Today’s band (from left): Matt Appleby, Daithi Wolfe, David Spies, Greg Smith, Geoff Brady and Kia Karlen.
I can’t remember whether Sun Prairie Jimmy saw his shadow on Groundhog Day 1996, but I guarantee he froze his ass off looking for it. The temperature in Madison plummeted to -27°F that night. But that didn’t stop 50 or so lunatics from ditching their blanket piles to attend the debut performance of Yid Vicious at Mother Fool’s Coffeehouse on Willy Street. Madison’s preeminent klezmer ensemble has reconvened each year around this time for a show at Mother Fool’s to commemorate that maiden outing, usually joined by a gaggle of former members, occasional subs and other special guests. This year’s edition, marking the 20th anniversary of that first gig, is set for Friday, Jan 22.
I had just started playing klezmer — the dance music of Yiddish-speaking culture — a few months before I moved to Madison from Chicago in the summer of 1995, and wanted to start a klezmer group here right away. I called my only Madison friend, fiddler Daithi Wolfe, and asked him if he had time for another band. His answer was, “No, but I’ll do it anyway.”
Author Bob Jacobson (center) with the original Yid Vicious lineup, circa 1996.
The next challenge, finding a clarinetist, turned out to be just as easy. On about my third day as a Madisonian, I heard a damn good clarinet player practicing somewhere nearby. It turned out to be our next-door neighbor, Christina Baade. When we met in person out on the sidewalk the next day, she mentioned that she’d been thinking about getting involved in something non-classical, maybe klezmer. I said, “Funny you should mention that....”
Next, I popped over to St. Vinny’s to look for a baritone horn. Amazingly, they had one, a no-name $50 clunker. The guy who sold it to me turned out to be a guitar player, Mike Pollay, who became the fourth member of the band.
After we brought on Matt Appleby, a friend of Christina’s from the UW music school, as our bassist, we decided to add a drummer. Wacky fate intervened once again. I was at Dane County Regional Airport with my tiny kids waiting for my parents to arrive on a flight that ended up getting canceled. I struck up a conversation with a fellow dad trying to keep his own tiny kid entertained while waiting for the same ill-fated flight. That dad, Jon Pollack, turned out to be not only a drummer but a Ph.D. student who knew a lot about Jewish cultural history.
A lot of other musicians — too many to list here without blowing my word limit — have done time in the Yid Vicious lineup since then. Wolfe and Appleby are the only original members left. I generally get credited as being the “founder” of Yid Vicious, but by now the band has existed for three times as long without me as it did with me (though I still get called in as a sub from time to time). I was long gone by the time they toured Chiba Prefecture, Japan, in 2006; or performed at an international klezmer festival in Argentina in 2009; or provided live accompaniment — composed by Yid Vicious percussionist Geoff Brady — to the 1920 silent film The Golem at James Madison Park in 2011. My klezmer baby has grown up and accomplished more than its dad ever envisioned.
Klezmer, the traditional party music of Yiddish-speaking Jews, evolved in the shtetls of Eastern Europe, making its way across the Atlantic with Jewish immigrants in the early decades of the 20th century. But by the 1950s it was on its way to extinction. Then, in the 1980s, a cohort of young, hip Jews started taking interest in their Yiddish roots, which helped spawn renewed interest in klezmer nationally and abroad.
By the time Yid Vicious launched, the klezmer revival was peaking. New bands, Jewish and not, with cute pun-based names were popping up all over the world, even in places where few Jews lived.
What’s behind Yid Vicious’ longevity? It could have something to do with its multigenerational appeal. “My favorite audiences tend to be really young kids and older people,” says Brady. “Both have a way of immersing themselves in the experience in a total and real way.”
Horn player/accordionist Kia Karlen, who has played with Yid since 2002, attributes it to the band’s community orientation. “Of all of the musical projects I’m involved with, Yid Vicious is uniquely knit into the Madison community,” she says. “It really opened my eyes to the way music can support community well-being.”
