#mark rubin - jew of oklahoma

[krispyweiss]

Mark Rubin, Jew of Oklahoma, Recovering from “Very Minor Stroke”

- “Well this sucks,” former Bad Livers bassist writes from hospital bed as hurricane Francine bears down on New Orleans

Former Bad Livers bassist Mark Rubin - the self-proclaimed Jew of Oklahoma - is recovering from a “very minor stroke.”

Rubin announced his condition on social media. He was writing from the hospital, which he said he would have already left if not for hurricane Francine and associated lockdowns in New Orleans.

“Well this sucks,” he said.

Rubin said doctors told him his was a “very minor stroke, more than a TIA but not a full-blown.” He should be released after the weather-related danger passes.

“Good news, as it can always be worse … at least my brain didn’t explode,” he said.

9/12/24

[americanahighways]

Interview: Mark Rubin ’s Jew of Oklahoma Project ‘The Triumph of Assimilation’ Addresses Anti-Semitism On The Rise

Interview: Mark Rubin ’s Jew of Oklahoma Project ‘The Triumph of Assimilation’ Addresses Anti-Semitism On The Rise @nolarubinchik #americanamusic #southernjews @conqueroo1 #badlivers @wildknees #newmusic2021 #buymusic #qualitymusic

Mark Rubin’s work as co-founder, bassist and tuba player in the ground-breaking Roots and Punk band Bad Livers is what he’s most widely known for, but since 2015, he’s been in a developing role as a songwriter and frontman for his Jew of Oklahoma project. His third studio album under this moniker, The Triumph of Assimilation, is out on June 1st, and reflects Rubin’s desire to fuse his very…

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: The Bad Livers - “Little Bitty Town” (Live, June 6, 2024)

Folks walking along Washington state’s Irondale Beach July 6 found more than seashells. There were Bad Livers there, too.

The Livers - banjoist Danny Barnes and bassist Mark Rubin (the Jew of Oklahoma) - were there for a reunion/pop-up concert. And “Little Bitty Town” from the gig suggests it was something special.

The music is low-key, like the humor. And wind occasionally interferes with the lo-fi, amateur recording as Barnes sings of the titular community of dilapidated buildings and cops looking for troublemakers.

It might take a turn for the better/but then again, I’ll be leavin’ anyway, Barnes sings.

“There’s new Bad Livers music in the pipeline,” says the long-defunct band. That’s good news; more gigs, routed through actual venues, would be even better.

Grade card: The Bad Livers - “Little Bitty Town” (Live - 6/6/24) - B+

9/26/24

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: Panorama Jazz Band feat. Mark Rubin, Jew of Oklahoma - “Happy Joyous Hanukkah!”

The Panorama Jazz Band and Mark Rubin, Jew of Oklahoma take Woody Guthrie parading through the streets of New Orleans for the Festival of Lights.

With Guthrie’s lyrics, PJB’s music, party sounds and plenty of call-and-response vocals from Rubin and his accompanists, the partners in song cut a new version of “Happy Joyous Hanukkah!”

The track lives up to its title - exclamation point and all.

Eight are the days/eight are the nights, Rubin sings.

Happy, joyous Hanukkah!, the band replies.

And it totally is. Whether listeners Jew or Jew not celebrate, it’s nearly impossible to not want to after taking in this ridiculously upbeat and good-natured “Happy Joyous Hanukkah!”

Grade card: Panorama Jazz Band feat. Mark Rubin, Jew of Oklahoma - “Happy Joyous Hanukkah!” - A+

12/20/22

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: Mark Rubin, Jew of Oklahoma - “Southern Jews is Good News” (Live, Dec. 2, 2022)

Funny, sad, educational and potentially unsettling, “Southern Jews is Good News” is an ear-opener.

Mark Rubin, Jew of Oklahoma performed the number Dec. 2 in Texas while seated next to a host who seemed unsure of what to make of a song that references farms with no pigs, Jews passing for white, Confederate Secretary of State Judah Benjamin (a Jew) and a willingness to kill Jesus - again.

Southern Jews is good news, baby/it’s just those Yankees I’ma worried about, Rubin sings as he accompanies himself on banjo and breaks into joyful, wordless vocalizing to underscore the humor amid the seriousness.

Grade card: Mark Rubin, Jew of Oklahoma - “Southern Jews is Good News” (Live - 12/2/22) - A

12/6/22

[krispyweiss]

Ida Takes out Karnofsky Store

- Louie Armstrong’s “second home” was on National Register of Historic Places

New Orleans’ historic Karnofsky Store, the so-called second home of Louis Armstrong, was destroyed by Hurricane Ida.

The building at 427 S. Rampart housed a tailor shop owned by a family of Jewish immigrants for whom Armstrong worked on their junk and coal wagons. Armstrong ate meals in the family’s apartment above the store.

The Karnofskys are said to have loaned Armstrong the money to buy his first cornet, according to the National Park Service, which listed the building on its National Resister of Historic Places. The pre-World War I building had been slated for renovation.

It’s a pile of rubble now.

“A tragic loss of both New Orleans Jewish and black music history,” Mark Rubin, the New Orleans-based musician who performs as the Jew of Oklahoma, said in a Facebook post.

The building was later home to Morris Music, run by Morris Karnofsky, Armstrong’s childhood friend. Another significant nearby building, the Little Gem Saloon, was also damaged in the storm.

8/31/21

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: Mark Rubin - Jew of Oklahoma - “The Murder of Leo Frank”

Part modern murder ballad, part plea for justice, “The Murder of Leo Frank” is what might have happened if Bob Dylan had crossed “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” with “Hurricane.”

But it’s Mark Rubin - the Jew of Oklahoma retelling the story of the titular character, a man falsely accused of killing 13-year-old Mary Phagan and hung by a mob in Atlanta in 1915 while the murderer got away with with the crime.

Hang that little Jew/let’s that little Jew/hang that little Jew/he hanged that little Jew, Rubin spits on the refrain.

Set to solo-acoustic accompaniment, the track follows “It’s Burning” and “My Resting Place” from the Triumph of Assimilation, which Rubin releases June 1.

“Hopefully my tale will set a few records straight,” Rubin said of “the Ballad.”

“Frank was posthumously pardoned in 1986, though never formally absolved. Justice remains elusive to this day."

Grade card: Mark Rubin - Jew of Oklahoma - “The Murder of Leo Frank” - B+

5/29/21

[krispyweiss]

Soundly Spiritual: Mark Rubin, Jew of Oklahoma - “Southern Jews is Good News” (2018)

Thank G-d for Mark Rubin.

Recording as the Jew of Oklahoma, the former Bad Livers bassist has spent the past few years adding levity to the heavy issue of being Jewish in America and making some terrific bluegrass-leaning music in the process.

The banjo-and-voice “Southern Jews is Good News” from 2018’s Songs for the Hangman’s Daughter is among the most entertaining of these numbers.

The song begins as a monologue as Rubin discusses other Jews who can’t believe people like him - people who take the bacon off our cheeseburgers … drive to schul on Shabbes in our best-pressed overalls - even exist. He then goes on to explain the unique position Jews south of the Mason-Dixon Line find themselves in:

Did we kill your Lord/heck yes we did/bring him back and we’ll kill em again/and the good old boys all belly laugh ’cause we’re all the best of friends

See? We can all get along. We just need more people like Rubin to help foster the environment.

Happy Hanukkah … y’all.

Soundly Spiritual is a periodic feature that appears the first Sunday of most months on Sound Bites - the blog six people read religiously.

12/5/21

[krispyweiss]

Mark Rubin, Jew of Oklahoma, is “Down South Kosher”

Mark Rubin is the Jew of Oklahoma.

And he has a little advice on how to be “Down South Kosher.”

Rubin performed the track from his 2021 Triumph of Assimilation LP at the 2022 Folk Alliance International Conference. And here’s what he sang:

If you’re gonna stay Jewish well it better suffice/to see bacon as a garnish and ham hock a spice … /you make accommodations when you live in the South/don’t ask too many questions ‘bout what goes in your mouth/don’t wanna stick out, you wanna get along/so eat that crawfish and sing my little song

Solo-acoustic, tongue-in-cheek and with wordless vocalizations subbing for accordion in the rooted-in-klezmer melody, the ditty is based on a true story, Rubin told the crowd, whom he did not advise to try the pork.

8/20/22

[krispyweiss]

Album Review: Mark Rubin - Jew of Oklahoma - The Triumph of Assimilation

Mark Rubin is angry. He’s disheartened. But he’s also funny. And he mixes these emotions with bluegrass, folk, jazz, blues and klezmer music to make his point on the Triumph of Assimilation.

The self-proclaimed Jew of Oklahoma and former Bad Livers bassist announces a message of kindness, peace and love on “A Day of Revenge,” which kicks off the album, a half-hour treatise on being Jewish in America, on a hopeful note.

Things turn darker on “The Murder of Leo Frank,” a true-story murder ballad-cum-tale of false accusations whose refrain is: hang that little Jew. And joy comes back via the instrumental - and self-explanatory - “Yiddish Banjo Songs” and “Good Shabbes” a solo-acoustic bit of country blues that imagines how the Rev. Gary Davis might’ve sounded as a rabbi.

An Oklahoma native who once witnessed a cross burning in his yard and subsequently transplanted to New Orleans, Rubin celebrates all he is on the banjo-and-Yiddish “Avinu Malkeinu” (Our Father, Our King); with the Hanukkah-in-summertime “Spin the Dreidel,” featuring the Panorama Jazz Band; and on “Down South Kosher,” which bounces along on tuba, accordion, snare drum and banjo.

I used bacon as a garnish and ham hock as a spice/if you wanna keep kosher gotta work real hard/cause everything here’s gotta a little bit of lard/you make accommodations when you live in the south/don’t ask too many questions ’bout what goes in your mouth/don’t wanna stick out you wanna get along/so eat that crawfish and sing my little song, Rubin intones.

Elsewhere, he reunites with the Livers’ Danny Barnes on “My Resting Place,” a close musical cousin of “Man of Constant Sorrow.”

And while only a Jew could get away with a song like “Unnatural Disasters” - it’s not always easy to tell one when you see one/so someone you like might turn out to be one/it's the Jews/it’s always the Jews/we cause global warming and he give you the blues, Rubin sings to a shuffle not unlike an acoustic arrangement of the Grateful Dead’s “Loose Lucy” - one needn’t be Jewish to relate to the Triumph of Assimilation.

But it’s funnier - and cuts closer to the bone - if you are.

Grade card: Mark Rubin - Jew of Oklahoma - The Triumph of Assimilation - B+

6/8/21

[americanahighways]

REVIEW: Mark Rubin – Jew of Oklahoma - “The Triumph of Assimilation”

REVIEW: Mark Rubin – Jew of Oklahoma - “The Triumph of Assimilation” @nolarubinchik @conqueroo1 @wildknees #americanamusic #southernjews #badlivers #buymusic

Mark Rubin – Jew of Oklahoma – The Triumph of Assimilation Co-founder of the 90s roots-punk band Bad Livers, Mark Rubin injects a little humor into his attempt to jump on the disenfranchised bandwagon (which just about every ethnicity is entitled to), & if it isn’t ethnicity, maybe heritage, culture, religion, or where you come from. You’re from New York? What are you doing here? This is where…