Adam Schneider in Chervona, Klezmer music and the Alberta Street Public House

Last night was my first night 'out on the town' here in Portland. One of Sarah's roommates, Adam (to whom I was unforgivably rude when I found out his uncle is Roy Schneider - yes, that one - but he's forgiven me anyway), plays the trombone - and I'm betting a few other instruments - is in a couple of bands in town, both based on Russian/Gypsy type music. There's a difference but I'm not knowledgeable enough to tell you what it is.

What? You too think you aren't familiar with the sound of Klezmer music? Yes, you really are; you just don't know it. And if your ears don't know it, your soul knows it (well, unless it's been extracted, like in this weird movie we watched, Cold Souls, in which case you wouldn't be reading this anyway, but I digress). As the band's leader says in an interview on PDExposed, People connect to this music in their genes (not their Levi jeans), and they can't explain it...

The Alberta Street Public House is an interesting venue and feels very much like the old private house I imagine it once was. Well, if you grew up in a Fellini-esque style house, it does. One side is open floor with benches and small tables randomly scattered on the sides with the stage on the back wall. It is long and narrow and the wooden floor is great for stomping one's feet and rattling one's fillings. The  other side - past the entrance where our hands were drawn on in Sharpie with an imaginative flair that undoubtedly means something I will never be hip enough to know - is the bar, a long narrow room with what I think is a pretty cool old bar but it was dark and crowded and I was too busy checking out the people to register much of the architecture. Someone was actually, and I swear this is true, talking about P.G.Wodehouse. I wanted to stop, but...sometimes I do restrain myself. Believe it or not. I kept walking.

Out back and around the sides was the smoking, drinking, get-out-of-the-pressurized-compartment zone. Out back was where I met a girl who turned to me and said, "Do you mind if I...go ON about...the center...of..." She did for awhile and then mentioned she was an herbalist and how a certain herb had helped a certain complaint...and then I asked her about a certain complaint (people who are affected by stress in the belly to a serious degree) and she told me all about Devil's Claw, which I'm going to check out, and her herbalist mentor at the Something Something that I am not going to check out. I'm familiar with Devil's Claw, and it seems weirdly appropos that it is supposedly a soothing agent for a wicked sharp pain.

The first band on, Holy!Holy!Holy!, is an Irish punk rock band, I only know this about that. The lead singer was naked and quite proud of the fact, though from an aesthetic point of view rather than a fairly moronic political one, he had no reason for much in the pride department (even if I AM of the 'everyone is beautiful in his own way' generation..., ok, he had really great hair). His entire philosophy, at least on the stage, seemed to be that all cops should be killed for true freedom to be achieved. His listeners seemed to like that, stomping and jumping with a few flailing arms that had me leaping behind Dan for cover at one point, Dan immobile as a redwood and sure to not bend under a flying limb or two. A comfort, truly. It was a good time to check out the bar until the last angry strains shuddered away.

And then, like the Good Witch Glenda in a Dali painting come to life, a kind sort of magic happened. The vibe of anger and sharpness was gently but swiftly turned by the words and energy of Chervona's front guy, Andre Timkin, who, in band-classy style, asked the audience to give it up for Holy!Holy!Holy! first and then went on to...who knows exactly what but it felt good, musical waves putting fun in the air.

 

The crowd mixed up, new arrivals and some of the crowd from the first band, and gave way to another sort of abandoned dancing, and happy faces. The guy in the kilt next to the girl in the A-line skirt, collared shirt and ballerina shoes, next to the six foot tall chick with long blond dreads (reminding me of a certain six foot blonde chick with dreads) with Doc Martens. The music flowed and pulsed like good blood in the veins, for two hours that seemed like 30 minutes.

Can you even count all of the instruments? I'm not sure I did, but there were two guitars, two trombones, a trumpet, an accordion, drums (was the drummer naked? I'm not sure, I was too mesmerized by the sound - sad, but true), I think maybe a clarinet at some point...I've seen videos of this band with a tuba too, but it wasn't there last night. The violin is achingly sweet or scorchingly fast, Adam played kick ass trombone, well, they were ALL good!...there was also a fabulous woman for awhile who sang traditional gypsy...um...that high and low vocalization that makes you want to burst out of your skin, sobbing crying or maniacally laughing or obsessed with the need to have really passionate sex, preferably with a gypsy stranger. Luckily, I avoided doing any of the above, but I was smiling a whole lot.

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Thanks, Adam! Thanks, Chervona! Thanks, Dan! An excellent first night out in Portland.