Recently, I was very saddened to hear of the loss of Debbie Friedman. Considered the leading light of Jewish American folk music, she brought together the sounds and spirit of 60’s folk artists such as Joan Baez, Peter Paul & Mary, Judy Collins with Jewish texts and themes. Debbie was also someone I backed up on guitar and was proud to call a friend.
Respectfully, her music, which contains a lot of campfire songs, is not something I’d recommend to most of my own listeners, especially the metalheads. However, it is music I’d highly recommend to their children and grandparents, particularly those of Jewish heritage. The amount of people touched by Debbie’s music is staggering, yet I somehow wasn’t familiar with it when I was younger. Most likely, her songs were played at the Jewish Day camp I attended from ages 8 to 12, but I probably wasn’t paying attention. Back then my ears were too wrapped around the music of these less overtly Jewish singers named Stanley Eisen and Gene Klein (they’d changed their names to Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons).
My own introduction to Debbie Friedman (no relation to Marty) came in my early 30’s. A recent transplant to New York, I received a call that her band needed an electric guitar player. One of her musicians, an acquaintance of mine, explained the situation: for years, she’d mostly done solo gigs, backing herself on acoustic guitar and occasionally adding a drummer, bassist and keyboardist. More recently, her management and label had been urging her to ‘cross over.’ Her keyboardist, David Bravo, had taken the reigns by giving her songs sophisticated arrangements similar to those of KD Lang, Suzanne Vega or James Taylor. This new sound called for delicate, clean, textural electric guitar- quite different from the bebop based jazz guitar I’d been immersed in and especially the speed metal of which I’d made a name for myself. Nonetheless, this friend, her drummer at the time, suggested I audition.
I gave it some thought. I supposed it couldn’t hurt to audition. Although not much of a ‘folk’ aficionado, part of the reason I’d moved to New York in the first place was to be able to experience many different types of musical situations. I’d already done local gigs for jazz and cabaret singers. So why not a folk singer?
I got the gig.
Immediately upon being hired, I began learning the extent of her influence. While at a passover dinner with extended family, a relative asked me how things were going. I mentioned my new ‘gig.’ “THE Debbie Friedman?” he asked? This followed by a shout across the table. “He’s playing with Debbie Friedman!” Other relatives, of various ages, teens to fifties, began crying out in unison. “Wow! You’re playing with DEBBIE FRIEDMAN?!” A fellow NY musician, upon hearing the news said “Debbie Friedman?! I used to sing her songs at camp!”
Backing Debbie, I’d find myself playing alongside top NY pros who’d played with everyone from jazz artists like Wayne Shorter and Ray Barretto to pop artists like Suzanne Vega, Moby and Paul Simon. One time the bassist was African bassist Bakithi Kumalo, the same guy who’d recorded that amazing bass lick during the break in Paul Simon’s hit song‘You Can Call Me Al.’ Sure Debbie’s songs were conceptually very simple, but the band supported her with a level of sensitivity, listening skills and focus that I hadn’t experienced before. Debbie herself turned out to be a very good listener who could immediately tell if something didn’t sound right. Everyone was kept on their toes. You did not want to have her look over during the show too often with a look that said something wasn’t right (although fair, she was not afraid to fire people). Playing in her band would raise the level of my playing significantly, more so than some gigs that called for many more notes. I would discover that there is a next level of professionalism required to back someone up, support their vision, enhance their performance without getting in the way and not make the show about you.
Doing shows all over the US, Debbie and I would have many adventures, becoming unlikely allies. When an irate stewardess kept hassling us about placing our guitars in the overhead bins, Debbie and I would high five each other after we both threw a collective fit, won the battle with the flight attendant and nearly got ourselves thrown off the plane in the process. Another time, she and I took a road trip to Mandolin Brothers in Staten Island, with about five guitars between us, all in need of repair. Not knowing that all repairs required an appointment weeks in advance, we were made to feel unwelcome, told to take our guitars home and given a later date to come back. I looked the guy straight in the eye and whispered Do you know who this is? It’s Debbie Freidman… giving the whole spiel about who she was. He was not impressed. Debbie tried a different strategy. Recognizing that they were about the same age (mid-50’s) and part of the flower power generation, she started casually talking about a subject close to to both their hearts: old Martin Guitars. As she opened her case, his eyes lit up like Shabbas candles “Whoa! Is that a pre-war Martin 1936 D-18?! Can I play it?” They hit it off, became guitar buddies and he let us leave all our guitars for repair.
Although not religious myself, Debbie’s gigs, which were often in large Jewish Community Centers and Synagogues, helped give me a stronger glimpse into my own heritage. Between the Debbie Friedman band, TSO- the popular Christmas concert I toured with and Acrassicauda- the Iraqi heavy metal band I produced whose members are Muslim, I had the three major religions of the world covered.
Debbie loved to tell jokes. When I told her I was reuniting with my old heavy metal band, she asked me to remind her the name of the group. When I told her, she answered ‘That’s perfect. Now you have ‘Testament’ and the ‘Old Testament.’ When it came to her sexual orientation (which she was very open about), she told me she’d once had a husband, then added “That was before I converted.” She also loved stories. One of my favorites goes something like this:
A friend or relative comes over to Debbie’s place with her young child, a toddler. While the grown ups are talking over coffee, the kid is glued to the TV watching ‘Barney And Friend’s.’ All of a sudden, Barney, the purple dinosaur, busts into the ‘Aleph Bet Song,’ Debbie’s children’s song which teaches the Hebrew alphabet. Debbie had never received a request for a ‘mechanical license’ for the song, as per the standard requirement for composers and publishers. In other words, this god damned purple dinosaur is on TV singing Debbie’s song without her permission. So what did she do?
She sued Barney!
What actually happened was a series of phone calls and meetings between her attorney and those representing the creative team behind the Barney show. ‘Team Barney’ tried to get out of paying her by claiming they thought the song was public domain. Without a purple leg to stand on, they were forced to pay Debbie the sum of all mechanical royalties from the performance, which resulted in upwards of ten thousand dollars. While the entire matter had been settled out of court, I could never get the image out of my head of Barney the Dinosaur himself taking the witness stand in the courtroom, being cross examined, and explaining to the judge and jury in that stupid voice: “Well gosh boys and girls, I guess uh… ya know, even Barney himself makes a mistake now and then. I coulda sworn the song was pubic domain, heh heh heh’.”
Debbie stood up for herself and sued that annoying purple scam artist. You know something? That’s kind of metal.
Goodbye Debbie. It was great playing with you. You were always great to me. I was probably the most unlikely person to ever play in your band but you made me feel so welcome and become my friend. We’re all going to miss you.