Stones & Bones is what I call the album we coulda, shoulda released in 1987. Somehow we never found time to organize what could have been our hottest album — maybe even (I'd like to think) a jazz crossover hit.
Our 1987 personnel lineup balanced the near-telepathic bass/rhythm axis of Thornton/Linscott/Liberman with the melodic and percussive innovations of soon-to-be avant-garde stars Ben Goldberg and Kenny Wollesen. With Jazz-Babies in the can, we felt free to discard standard repertoire and explore new ways of playing, including: 1) a funkily authentic 1910 street-band sound influenced by Belf's Ruminskiy Orkester; and 2) klezmer/New Orleans/bebop/Twilight Zone originals composed by me and Goldberg. We also experimented with African music, Stravinsky, and free improvisation. Hardcore traditionalists? Radical revisionists? The Klezmorim were two, two, two mints in one!
We did innumerable jazz festival broadcasts and TV shows in France, Germany, Sweden, and Holland. Hip European audiences pushed us to do our best work ever. There's a ton of concert tapes floating around, featuring our wildest improvisations and a wealth of unreleased oddities. Some enterprising record label could — should — assemble these into the best The Klezmorim album of all time. The stuff was hot! Would you like the chance to enjoy these heat-seeking rockets? Email Steve Netsky at Rounder Records and tell him you wanna hear this album!