RIENLP1096 Detroit-born, Hamburg-based troubadour and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Kahn and New Yorker master fiddler Jake Shulman-Ment have been playing and traveling together for nearly twenty years. Having worked in so many bands and projects (including The Painted Bird and Brothers Nazaroff), they have finally joined up to record an true analog duo record: The Building & Other Songs. It is, as Kahn says, "the most personal and intimate selection of songs I've ever recorded. And with Jake, it was like recording it with a brother."
The interpretations range from radical treatments of modern Yiddish songs such as Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman's title track "Der Binyen / The Building" to new Yiddish translations of some of Kahn's lyrical heroes: Cohen, Brecht, Springsteen, Guthrie, and Waits. Yiddish serves here as a kind of broken mirror, reflecting both despair and repair, exile and ecstasy, loss of trust and wanderlust. The title track is the key to it all: "Imagine your building… how it suddely burns and falls… a tower of steel on foundations of straw… Why sit and sigh?… Let us dance a tango till the dawn, warming our souls by the burning of straw."
1. Morgndike Simkhes (All Tomorrow’s Parties)(Reed/Kahn)05:04 2. Der Binyen / The Building (Schaechter-Gottesman/Kahn) 05:06 Prelistening: 3. Di Tsukunft (The Future) (Cohen/Kahn) 4:42 Prelistening: 4.Yeder Eyner Veys (Everybody Knows) (Cohen, Robinson/Kahn) 04:23 Prelistening: 5. Dos Lid Fun Der Molde (Das Lied von der Moldau) (Brecht, Eisler/Kahn) 02:12 Prelistening: 6. Zuchnower Nign (Kahn, Dawid) 02:03
Tracks side A:
7. Brokhshtiker / Broken Pieces (Markish, Kahn) 05:05 8. Mayn Tatns Hoyz (My Father’s House) (Springsteen/Kahn) 05:06 9. Dos Land Iz Dayn Land (This Land is Your Land) (Guthrie/Kahn) 03:55 Prelistening: 10. Heym Iz Mir (Home to Me) (Paxton/Kahn) 03:07 11. Tom Trauberts Kloglid (Tom Traubert’s Blues) (Waits/Kahn) 05:10
Produced by Michael Fetscher Recorded analog to tape October 2022 at White Fir Studios, Trochtelfingen-Steinhilben, Schwäbische Alb Engineered, mixed, and mastered by Michael Fetscher