by jon bosworth jaxvillain@yahoo.com
WHO: The Fenwicks with Big D and the Kids Table
WHERE: Fuel in 5 Points
WHEN: Thursday, November 1st
Back in the late 80s Steve Schub was taking a year off of his studies at NYU and playing in a punk band called Jew2 when he was “discovered” by Skynyrd drummer Artimus Pyle.
“Eventually the band name was changed to Traif, which doesn’t mean anything unless you speak Yiddish. But it means un-kosher. You can imagine playing in Jerusalem Israel in a band called Traif. We offended everyone. We united Arabs, Jews and Christians. We are owed a peace prize, I think, because we united that country for the first time in 5,000 years because everyone hated our band. We brought everyone together.”
He would go on stage in an Israeli army uniform and an Arab headdress, or a burqa with Mickey Mouse gloves. He was 21 years old and one of the competing bands was called China Black. Chris Pyle was the drummer for that band and Artimus was judging the battle of the bands. They hit it off, but Steve went back to New York, finished his degree and played as The Fenwicks, which was just an acoustic duo consisting of Schub and his songwriting partner Jimmie Corrieri at the time. He was working at the Omni Park Central Hotel when the Lynyrd Skynyrd tour bus pulled in. They had just made a video with Bennett Miller, the director of Capote (Steve and Jimmie were also roommates with Phillip Seymour Hoffman), and he handed the video to Artimus. Two weeks later Artimus had quit Skynyrd and he flew The Fenwicks down to Jacksonville to put a band together and record an album. Their first gig was at Metro park opening for Foreigner and Billy Squier in front of 15,000 people.
“Which was especially ironic because we used to play ‘Double Vision’ as a joke at coffeehouses in Greenwich Village.”
According to Steve, in 48 hours The Fenwicks went from an acoustic duo to a “17-piece afro-Celtic Yiddish ska band with three full drum sets.”
“I think of the Fenwicks now as a lifelong metaphysical performance art project.”
Steve’s family has a long history of Yiddish theater and he’s a fan of schtick, but he also takes pride in the depth of their lyrics.
“The deepest most profound message that anyone can make is that life should be fun. The giddiness and wackiness, especially in this day and age when everything is nihilistic and post-modern and sarcastic…I think that is the most profound statement we could make. From the theater of the absurd, it’s all one thing. The stage schtick, the banter between the songs, the costumes, the regalia, the hyperactive music, it is all part and parcel of the same thing. It is a vaudevillian, burlesque philosophical joyride.”
But the balance between depth and frivolity is one that The Fenwicks take seriously.
“The real battle on this planet is between reason and unreason. Between the rational and the irrational.”
Which is why their sponsor on this short tour is The Human Rights Foundation (humanrightsfoundation.org), which is an organization that “has a classical understanding of human rights, which is that every person, as long as they’re not violating someone else’s human rights, should be left alone.” Steve also offers up their gratitude to Big D and the Kids Table, the Boston ska band that Steve says is “the best ska band still skankin’.”
So is their music all just about Ayn Randian philosophies and the evils of Hugo Chavez’s regime? Hardly!
“We have a song about an avenging, senile Jewish werewolf, we have a song about eminent domain abuse, we have a song about disemboweling the undead and decapitating zombies.”
There will be costumes and “full battle regalia,” so he recommends that you wear something either waterproof or flammable and be prepared to “sweat and giggle.”
“The actual quote we couldn’t use in the press kit because it’s too grotesque, but I think it’s more accurate. I think it’s ‘If Madness had been violently molested by the Marx Brothers, The Fenwicks would be the naughty musical afterbirth.’”
There are up to 17 Fenwicks at any given time “depending on the weather and the barometric pressure.” Jon Marshall Smith from the Mosquitos is the newest member to the Fenwicks family, he joined them just before their 2005 Warped Tour appearances. He also produced their last two records. Because they live in five different time zones, it is difficult and expensive for them to tour, so this may be your only chance to see them before Haley’s Comet circles earth again, although Steve hopes that he and I will be conducting a similar interview when he’s 90. He also claims to be “literally a thousand years old.”
“We have a horn section now. Before we were posing as a ska band, but now we got our certificate in the mail. We are officially sanctioned now that we have horns as opposed to just me playing kazoo out of my sphincter.”
Go to thefenwicks.com for free stuff and to learn more about the band. Go to Fuel Coffeehouse on Thursday, November 1st, and make sure to get there early since they are going on at 7 pm sharp and their set will likely be done before it’s even dark outside.
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