Yaakov Chesed

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After a completely draining Purim last year we vowed never to do 3 shows in 36 hours ever again. This year we spaced out our Purim shows- one Thursday night after the fast, one motzei Shabbos on Purim night and the last on Monday morning, Shushan Purim. It seemed like we would have a nice amount of space between each show, but as anyone who read the last blog might be aware, there always seems to be a bump in the road for us, and this bump was covered by 20 inches of snow. We had to reschedule our Thursday night show at Ohr Naava to Sunday night- which of course meant 3 shows in 36 hours, but, Baruch Hashem, things worked out pretty well.

Friday was a load of fun as we had to dig out of heaps of snow and get to Elizabeth, NJ. Our manager, Yoni, got stuck in the snow for over an hour on route to YU to pick some of us up. Fortunately two very friendly Slovenian guys helped him push and dig his way out- but we love the way they approached him: “Hey there pal, could you use some aids?” Ummmmm, maybe?  You have to love broken immigrant English (not to put those guys down- they were awesome- and their English is a lot better than our Slovenian…..that’s a language right?). One we got out of the city and into Jersey the ride was fine and we actually had a lot of time to set up and rehearse on Friday.

Shabbos was a lot of fun, and the show Saturday night was going really well until we smelled some smoke….and then saw some smoke, this was of course followed by the smoke alarm, which really doesn’t go well with the chorus of “Shalom”. Somehow a cotton candy got on fire, and shortly after the gym we were playing in smelled like burnt sugar. The whole building had to be evacuated into the snow-filled parking lot. The fire department came shortly after and unfortunately about half the crowd decided to go home rather than wait out the situation in the cold. About 20 minutes later they did let us back in, and to the people who did end staying we send you a huge thank you. The fire certainly weeded out the non-fans and it was great playing for a group who knew all of out tunes. It actually turned out to be one of our best shows ever; we even played “Rise Above” for maybe the third time ever.

The next evening we found ourselves in Brooklyn playing for Ohr Naava (a girl’s seminary for high scholars and college students). This show was notable not only because Jake was dressed like a clown, but it was the first time we played for a crowd behind a mechitza. We really have no idea how many girls were there during a lot of the show or how into the music they were. We did hear a lot them saying “Woooooo!” which we assume is good. We just kept playing as if they thought we were the greatest band in the world and did not want us to stop. They did occasionally come up and make requests. Some wanted a lot of Sefardi music, to which Michazzel wisely said “Sorry, we’re Ashkenaz.” We actually did play two Sefardic tunes (we hope they like it). A bunch of girls also wanted the song “Yaakov Chesed”, to which we were more than happy to accommodate. We heard a lot of excited screaming during the song, and wondered what was going on- was it us? Actually….yes. Well sort of. It turns out a bunch of the girls did some sort of jump-rope routine set to the song- very cool! We love to see the video of that if anyone reading this has it. Ohr Naava turned out to be a really cool gig. We sort of felt like Stevie Wonder: we just played the songs, and even though we couldn’t see the crowd we could still feel their energy.

Six hours after we got home from Ohr Naava we had to head back to Jersey to play at Frisch. Sorry to be so anti-climactic, but there aren’t any interesting anecdotes to report on. It was the ninth or tenth time we’ve played the school, and we love going there. It was another high-energy show and by the end we all were ready to hibernate for the rest of winter.