Revisiting Andy Statman

Music Credits: “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T. from the cd Soul Sand. Used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

Excerpt of "Wedding March" from the album Jewish Klezmer Music performed by Zev Feldman and Andy Statman, used courtesy of Shanachie Records.

Excerpt of “Rawhide” composed by Bill Monroe, performed by Andy Statman from the album East Flatbush Blues, used courtesy of New Rounder, LLC.

Excerpt from "The Brothers Ben Chassid" from the album Breakfast Special performed by Breakfast Special, used courtesy of New Rounder, LLC

Excerpt from "Andy's Ramble" from the cd, Andy's Ramble, used courtesy of New Rounder, LLC.

Excerpt from "Hassidic Dance from Galicia" from the album The Andy Statman Klezmer Orchestra, used courtesy of Shanachie Records.

Excerpt from "Kazatski" from the album Songs of Our Fathers performed by Andy Statman and David Grisman, used courtesy of Acoustic Disc.

Excerpt from "Wedding March" and from "Gypsy Music and Sirba" from the album Jewish Klezmer Music: Zev Feldman and Andy Statman,  arranged by Zev Feldman and Andy Statman,used courtesy of Shanachie Records.

-  Excerpt from "Flatbush Waltz" from the album Flatbush Waltz, used courtesy of New Rounder, LLC.

-   Excerpt from "Maggid," and "Purim," from the album Between Heaven and Earth performed by the Andy Statman Quartet,used courtesy of Shanachie Records.

- Excerpt of "East Flatbush Blues" from the album East Flatbush Blues, used courtesy of New Rounder, LLC.

Excerpt from "Forsphiel/Improvisation" from the album Awakening from Above, used courtesy of Shefa Records.

- Excerpt from "Old Brooklyn," "Ocean Parkway After Dark" and "The Lord Will Provide" from the album Old Brooklyn, used courtesy of Shefa Records.

Ricky Scaggs is the singer on "The Lord Will Provide" which was written by John Newton, and arranged by Ricky Scaggs and Andy Statman.

All songs are performed and composed or arranged by Andy Statman unless otherwise noted.

Jo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed. 

You’re listening to Andy Statman performing “Forspiel/Improvisation,” from his album Awakening from Above and today we’re revisiting my 2012 conversation with this extraordinary musician.  Renowned for his virtuosity on the clarinet and mandolin, and for his role in reinvigorating klezmer music—a vibrant, emotionally rich tradition of Jewish instrumental music from Eastern Europe, Andy was named a 2012  National Heritage Fellow.  But throughout his career, Andy Statman has defied musical boundaries. Starting with his early love for bluegrass and mentorship under David Grisman, Statman later embraced jazz, working with artists like Richard Grando, before diving into the klezmer music of his Jewish heritage. This year, as Christmas and Chanukah coincide, it feels like the perfect time to share this interview with remarkable man who bridges cultural traditions to craft a unique and deeply personal sound. It is a tuneful podcast that celebrates music’s ability to unite cultures and generations. I spoke with Andy shortly after he was named a National Heritage Fellow. We talked in the kitchen of his Brooklyn home and you'll hear the sounds of city traffic in the background. I began by asking him to define Klezmer music

Andy Statman:  Klezmer music is the traditional instrumental music of the Jews of Eastern Europe. In what they call the Pale of Settlement. It'd be the Ukraine, Southern Poland and parts of Poland proper, Belarus, the areas around Romania.

Jo Reed: And what's distinctive about it?

Andy Statman:  The emotional contact is distinctive. Basically, what it is, is it's instrumental versions of Hasidic vocal music. So it's coming directly out of the religious milieu. In fact, most of the great klezmer musicians came from Hasidic families and were Hasidic. But basically in a nutshell, it's Hasidic vocal music played instrumentally, and it could either be actual Hasidic melodies, or melodies that would- were composed by the musicians themselves that might show their creativity and virtuosity. But the feeling they would invoke is the feeling of a Hasidic melody.

Music up and hot

And Hasidic music is very broad and- and very creative and very deep, and much broader than we consider klezmer music. And also, klezmer is- for lack of a better word, a- a term that was applied to the music after it was pretty much gone. That's not what the musicians themselves refer to the music as. It's just, you know, traditional Jewish instrumental music, you know, from East Europe. And uh a lot of the best musicians came to America in the 1890s and up until the 20s, it flourished here, became a little bit different, and then sort of became dormant,  it died in many ways.

Jo Reed: And you helped resurrect it?

Andy Statman:  Well, yeah. so to speak, yeah. I mean, that was not my intention, but, you know, I certainly played a hand in that.

Jo Reed: Well, you come from a long line of musicians, I know, on your mother's side, correct?

Andy Statman:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jo Reed: Canters way, way, way back, generations and generations.

Andy Statman:  Yeah. I mean, canters going back to the, you know, 17- mid-1700s, early 1700s. And when they came to America, some of them went into Vaudeville and became well-known Vaudeville entertainers. 

Jo Reed: What did you hear when you were growing up around the house?

Andy Statman:  I heard Guys and Dolls, Kiss me Kate, all that stuff, classical music. We had 78s, I remember hearing, like Three O'Clock in the Morning, probably, by Paul Whiteman, as it was a very popular waltz probably back in the twenties or, you know, this Yiddish theater song, folk song, called "Yosel," I remember that I loved that one. That was one of the first songs that really, really sent me.  I really got very energized when I heard that song, that and “Three O'Clock in the Morning”. My aunt had a record of klezmer, if you want to call them "klezmer"-- you know, traditional Jewish tunes that my, you know, my father had grown up with, you know, the Jews from different areas used to have like town organizations, if you came from that town, and they'd have meetings and- and balls and, you know, dinners, and they'd buy a common burial plot for people from a particular town. And each town had its own customs and things, and so they used to hear all this music. My father, you know, grew up with that, with you know, what we call today klezmer music, so at family gatherings, when I got together with his sister and his brother, my uncle they would put on these records and we'd dance around and things like that. but I also remember when, you know, Rockin' Around the Clock came out, and when Hound Dog came out, and, you know, all that stuff. I remember really liking that stuff, and so I heard all the early, early rock-and-roll-- big bands

Jo Reed: And I know when you first heard bluegrass that had a huge impact on you.

Andy Statman:  Yeah. yeah, a number of things coincided for me with that. So my brother, who's about seven and a half, eight years older than me, he was in a jug band, I liked it. I loved the live music, but when he brought home some records of bluegrass, I really got excited about it. And he played guitar. You know, we had guitars in the house. I'd been interested in shortwave radio, and also in getting out-of-town radio stations on the AM radio. So there were 50,000-watt stations then that broadcast live country music. There was a- a station called WWVA, from Wheeling, West Virginia, which you could get right around dusk in New York, and all night into the early morning  And there was this guy named Doc Williams, who was a sort of traditional country music guitarist/singer/band leader-- He had a nightly show on WWVA during the weekdays, and then he'd appear on the jamboree. And he had what he called a Big Note Guitar Method-- you know, "Teach yourself guitar." So I sent away for this thing, I started learning to play guitar. And then there was a banjo player in my brother's band, and I- I really wanted to learn to play the banjo. So I guess with my bar mitzvah money, I went out and we bought a banjo, and I started taking lessons, and then I eventually decided I wanted to play mandolin. So this started when I was around 13,12, 13.

Jo Reed: How did you meet Dave Grisman, the great mandolin player?

Andy Statman:  David I saw play at one of these what they used to call hoots, that my brother's band played at. They were on the bill. And, you know, so when I wanted to learn mandolin, I was able to get his number and gave him a call, and that started a- a lifelong friendship.

Jo Reed: And did he introduce you to Bill Monroe?

Andy Statman:  Everything I did prior to playing the mandolin was really setting me up for the mandolin. You know, I'd played guitar and then really got into banjo. There used to be in Washington Square Park in New York on Sunday, groups of musicians would get together and play, and there'd be one group playing bluegrass, one old-time, one topical songs…different things. And so I began playing in bands, but I was banjo-oriented, so I was mainly listening to people like Earl Scruggs and Don Reno and Bill Keith, and all these great banjo players. But there were a lot of really great banjo players, and I was just another one of them, and I was the youngest. All these guys were college-aged kids. I was by that time, maybe fourteen.

Jo Reed: You were the kid? <laughs>

Andy Statman:  I was the kid, yeah. And I started hearing it on these records, these mandolin breaks, and they started, I got the chills when I heard some of them. So I decided this is what I want to do. I went out and bought a very inexpensive Czech mandolin and went to see David, and the thing's that my hands were already developed from playing guitar and banjo, and I had an understanding of the musical language. So what he did was he saw, you know, "You have to listen to Bill Monroe. " He basically gave me, you know, un- intentionally or unintentionally, really, you know, basically, a course in aesthetics of music. And you know, through getting it to Bill Monroe, a whole different thing opened up for me, musically and emotionally, you know?

Excerpt of bluegrass up and hot

Jo Reed: Now, what was it about Bill Monroe's playing that just spoke to you.

Andy Statman:  Well, there are few things at play here---one being that I was 15. There's the great romance of another culture, so to speak. Of course, in America, everyone heard bluegrass anyway, growing up. We all knew fiddle tunes and things like that, you know, Turkey in the Straw, and we've all heard the stuff. ButMonroe was presented as being the real deal, so it's like you become sort of an initiate in a small club of people who know the real truth about something, so to speak. You understand what I'm talking about? This exists in all music, and it probably exists in every field. But when you're 15, it's a very, for lack of a better word, empowering type of thing, like, " This guy is it."  He was a super creative mandolin player. He did all these very subtle and powerful things on the mandolin. You know, he developed his own language and was able to speak it very, very well and very creatively, and at this point in his career, he had a great band. All the great people in bluegrass played with him. He was a great songwriter, he was a great singer, and his music had a tremendous intensity and integrity.

Jo Reed: While you were still young, a teenager, though a later teenager, you moved in a very different direction from bluegrass, you became very interested in jazz. And you worked with the jazz saxophonoist Richard Grando.

Andy Statman:  Right, right. So, what- what happened was through David, you he exposed me to Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti and Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt. I started meeting musicians, I started going down to jazz record shops, and, you know, I started listening to Stuff Smith, and then listening to jazz on the radio, and I started really getting interested in Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and Monk and Mingus, and my brother had some Cannonball Adderley and Jackie McLean records. I started listening to them. So a little before I was 17, you know, I'd realized that, as great as the instrumental tradition is in bluegrass, the deepest emotions in bluegrass are conveyed through the singing. That's the heaviest stuff. Not that the instrumentals aren't heavy; they're great. But the singing is the heart of everything, in many ways. And I'm not a singer. I heard Albert Ayler. It was a record called Live in Greenwich Village. It was on Vanguard. And he did this song called “The Truth is Marching In,” and he was exploring, at that time, basically, almost like Eastern European folk melodies, and then sort of playing them faster and faster until they became absorbed in a pulse, in the power of the drummer playing colors, you know what I'm talking about. And Albert and Donald would do their thing, and, you know, for like a 17-year-old, you know, in 1967, it was intense and expressive and yeah!

Jo Reed: And you began studying the saxophone.

Andy Statman:  Yeah, yeah. So as it turns out, a banjo player named Mark Horowitz, who I worked with in a number of bands in New York, his brother is someone named David Horowitz, a genius jazz piano player. And I said I want to study saxophone, ask your brother. And so he  gave me Richard Grando's phone number, and so Richard was who was an amazing, amazing person, said, "Okay, listen. Why don't you come out and we'll talk, and I'll see if I'll take you on as a student." So I went out to see him. I remember the first lesson was <laughs>--  we discussed for about an hour to whether God existed or not, and then he said, "Okay, I'll take you on as a student." And that was that. And Richard was like a brilliant man, a Renaissance man, and he had come through the bebop scene. He was, of course, very into Coltrane, also very into Sonny Rollins, and I know he'd worked a little bit with Art Blakey, and so I became sort of almost like a houseboy there.  I just spent hours there, once, twice a week, and became very close with him. And so, around that time, I started playing saxophone in rock-and-roll bands, blues bands, free-jazz bands-- you know, whatever I could do. And I'd bring along the mandolin, and adopt it to those situations. I never thought I'd be playing any sort of bluegrass again or anything like that. I'd thought I'd be playing some sort of saxophone-oriented music.

Jo Reed: Now, when was Breakfast Special?

Andy Statman:  That came about around 1971, out of nowhere I got a call to play with a one of the groups-- there was a precursor to Breakfast Special called "Country Cooking,"  it was led by Peter Wernick, and then in the group was Tony Trischka and Russ Brandberg , two well-known very innovative musicians, and they were writing their own music, playing pretty much all originals, and playing music that was bluegrass-based, but really Northern and really reflecting a whole other emotional type of thing.  So they hired me to do this record with them, which I did. I played the saxophone in one piece and the mandolin on others. And by this time, my mandolin playing had completely changed, it developed in the beginnings of what it is now, it was very free and a different harmonic language than bluegrass uses, and a different rhythmic language. And from there, I started just getting gigs and making the scene in the Village. I needed to work. And I ran into David Brandberg. I hadn't seen David in a few years. So he invited me down to play with him. He was with Columbia Records at that point. All of a sudden, I was on salary, you know, working for a Columbia recording artist. And we were traveling all over the country, and, you know, he got me involved in sessions we did like with Dylan, you know, the Grateful Dead, you know, Dr. John- - lots of different people. And I always felt there was an invisible wall between amateur and professional, and going on the road with him, I felt I sort of walked, you know, through that door and got to the other end. Anyway,  he hired two other musicians, who I would been spending time with in New York Kenny Kosek and Roger Mason and at some point we decided to form Breakfast Special. That was around 1971. And there I was, you know, playing mandolin again.

Excerpt of Breakfast Special up and hot.

Jo Reed: How did you move from being part of a group like Breakfast Special to playing klezmer music. How did that trajectory work?

Andy Statman:  Basically through my working with Richard Grando, I began relistening to some of the traditional Jewish instrumental music I heard as- as a child, and began listening to lots of other, you know, related ethnic folk musics, and nonrelated, as well. I remember at one of the Breakfast Special gigs, I met Zev Feldman came down to see us, and we hit it off, and we started playing together. He played the Persian santuri, and we worked on a number of different things, and I started studying with different people. Up until, you know, my around 30, I was just studying, you know, with all sorts of different people. I was always doing different things, studying with different people, and trying to broaden my horizons, and trying to enhance what I was doing. So at one point, I remember after Breakfast Special ended, I mean, I was just playing lots of different bands, I decided that I was getting more interested in Judaism and my own personal family background, and I'd found 78s of Dave Tarras and Abe Schwartz, and, you know, all these great, you know, traditional Jewish instrumentalists. I said, "You know, this music is really, you know, my heritage, you know, particularly where, you know, where my father's family come from. This is, if I was born there, as a musician, this is probably what I'd be playing." So I said, "Just for myself, I want to learn to play it to keep it alive."

Jo Reed: You’re listening to Art Works from the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed. We’re listening to my 2012 interview with Klezmer clarinetist, mandolinist, composer,  and 2012 National Heritage Fellow Andy Statman.

Let’s pick up the interview with Andy meeting the man who would become his mentor:  the legendary klezmer clarinetist and NEA National Heritage Fellow, Dave Tarras. 

Andy Statman:  I looked up Dave Tarras in the union book and went out to see him, and I had transcribed some of his melodies on the saxophone and mandolin, and at that point I didn't have a clarinet. He was sort of amazed that not only a person much younger than him would be interested in this music, but that I actually did this. And we sort of hit it off. I became like a houseboy there as well. I wanted to play on the Albert System clarinet, which is what the old-timers played, and you know, he gave me clarinets, and, he had no real way of teaching, and basically I just slowed down his recordings and of other people. And what I would do is I'd go over there, and his wife would make us some tea and cookies, and stuff like that, and we'd talk. And then he'd take out his clarinet and play for me for about an hour. I'd ask him some questions, and I'd say, "Dave, would you do this this way?" And he'd say, "No, never this way, only this way." And you know, what we call klezmer music, there's like an oral law of how to interpret songs when and how to use ornamentations, and it's very logical, but it can only be really learned through osmosis. It's something that can't really be written down. And so he was really helpful, and he had very strict feelings about a lot of this stuff, and very strong opinions about a lot of it. And we became very close. I know that he'd been a very tough character in the music business, but he was, too, sort of like a, you know, another grandfather to me. And you know, he sort wanted me to carry on for him, but not to be him. 

Music up and hot.

Andy Statman:  He understood musicians are individuals, and- and the way to carry on a legacy is- is not to be a carbon copy of someone, but for that, you know, to take what that person taught you and move on from it. And that's probably the way he learned, also, from his uncles, and other people who we said were very great players.

Jo Reed: Well, don't you think that's the only way any art stays vibrant; it has to move into the next generation, and then it gets reconfigured in some ways.

Andy Statman:  Yeah. I'm simultaneously a purist and expansive. In essence, if you want to be an innovator in a style, you need to preservationist also, because until you can speak the stylistic language fluently, you can't really understand how to innovate in the style.

Jo Reed: It's like a jazz musician.

Andy Statman:  Yeah.

Jo Reed: If you don't know how to play the instrument, you're not going to be able to improvise. You have to know that instrument.

Andy Statman:  You have to know the instrument, but you also have to know the language.

Jo Reed: Right.

Andy Statman: It really has to do with the power of expression and the ideas being expressed, and how they're being expressed. So with Dave, you know, he said to me, "You know, there'll never be another Dave Tarras," he says. "But, you know, then, there shouldn't be, you know? He's Dave Tarras." And he said, "'Cause you have a lot of heart, you'll be able to carry this on." 

Jo Reed: So, what was your first recording of klezmer music?

Andy Statman:  So the first recording I did was with Zev Feldman. And Zev back then was very traditionally oriented, and what we were looking to do was to try and recreate, you know, in our own way, what this music might've sounded like 70 years earlier, you know, particularly if had been in Europe.  I had to keep it in within certain boundaries, both on the clarinet and on the mandolin. There really wasn't a mandolin style of this music. Based on my understanding of the ornamentation through the clarinet playing, I developed a mandolin style to go with it.

Up and hot

We were doing this really for ourselves, you know? We weren't looking to revive anything. We made a decision. You know, I said, "I really want to do this. this music is not being played, and we should just try and keep it alive for ourselves." You know, I never expected that it would become the focal point for me for a number of years. And that was also partially by the economics of the business because the gigs I got playing klezmer music paid better and were better conditions.

Jo Reed: Plus side.

Andy Statman:  Yeah, better than playing in bars with rock-and-roll bands or bluegrass bands or whatever. You know, I was still playing in a lot of different bands at that time.

Jo Reed: I knew you were playing in funk bands.

Andy Statman:  Yeah, yeah. That was fun. At the same time I was doing the record with Zev Feldman I was doing this record called Flatbush Waltz, which was just a whole other thing.

Jo Reed: Well, describe Flatbush Waltz. That's a very important early record for you.

Flatbush Waltz under

Andy Statman:  To make a long story short, I started developing my own music, and I was very interested in doing something that just reflected all these different influences that I had studied. So it was, in a way, it was a bit of a world music record.   There's the song Flatbush Waltz I wrote, which is a combination of a traditional Jewish song and a Bill Monroe song, and it has an introduction that owes a lot to traditional or I say classical Azerbaijani music. Then there were just these things that owe a lot to Eric Dolphy and Mingus compositions on there.

Flatbush Waltz up and hot

Jo Reed: When did you start composing, Andy? Was it with Flatbush Waltz?

Andy Statman:  No. I started composing when I was about 16, started writing songs. With Country Cooking, I got sort of reinspired to do it, cause all these people were writing songs, and Breakfast Special a bit. And then around the time I was doing the thing with Zev, I started getting and composing a lot more,  just started writing a lot. Goes through stages, and it's just another skill I picked up, you know?

 Jo Reed: When you're composing, do you, as you're composing, do you think, "Ah, mandolin; ah, clarinet," or when you're done, you weigh it and make a decision then?

Andy Statman:  That happens sometimes, but composing is the type of thing where you have to turn it on, and then you have to turn it off. If I'm writing for a record, records are very much like menus, and you need to have a variety of different types of food: you know, fish, meat, chicken, desserts, so, you write for specific types of melodies expressing certain types of feelings. Well, you need this type of song, you want this type of song, so you write going by that feeling. And I find that once I start writing, then whenever I pick up an instrument, I just start writing.  

Jo Reed: You have a trio.

Andy Statman:  Right.

Jo Reed: You've been working with a bassist and a...

Andy Statman:  Drummer.

Jo Reed: Drummer...

Andy Statman:  Yeah.

Jo Reed: For a long time.

Jo Reed: Larry Eagle and Jim Whitney.

Andy Statman:  And Jim Whitney, yeah.

Jo Reed: And you play at a synagogue twice a week?

Andy Statman:  Yeah.

Jo Reed: You said in another interview. I was really intrigued by this. You guys arrive there, and you really don't have a set planned.

Andy Statman:  No, no. We just play. A lot of what I do is improvised, So we sort of see what we feel like playing at that moment, and see where it goes, and sometimes we'll do more, depending on the melody or whatever we picked, more little interpretations, we just really expand on them. And it is really just a matter of the moment and how- and how we're feeling.

Jo Reed: So that's a lot of the jazz influence, no? 

Andy Statman:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. See for me, I'm just interested in playing music. I can play traditionally in a number of styles, but that's not what I usually choose to do. I usually just play music and just let the music go where it goes. I have my own aesthetic, and I've developed my own languages in the traditional styles I play, sp I just sort of play. Basically, I'm looking to go on some sort of "exploration" with the music, an emotional exploration, and get it to the point where the music just sort of happens, and I become   in some ways, almost an observer, as well. It's just another form of talking when you're improvising. And even if you're playing a song where you're not improvising much it's just melody you're still improvising in terms of how you phrase and how you're gonna ornament, so everything really is improvisation.

Jo Reed: What I think is so neat about your music--many things--but the way it somehow combines the Hasidic tradition of music being transcendent, and recognizes that that's what John Coltrane was doing, as well. <laughs>

Andy Statman:  Right.  You know, when I became involved in religious community and Hasidic music, it sort of rekindled my interest in in Jewish music, and I realized a lot of the feelings that I was experiencing from klezmer music were really feelings of, you know, Hasidic melodies. I began wanting to explore a commonality with some of Coltrane's approach to modal music, and the thing is, with traditional music, even though it's very powerful, it's also very fragile. And once you start putting chords to modal melodies, they can very easily distort the feeling and the idea of what the music is supposed to be. So I looked for musicians who could play that and would have some understanding of the traditional Jewish music.

And I always loved Elvin Jones. I used to go see Elvin play all the time, since I’m 17. So Elvin's music had a big influence on me. So I began putting together ensembles to play versions of Hasidic music with this- with these types of approaches, and I guess the most well-known was this record called Between Heaven and Earth. Actually, it was picked by the Times as one of the top ten records of the year.

Maggid up and hot

Andy Statman:  We sold out town hall. We did some concerts, and it led to a contract with Sony. And around that time I started doing these things with Perlman. 

Jo Reed: You and Itzhak Perlman, you mean, made records together?

Andy Statman:  Yeah.

Jo Reed: Yeah.

Andy Statman:  And touring, and  around the end of this time I started exploring this sort of jazz-Hasidic connection, I wound up getting like a weekly gig at the Housing Works, down in downtown. It's a bookstore. And they raise a lot of money for AIDS and things like that. And I started doing it as originally duets, you know, of improvised music with Bob Weiner or some other, you know, different drummers. And at that time, I had started using a pianist named Brendan Dolan, who was a really great traditional Irish musician, but understood how to play in these you know, in these fourths. And the series became successful, and as things evolved I decided I wanted to play a little bluegrass, and then we started two nights, and one night would be Jewish, one night bluegrass. And then I just said, "You know, I just want to mix everything up and- and not make the separation

Jo Reed: In 2006, you had a pair of very different CDs come out, Awakening from Above, which is Hasidic music and East Flatbush Blues, in which you return to bluegrass. That was a very interesting pairing.

Andy Statman:  And the East Flatbush Blues was sort of the more American-type thing I'd done in years. The last thing I did was a record called Andy's Ramble. It was a bluegrass record, probably back in the, it was recorded, actually, in the late eighties, came out in the early nineties. So it'd been a long time. It was sort of my reintroduction to the American, <laughs> you know, music world, outside of the, you know, outside of the sort of Jewish-American music scene.

Andy's Ramble up and hot

Andy Statman:  You know both records were very well received.

Jo Reed: And Old Brooklyn, which came five years later...?

Andy Statman:  Yeah.

Jo Reed: In a way, it seemed like a bridge between those two CDs.

Andy Statman:  Well, what I wanted to do was to just put a record out which just reflects a lot of what I'm doing, and not worry about labels or styles. And the other two records were basically live. These were studio records, and I decided I wanted to bring in some of my friends who, you know, <clears throat> to play with. So we brought in Byron Berline and, you know, and Bruce Molsky, John Schull, Paul Shaffer and Ricky Skaggs, and Bela Fleck.

Jo Reed: Love Bela Fleck.

Andy Statman:  A bunch of other people.

Jo Reed: Now, Ricky Skaggs does a very interesting song

Andy Statman:  Oh, The Lord Will Provide? Yeah. Yeah, it's powerful. Yeah.

Jo Reed: How did-- was that his idea or your idea? How did...?

Andy Statman:  Well, he had once sung it for me over the phone, and I was very moved by it. And then we did a house concert at his house in Nashville, and as we were leaving, I said, "Ricky, why don't you sing this song for the guys?" And he sang it, and then when he was gonna come to do the session--we were gonna do some duets.  And he had told me he had tried it in different ways, and I think, he called it an Eastern Baptist style. He hadn't had the style down to his liking, although it always sounded great whenever he sang it. Now he felt it was the time. And I said, "Let's just do it with clarinet and voice." And to me, it sounds like some old field-recording from somewhere.

The Lord Will Provide up and hot

Andy Statman:  And on the clarinet playing,  aside from the Jewish thing, there's a lot of the Epert sound in there, and there's also a bunch of Charlie Parker in there if you listen. It's funny, cause after we did this, we felt like anything else we could do, would just pale. We felt we did what we were supposed to do, and that anything else would just be, you know, superficial, so we just left it and that was it, cause we'd originally had intended to record a few things, but this was so strong, we just left it.

Jo Reed: Where is your musical curiosity taking you now?

Andy Statman:  You know, there's a lot that goes on, and there's not enough time.

Jo Reed: How true.

Andy Statman:  Yeah. So, I mean, I just find that, for myself, when I start playing, all these ideas come out, and extensions of my own language, which I record, and then I want to go back and learn so there's a backlog of that. I'm teaching at a mandolin camp, and I'm sort of revisiting some mandolin players who I listen to occasionally during the year, who are big influences on me, and relearning some of their stuff to teach it, and, you know, reconnecting with a lot of those feelings and those ideas and those ways of approaching music. And at the same time, you know, I always listen to Charlie Parker, and I've been very interested in writing songs in the older, fifties rock-and-roll style that we play with the band, you know? And I've been sort of revisiting a lot of the old rock-and-roll saxophone styles.  And also listening to people like, you know, old Gene Vincent things and stuff, and there's an energy in- in that early sort of rock-and-roll, rockabilly that's absolutely incredible, super intense and really great. So I've been starting to write some songs influenced by that, and doing them with my band. Also I've gotten very interested in the way just sort of you know of jazz from the twenties and thirties, the way some of those solos are constructed, and their use of arpeggios and things like that, and I'd always been more bebop-oriented, but, you know, there's such great color and creativity in the way these guys play. It's really amazing, and so I've been fooling around with some of that language, and you know, I'm not interested in playing that music as playing that music, but using those ideas as part of the the well for my own music.

Jo Reed: You teach, as you said at mandolin camp, what do you try to impart to your students?

Andy Statman:  You know, on mandolin, you know, and on clarinet. I mean, the first thing I try to do is to get these students to realize that we're all equals, and that some may have more talent, some may have less, but it's all sort of practice, and practice is all desire. In other words, if the music moves you, then you'll have the desire to practice. I also try and make them realize that, don't worry about mistakes. You know, we're not computers. I tell them that when I play a gig, if I start a song and I know it's not happening, I'll just stop it. I say, "Well, you know, I'm not playing music to torture myself for the next five minutes. You know, if it's not happening, forget it, you know, and move on to something else, you know? If you make a mistake, you make a mistake. It doesn't matter." I try and give them a real basis for relaxing in their playing. With traditional Jewish instrumental music, I'm looking to convey a literacy in that music, a grammatical and emotional literacy, as well, in terms of mandolin styles, but overall, to try and have the musician feel some sort of self-confidence in their own ability to be able to play what they want to play, and not to worry about all these stupid little things, not to feel pressured. Of course, I tell my students, "The reason we're all playing is because it makes us feel good." And what can happen very early on is that you become a prisoner of technique and a prisoner of the music business. And then, you sort of have no musical identity. You'll just play whatever people want you to play, and, you know, we all know great, great technicians, who, if you ask them, "What do you really like to play," they'll say, "What do you mean?" The music it's just something they do.

Jo Reed: It's a job.

Andy Statman:  It's a job, yeah.

Jo Reed: Well, no one can say that about you, Andy.

Andy Statman:  Well, thanks.

Jo Reed: Not at all. So many congratulations.

Andy Statman:  Thanks, thanks.

Jo Reed: And thank you for everything you've done.

Andy Statman:  Well, thank you.

Jo Reed: Truly.

Andy Statman:  Well the truth is, it's really and, you know, it's really nothing, to tell you the truth, so it's, you know, it's just what I do. It's not such a big deal.

Jo Reed: Oh, well. It is for some of us. <laughs>

Andy Statman:  Well, thank you. <laughs>

Jo Reed: That was my 2012 interview with klezmer clarinetist, mandolin-player, composer and National Heritage Fellow, Andy Statman. You can keep up with Andy and his continuing body of work at Andy Statman .org  You’ve been listening to Art Works, produced at the National Endowment for the Arts.  We are taking a two week break for the holidays. But we’ll back on January 7. We wish all of you the happiest of holidays. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.