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R96 CoverRIENLP1096
Detroit-born, Hamburg-based troubadour and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Kahn and New Yorker master fiddler Jake Shulman-Ment have been playing and traveling together for nearly twenty years. Having worked in so many bands and projects (including The Painted Bird and Brothers Nazaroff), they have finally joined up to record an true analog duo record: The Building & Other Songs. It is, as Kahn says, "the most personal and intimate selection of songs I've ever recorded. And with Jake, it was like recording it with a brother."

The interpretations range from radical treatments of modern Yiddish songs such as Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman's title track "Der Binyen / The Building" to new Yiddish translations of some of Kahn's lyrical heroes: Cohen, Brecht, Springsteen, Guthrie, and Waits. Yiddish serves here as a kind of broken mirror, reflecting both despair and repair, exile and ecstasy, loss of trust and wanderlust. The title track is the key to it all: "Imagine your building… how it suddely burns and falls… a tower of steel on foundations of straw… Why sit and sigh?… Let us dance a tango till the dawn, warming our souls by the burning of straw."

180 gr HQ LP + mp3 download

Tracks side A:

1. Morgndike Simkhes (All Tomorrow’s Parties) (Reed/Kahn) 05:04
2. Der Binyen / The Building (Schaechter-Gottesman/Kahn) 05:06
Prelistening:
3. Di Tsukunft (The Future) (Cohen/Kahn) 4:42

Prelistening:
4. Yeder Eyner Veys (Everybody Knows) (Cohen, Robinson/Kahn) 04:23
Prelistening:
5. Dos Lid Fun Der Molde (Das Lied von der Moldau) (Brecht, Eisler/Kahn) 02:12

Prelistening:
6. Zuchnower Nign (Kahn, Dawid) 02:03

Tracks side A:

7. Brokhshtiker / Broken Pieces (Markish, Kahn) 05:05
8. Mayn Tatns Hoyz (My Father’s House) (Springsteen/Kahn) 05:06
9. Dos Land Iz Dayn Land (This Land is Your Land) (Guthrie/Kahn) 03:55

Prelistening:
10. Heym Iz Mir (Home to Me) (Paxton/Kahn) 03:07
11. Tom Trauberts Kloglid (Tom Traubert’s Blues) (Waits/Kahn) 05:10

Total Time: 46:27

© Oriente Musik, except:
Track 1: Oakfield Avenue Music Ltd
Track 3: Stranger Music Inc
Track 4: Sony ATV Songs LLC
Track 5: Deutscher Verlag für Musik Leipzig
Track 8: Sony ATV Pop Music Publishing
Track 9: Ludlow Music Inc
Track 10: BMG Ruby Songs
Track 11: Fifth Floor Music Inc

DANIEL KAHN: Vocals, Piano, Accordion, Drum, Harmonica, Guitar, Banjo, Uke, Harmonium
JAKE SHULMAN-MENT: Violin, Backing Vocals

Produced by Michael Fetscher
Recorded analog to tape October 2022 at White Fir Studios, Trochtelfingen-Steinhilben, Schwäbische Alb
Engineered, mixed, and mastered by Michael Fetscher

Release date May 12, 2023