Eclectic Company: Valse, Sher and Boogie On Down

Now that the world has been made safe for Klezmer, the Heinz 57 varieties form of Jewish music from Eastern Europe that’s one part mariachi horns, one part circus calliope, one part Romani (Gypsy to you) fiddling, one part Tin Pan Alley crooning, and 53 parts sounds of the Jewish diaspora, wherever the people and their music have roamed, you can pretty much find work playing in a Klezmer band, in New York and other big cities, at least once a week, and in some months more often than that. Those gigs range from concerts and lecture demonstrations at synagogues to dances, weddings and special events, in public and private spaces, and you never know where you’re going to find them.

That’s pretty much the same schedule for Cajun musicians in Southwest Louisiana, where family restaurants make dance floor space for diners and social dances are held at community centers, church halls, and the like. Whether it’s Klezmer or Cajun, you really can’t help yourself; the music is so infectious you’ve just got to move. But recently, I found myself at gigs by Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys (performing their special blend of Klezmer Meets Bluegrass) in the packed Long Beach (New York) Public Library community room, and by Chris Miller and Bayou Roots (covering the Cajun waterfront, with old and popular tunes in Cajun French and English) in the jammed tiny Broad Street (Lake Charles) restaurant, Sabine Pass Crab Shack, where dancing was the last thing you could do. Both shows were crammed into spaces too small for their overflowing audiences, and with aisles barely legal for the fire codes, I could only bounce up and down in my seats, hoping not to bang into the little old lady (my mom) or her neighbors surrounding us in Long Beach, and in Lake Charles, ducking the wait staff carrying platters of crabs and catfish to eager diners, and the tiny little girl twisting her way around the restaurant.

In the Long Beach Public Library, favorite hang of my mom’s posse, where most of the concert-goers would prefer to sit than to dance, the seats are free, but advance general seating tickets are handed out first come, first served. On concert day, for Leverett and the Boys, not only were all the chairs taken, there were tushies on every available window ledge, and some latecomers made do with their wheelchairs or the seats of their walkers.

At the Crab Shack on Friday nights, you’ve got to come early to get a table among the families of all ages; the music doesn’t start until 6:30, but the restaurant starts filling up at 5:00, and by the time Bayou Roots kicks out the jams, much of the room has already turned over for the second seating, while latecomers! crowd the entryway and mill around on the street outside. The night I was there, advised to come early so I could scarf down a fabulous fresh fried platter of just about everything while listening to the band, I was lucky to snag the last open table up front just before 6:00. And the crowds kept coming. It was so crowded that Ervin Lejeune, accordion-builder and son of accordion legend Iry Lejeune, who had come to jam, sat and played fiddle from his a dinner table down the side of the room behind me.

In the Klezmer meets bluegrass room, Margot Leverett’s boys trickled onstage. I met bassist Marty Confurius wheeling his bull fiddle to the elevator about 10 minutes before showtime, but once the music started he gathered concentration and intensity, and his fingers flew. Barry Mitterhoff plays mandolin with the Boys when he’s not on the road with Hot Tuna, the acoustic duo of bassist Jack Casady and guitarist Jorma Kaukonen that broke out of the Jefferson Airplane/Starship. Mitterhoff’s an exquisite mandolin player, knocking off graceful and complex solos in bluegrass mode, and mournful tones in Klezmer. He played a birthday tribute to the late great mandolinist and originator of Bluegrass, Bill Monroe, so deftly and speedily that his fingers were a blur on the strings. Guitarist Joe Selly showed his jazz chops in several tasty solos that weren’t hardly strictly bluegrass, or for that matter, Klezmer. The group’s usual fiddler, Kenny Kosek, was ably subbed for this event by Jake Shulman-Ment, whose “krekhts” or crying musical rifs sounded just like a human voice. Bandleader Leverett is a classically trained award-winning clarinetist of great sensitivity and fluidity, and she drives the engine of her band with precision and finesse. Eventually the band sang, and on the folksong “Tumbalalaika,” which Mitterhoff said was his mother’s favorite, we all joined in, in Yiddish and English.

Chris Miller is self-taught on the Cajun accordion, but his chops brought his previous band, Louisiana Kingfish, to play at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2001, so you know he’s done an excellent job of it. He’s the centerpiece of his quintet, also playing fiddle and harmonica, but the Barbe High School and First Presbyterian Church Choral Director is first and foremost a fine vocalist. At the Crab Shack, Miller traded Cajun French vocal duties with 6-string electric bass player Tim Broussard, guitarist and songwriter Ray Ellender covered the Wilson Picket hit “Don’t Let The Green Grass Fool You,” Danny Peet laid down a danceable groove, and Chad Cormier played some wicked and unexpected turns on the fiddle that took Cajun music up a notch. His smooth drawn out bowing alternating with clipped runs is from some other dimension. I could have listened to him play all night. But I had “Cinderella” at ACTS to see, and so I dashed out, fingers popping, two-stepping to the car, and zoomed off to the Railroad Avenue theater.

Later that night, after some fine Rogers and Hammerstein songs that I didn’t remember came from “Cinderella,” there was still time for a little lagniappe, so I dropped into Sha Sha’s just as Southbound — Brian Racca on lead guitar, Eric Sylvester on acoustic rhythm guitar, Don Zimmerman on bass, and Billy Hammond on drums — were winding up their show. As I walked in, the quartet were well and truly rocking “The Weight,” one of my favorite numbers by The Band, then they closed the night with Creedence Clearwater’s “Cripple Creek,” because it’s “our” (Lake Charles’s) song. Whoooo-eeee!!! There were only a handful of us left in the bar, all on the shady side of youth, but there we were, belting out the words, and dancing. Next time, I’ll go see them first!