026 -Memoir: The Rubenoff Project

Something inside me makes me want to write, perform and record my own music.

I first started writing music during my first bout of college, 1974 through 1977, as an undergraduate music student at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire – a bout that I lost, but there were takeaways.  They had a very strong music theory department and, as a lover of music theory, I learned a lot.  One other thing I learned was that if I wrote a piece for our jazz ensemble our teacher have us perform and record it.  So I wrote a piece and then stayed up until three in the morning writing out the twenty parts for the musicians.  I used to have a cassette tape with the piece I recorded with the Third Jazz Ensemble at UWEC.

I love hearing my own music performed.  In those days, it was performed by a twenty-piece jazz ensemble.  These days it’s me and my computer.

After I dropped out of college I had a few opportunities to write for smaller ensembles.  I did some arrangements for the salsa band I was in, and wrote some pieces for a modern jazz band I was in as well.  Then I got married and started a business and did not write music again for several years.  We had a piano, but I don’t play well enough to perform the music I write, and I was not playing out with other musicians, so had no ensemble to write for.

After this musical hiatus I got involved with the the PTO band which later led to playing with the cover band, Unclaimed Freight, and also began to play with the Shabbos band at our reform synagogue that later led to my performing with the klezmer band, Too Klez For Comfort.  Mostly I did not write music for these bands, but just played the trombone.

Steve Rauch, the main founder of TKFC, does all the compositions, transcriptions and arrangements for the band.  From him I learned that Finale musical notation software would enable me to compose music on the computer and print out the individual parts, so I got myself the software and began to compose once again.

I wrote an arrangement of Debbie Friedman’s “Oseh Shalom” for a Music and Worship concert at our synagogue.  Cantor Randy Schloss originated this yearly event with Music Director David Sparr.  I called my version, “Oseh Shalom On Tour,” and it contained variations on the original tune.  The first section was done in klezmer style, followed by tango, then it broke into a version to the tune of “Wayward Son” by Kansas, with stunning three part vocal harmony (boy did that get a laugh), and finishing up with an up-tempo version of Debbie Friedman’s original.  It was so well received that I was encouraged to create more music.

I turned to the synagogue community to help fund my first album, “Songs of Love, Despair and Regret.”  I asked for contributions in exchange for a CD that I would produce.  The community rallied behind the effort.  Simultaneously I started working with musicians from Unclaimed Freight, the PTO band, TKFC and the synagogue to put on a concert of my music.  In the process of working with these musicians I asked them to help name the band.  I don’t remember all of the four choices, but “Heard Katz” was one and another was “The Rubenoff Project,” which was the one they chose.

(In the process I also learned that almost no one had a CD player anymore.)

As a bonus for helping me produce my first CD of music, I enclosed with each CD two tickets to the concert.  I rented The Lily Pad music venue in Inman Square, Cambridge.  About forty people showed up, some of whom bought tickets at the door from our daughter, who manned the ticket table.   We performed selections from the album as well as some instrumentals I had written.  Instrumentation was piano, bass, drums, two guitars, trombone (me), trumpet, tenor sax, violin, and vocals (also me).

It was one of the only times I experienced stage fright.  Usually I would get a little whiff of it right before it was time to perform, just for a fraction of a second.  But that day, as my wife drove me to the venue, my guts were all in a knot.  But like most of the times I put myself out there, it all came out okay.  And I couldn’t ask for a more supportive audience than my synagogue community.  Ticket sales at the door totaled five dollars, I think, but since my friends all volunteered, all was well.  I found the experience on the whole to be very satisfying.  I’d do something like that again if I got the chance.

There may remain some recordings from that ‘historic’ afternoon posted at Bandcamp if you’d care to listen.

I tried to record a session with that same band a year or two later, but there were multiple problems.  I had been at a session with Unclaimed Freight at Kissy Pig studio in Allston, Massachusetts, and thought it would be better suited than David Sparr’s Little Dog Studio out in Malden because of the number of musicians in the group.  Kissy Pig had a lot more space.  During Unclaimed Freight’s session at Kissy Pig, the owner ran the board and did the engineering – a very talented and nice man.  But I did not get him for my session.  I got some puffed-up guy who would not give me even a ballpark estimate for the final output, so as the date got closer I got more and more anxious.  I guess I was probably saved from a good fleecing by the drummer, who bailed out on the session a few days before it was to take place because he got a gig.  In the end I count myself lucky that all I lost was my deposit.

I did put together three more studio sessions with David Sparr after that (sans the bailing drummer).  Jeremiah Klarman filled our percussion needs with his cajon and assorted toys.   Excellent trombone and bass player Dan Fox joined David Patrick and me to fill out the ensemble for the remaining tunes on the album, “Songs of Love, Despair and Regret.”  Colescott Rubin, Bass, and Thorleifur G. Davidsson on Harmonica joined us for “Wishbone Harp Prayer,” and I did one session using my friends from Too Klez For Comfort to record a couple of numbers for “In The Moment.”

Since then I have recorded fourteen more albums using Finale notation software and Apple Garage Band.  My family got me Garritan Instruments to go with my Finale software, as well as a nice computer microphone and a mini-synthesizer.  I continue to have a lot of fun, not sticking to any one genre, and writing stuff that makes me laugh or smile.

I initially put a few albums on CD Baby, but they discontinued their music store in March.  It was fortunate that I decided to duplicate my discography at Bandcamp.  CD Baby remains a great way to get your music copyrighted and distributed to streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.  I joined ASCAP for copyright protection and help for collecting royalties if there should ever be any to collect.  That’s as far as I’ve ventured into the music business, and I’m happy to be where I am.

I recently put together a kind of ‘greatest hits’ album (like I had any hits), called “Second Chances.”  If you wanted a taste of what I do, there it is.