MARK
RUBIN, JEW OF OKLAHOMA
Southern
Discomfort
Rubinchik
Recordings
Mark
Rubin is an interesting – and interestingly
eclectic – musician. As you can surmise from his self-identification, he grew
up in Oklahoma but I first became aware of him during his long sojourn in Austin,
Texas when he and Danny Barnes
formed the Bad Livers, a duo that
brought a fresh, punk attitude to old-time music. The Bad Livers got a lot of
airplay in the early days of the Folk Roots/Folk Branches radio show. Mark
plays a bunch of instruments including bass, banjo, guitar, tuba, and mandolin
and I’ve also enjoyed his work as sideman for many artists and as a member of
several other groups covering a wide range of roots music styles and genres from
country to klezmer. These days, Mark is based in New Orleans, one of the most
fabled of all music meccas.
Southern
Discomfort is Mark’s first solo album and it, too,
covers a wide range of roots music styles and genres from country to klezmer –
more than half of it original material.
For me, the most affecting part of the
album are the fourth and fifth tracks, “The Murder of Leo Frank” and “Rumainyan
Fancy.”
“The Murder of Leo Frank” is Mark’s powerful
ballad – very effectively set to the same traditional tune as Florence Reece’s “Which Side Are You
On?” – telling the story of Leo Frank,
a Jewish pencil factory manager in Atlanta who was framed for the murder of Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old worker in
the factory, in 1913.
After his false conviction, Frank was
sentenced to death but an overwhelming campaign across the United States led
the Georgia governor to commute his sentence to life in prison. But, then, Frank
was kidnapped from the jail and lynched by a Ku Klux Klan mob calling itself “The
Knights of Mary Phagan.” As Mark references in “The Murder of Leo Frank,” the
early country musician, Fiddlin’ John
Carson, wrote and performed an anti-Semitic song about the case that helped
fuel the mob mentality.
The story of this case is one that I’ve
been aware of since 1967 when I received the book, A Little Girl is Dead by Harry Golden, as a bar mitzvah present.
Golden’s full length account of the case and its aftermath was unforgettable.
Mark’s song very effectively captures the zeitgeist of the case.
The final lines of the song – nominally addressed to fellow Jews – are “Next time you're at services/Say a Kaddish for Leo Frank." The words are a powerful lead-in to “Rumainyan Fancy,” an
intense, traditional klezmer tune played
by fiddler Adam Moss with Mark on guitar. The arrangement, which
builds in speed and intensity as it progresses, allows for four needed minutes of
contemplation.
There’s also fun to be had on the album. The
neo-jug band arrangement to “Key Chain Blues,” for example, makes it fun to
listen to the narrator embrace his recent unemployment, while “Seriously (aka
Too Much Weed)” is doper’s anthem with an absolutely delightful Dixieland
arrangement.
The album cover art coveys the discomfort
of the album title, and particularly “The Murder of Leo Frank,” with images that
include the Confederate flag (which, thankfully, came down in South Carolina
this week), a trio of idiotic looking Klansmen, a noose, Leo Frank, a menorah, and
an African-American man with whip marks on his back.
Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif
And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif
And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif
--Mike
Regenstreif
