BIOGRAPHY
The Silver Jews were born at the mouth of the
Hudson in 1990 when David Berman and Bob Nastanovich
joined Stephen Malkmus as the lessees of a cellar
apartment perched on a Jersey City hill beside
a wounded spice factory. The three actually
met four years earlier in 1986. Bob and David
had met in a university of Virginia dormitory
hallway. Shortly thereafter, Berman caught a
ride to a Cure concert with a malnourished chestnut
environmentalist whose co-pilot happened to
be upperclassman Stephen Malkmus.
Transplanted
to New Jersey after graduation, (these boys didn’t
feel they could afford to live any closer to
New York), Nastanovich went local as a maze-minded
NYC shuttle bus driver while Berman and Malkmus
took security guard posts at the Whitney Museum
of American Art, where the guards were, somewhat
comically, represented by the Teamsters Union.
When not prattling on about 20th century American
art with the lovely daughters of Europe or rescuing
Malkmus from some new bubblegum installation,
Berman stood at his post and penned odes to unwitting
au pairs and daydreamed lines from an Agnes Martin
poking out the museum’s front door.
New
York City days chasing a dime, Jersey City nights
chasing the bargain vodka with bargain beer…and
as much to impress the impenetrable clerks at
Pier Platters as to amuse themselves, the new
men accidentally became the Silver Jews. Silver
Jews: lopsided jams, moments of brilliance capsizing
beneath shout-outs, chop suey beats, slaphappy
solos, duct taped keyboard melodies and purloined
progressions from B-level SST bands, their songs
written on the spot and taped onto a candle wax-encased
boom box with one spot carved out for the built-in
mic. This was the sound of “Dime Map of
the Reef” and “The
Arizona Record” — the sound that
took the sock drawers of underground America
by storm in 1992 and 1993.
On the sunny side
of the tape hiss was what raised the band above
their tuneful cacophony — namely,
a bibliophile’s bent for an exacting turn
of phrase. As executed by the alchemic combination
of Berman’s rich poetic haw and Malkmus’ pin-up
harmonies, well-fixed lyrics became the Jews
calling card and imbued their early work with
a classic feel beyond their years.
Yet, true
callings called, and in 1994, David Berman left
New York for western Massachusetts to immerse
himself in the reading and writing of verse while
Malkmus and Nastanovich were living the golden
years of their Pavement star-turn. Then we he
least expected it, having given himself over
to life in a Yankee garret, Berman started writing
good songs — perhaps to keep one
foot out of the high ambition/low stakes world
of poetry that so frightened him. David invited
Bob and Steve, now adding fellow museum guard
John St. West to the band, to an old military
canine laboratory in the woods of north Mississippi
that he had rented for the summer. What followed, Starlite
Walker (1994) was the first studio-rendered
Jews recording. Recorded at Easley Studios in
Memphis after a few days of practice, the album
featured the Jews with extra players on pedal
steel and piano adding to the organic swoon.
Though all the tracks but one list Berman as
composer, the feel is that of a band — intuitive
and dynamic, alive — with rare courtesy
and manners displayed from track one on.
Their
musical heritage was The Band and X — if
only what lay ahead were as simple and plain
as those hallowed band names ... After the after-party,
a question remained — when did the tour
start? It was a big question that would be left
unanswered for a decade or more. Berman reviled
the impermanence of performance as an artistic
act. He had stage fright. He couldn’t leave
his dealer behind. He didn’t have arms.
Rival explanations seemed to elucidate nothing
but there would be no tour. There would be no
in-stores. There would be no ads (a disclosure:
in the back pages of a 1994 issue of Alternative
Press there was an ad for a tour, placed
in error, by a Drag City scrivener — who,
ironically, now runs the whole show! and even
with such evidence to the contrary, there would
be no tour forthcoming). No tour…but many
departures.
After two false starts, an album
with the working title, “The Late, Great
Silver Jews,” was
laid down in a rehabbed Colt gun factory in Hartford,
CT.The Natural Bridge(1996) was another
chapter in the Jews saga. This time out Berman,
perhaps bitterly, turned his back from his original
Jews brethren and recruited for his band an arrangin’ and
producin’ type drummer in the person of
Chestnut Station’s Rian Murphy, along with
New Radiant Storm Kings Peyton Pinkerton and
Matt Hunter, on guitar and base. A more deliberate
production sound focused attention on Berman’s
songs, which reversed the previously established
Jews equation of 60% whimsy and 30% heartbreak
(plus 10% ?!?) into a darker split — 80/20,
heartbreak rules. Jews fans were invited to laugh
to keep from crying — and they did, time
and again over the silence of the next couple
of years.
In 1998, the blessed decadence of the
Clinton years had a binding energy on Silver
Jews. Berman reunited with Malkmus at New York’s
The Rare Book Room, backed with a band including
Tim Barnes on drums, Michael Fellows on bass
and Chris Stroffolino on keys. Quality was at
a premium — American Water sparkled
with hook-laden singles, hot, hilarious lyrics,
golden instrumentation and rich production. Silver
Jews took the darkness that was out there and
partied inside of it, making it fun again. High
times for Silver Jews meant high life for the
record, as well. American Water was
the biggest, best Silver Jews record anybody
had ever heard.
And that was enough to keep them
in honey for the next few years. David took the
opportunity to drop his first volume of poetry,
Actual Air, to much acclaim from within and without
the poetry establishment. During that time, Silver
Jews’ American
dream was enhanced as well by his move to Nashville — a
music town famous for its session players. Excepting
the sitting rhythm section of Fellows and Barnes,
2001’s Bright Flight made ample
use of the town’s pickers. New additions
this time out included pedal steel virtuoso Paul
Niehaus, guitar whiz kid William Tyler, lady-love
Cassie Berman on harmonies and the Nicky Hopkins
of Nashville, Tony Crow, on piano. Mark Nevers,
an engineer possessing a hat-country-studded
resume, was adept at transcribing the Ashville
Sound into Silver Jews slang. These talents,
along with Berman’s heartrending songs,
produced the deepest Silver Jews album to date.
Thanks to God in Williamson County and a small
congregation of honorary Jews (Mike Fellows,
Stephen Malkmus, Brian Kotzur, Bob Nastanovich,
Bobby Bare Jr., Cassie Berman, Steve West, Duane
Denison, Azita Youseffi, Will Oldham, Pete Cummings,
William Tyler, Tony Crow and Paz Lenchantin),
there’s a new Silver Jews album at the
end of the rainbow. Out in October 2005, Tanglewood
Numbers is not just an awesome new Jews collection;
it’s also a fitting tribute to 15 years
of Silver Jews’ music, coming full-circle
with some of the most rocking sounds since those
Jersey days, while continuing to refine and redirect
Berman’s songwriting vision. There’s
even word this time that the longawaited Silver
Jews tour might actually happen. And if in the
end it only turns out to be two shows — it’s
still a tour. This is the Silver Jews we’re
talking about!
QUOTES
"Silver
Jews' David Berman, Holed up in Nashville
by way of Virginia, stands tall among our
nation's singer-songwriters: He's a veritable
Timbaland of the spoken word, a wandering
honky-tonk bard murmuring feverish, fractured
one-liners in his handsome country-rock growl...Burman
scored a bona fide masterpiece with 1998's American
Water, with guitar support from Pavement's
Stephen Malkmus, and followed it with his
superb 1999 book of poetry, Actual Air." ~
Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone
"One
of America's cleverest and most consistently
inspired narrative songwriters, Berman takes
odd jobs to keep his muse afloat, and toils
inscrutably for several years between Silver
Jews instalments. Bright Flight is
worth the three-year wait, as these 10 wonderfully
droll songs indicate that Berman's lyrical
and melodic dexterity have in no way abated. Mingling
mournful alt country with the wit of Jonathan
Richman, Berman continues to surprise...Bright
Flight is a beguiling treasure." ~
April
Lang, Mojo
