richie Shulberg, whose lust for life had been enormous, and whose radio shows and concerts and tapes had always given me great pleasure, but because I had strong feelings that needed some kind of release, and the music promised to be both cathartic and zany – a set made up of familiar old-timey and bluegrass tunes and novelty numbers, delivered slightly off-kilter by extraordinarily talented musicians, as extruded through the wringer of Wretched comedic excess. After all, the alumni Wretcheds are among the most accomplished working sidemen, session players, Broadway pit orchestra members and conservatory faculty members playing string band music, whose work has literally covered the musical waterfront. Just a sampling: Bob Jones (guitar, vocals), a highly regarded luthier, who's played with Kenny Kosek (fiddle, vocals), played Broadway with Jerry Garcia, in the musical "Big River" with John Goodman, and with Shulberg and Goodman, did sketch comedy on the Citizen Kafka radio show for years, and with Margo Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys; Larry Eagle (drums, percussion) plays with Bruce Springsteen, and is a member of the Andy Statman Trio (fractured jazz and klezmer); Jon Sholle (electric guitar) played on the soundtrack for Dennis Quaid's "The Rookie," and with Bob Dylan; Marty Cutler (banjo) played with Tito Puente and for Twyla Tharp's dancers; Marty Confurius (string bass) played for Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, and with Screamin' Jay Hawkins; and Matt Glaser (fiddle) who is all over Ken Burns' special "Jazz," is chair of the String department at Boston's Berklee School of Music, and has played in Lake Charles' Banners series with his own group, the Wayfaring Strangers.

Following Shulberg's funeral, I'd missed several tributes on New York area alternative and public radio stations, where Shulberg was also remembered for decades of producing musical and comedy mayhem. The WFMU-FM show, hosted by Irene Trudel, reminisced about the sketch comedy and musical adventuring that had been the monthly Citizen Kafka Show on WBAI (engineered and recorded by Edward Haber) from the late 1970s through the 1990s, and included excerpts from those shows and live commentary. The Citizen Kafka performances featured the Citizen as DJ and fool, and brought together fiddler Kenny Kosek and actor John Goodman to form an unholy aural alliance. By all accounts, the Trudel-Kosek-Goodman-Haber show had been priceless, as were other programs rebroadcasting vintage Citizen Kafka shows. Hearing about those recaps, I was sent right back to the early years of the Citizen and Wretched shows, where I could see not only the younger versions of the musicians I'd loved, but also the younger version of myself I wanted to remember. So I reserved seats for both sets at the Jalopy memorial, and it was a good thing I did. The house was mostly turned over between shows; but more than 60 people calling to buy tickets in advance, including many close and long-time friends of Shulberg and his family, had to be turned away.

The gigs-cum-memorial opened with an incredibly well-made slide/video clip retrospective of the Citizen's life and career. During both showings, family, friends and fans shouted out memories and guffaws as costumes, locations, and energetic performances were remembered and rediscovered. After the cascade of images, and reminiscent laughter, the screen was rolled away, revealing the musicians behind the curtain, who launched into surprisingly organized chaos, pacing through the Wretched songbook with nods to gospel in a cappella harmony and loving performances of trad tunes as well as "Thumbelina," the "Wretched Refuse Theme Song," and "Wheels of Karma," with ample soloing on all instruments throughout.

Throughout Shulberg's lifetime, whatever other influences the members brought to bear on the materials, the Wretcheds were an old-timey/bluegrass string band, with a repertoire leaning heavily toward the novelty song end of the spectrum, guided, in part, by Shulberg's extraordinarily broad musical archeology. [Viz, his work with Pat Conte on The Secret Museum of the Air, in which the results of his digging were aired on WBAI-FM and later on WFMU-FM.] But they were also the incubator for some enormously talented musicians, comedians, and entertainers, fusing southern string band music with northern post-industrial, scatological, and goofball ethnic humor. If the band was Shulberg's brainchild, it was nevertheless an egalitarian aggregation, and Shulberg, in his various guises, was its muse. Thankfully, a few of Richie Shulberg's performances are available on youtube, while old Citizen Kafka shows are on myspace, and there are Secret Museum archives on WFMU's website. "Wheels of Karma". Tribute to Richie Shulberg. The Citizen Kafka Show featuring John Goodman, Kenny Kosek, and Richie Shulberg on WBAI-FM. The Secret Museum archives.