Mark Rubin is an American multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer of music for television and motion pictures, published critic, educator. Founder of proto-Americana acts Killbilly in Dallas TX in 1989 and the Bad Livers, Austin TX, in 1990, Rubin is best known as a bassist and tuba player. Today he lives and works in the musical community of South Louisiana based in New Orleans and tours frequently performing his own original material as "Jew of Oklahoma". [1]
Rubin was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma [2] and grew up in Norman, Oklahoma. [3] His father was the director of the Hillel Foundation at the University of Oklahoma and was raised in a Jewishly observant household. He first arrived in Austin on August 28, 1987. [4] As of 2014 he lives and works in New Orleans.
Rubin was a founding member of "Killbilly", a Dallas, Texas-based band active from 1987 to 1994, which described its music as being a mixture of bluegrass and punk. Critics[ who? ] have variously described the band's style as a "fusion of bluegrass and shred metal", and as "a genuine bluegrass band playing straight, fast and loud". It was in Killbilly that Rubin first met banjoist Danny Barnes who encouraged his playing and suggested he leave for Austin. Rubin left the band, and Dallas, to move to Austin and play with Barnes in 1989, eventually forming "Bad Livers" in 1990.
The "Bad Livers" were an American band from Austin, Texas, United States, whose inventive musical style defied attempts to categorize them according to existing genres, though their influences included bluegrass, folk, punk, and other musical styles. The original lineup, formed in 1990, included Danny Barnes on banjo, guitar and resonator guitar, Mark Rubin on upright bass and tuba, and Ralph "Trey" White III on fiddle and accordion. Barnes composed the majority of the group's original songs. When White quit the group in a snit at the end of 1996, he was briefly replaced by Bob Grant on mandolin and guitar. Barnes and Rubin then continued to perform and record as a duo until unofficially dissolving the band in 2000. The band has neither toured nor recorded since then, but Barnes and Rubin played a few live shows with Grant in 2008, 2009, and 2014.
The Bad Livers' music has often been cited for its influence on other groups, creating what The Austin Chronicle described as "an impressive legacy". The Stranger credited them with "revitalizing roots music", and, according to the San Francisco Chronicle , "The Bad Livers helped open the way for old-time and bluegrass bands of today". The Bad Livers' first album, Delusions of Banjer, was released in 1992 on Quarterstick Records and produced by Paul Leary of the Butthole Surfers. The album was praised for "Barnes's strong material, as well as the group's tight musical interaction." The band's second album, Horses in the Mines, was produced by Barnes and released on Quarterstick in 1994. In his review, McLeese admired them as "a band drawing from the wellspring of tradition to create something fresh, vital and original." Süddeutsche Zeitung found that the record "sounded quite authentic—almost as if it had long held a place in the Library of Congress." The Bad Livers spent 1995 and 1996 touring and working on side projects as well as looking for a new label to release their next album. In 1999, Rubin was, according to Andy Langer, the band's "bassist, co-manager, and goodwill ambassador". [5]
The Bad Livers spent 1995 and 1996 touring and working on side projects as well as looking for a new label to release their next album. Finally the band signed a three-album deal with Sugar Hill Records, which had more experience than Quarterstick at "selling banjo records". Their first album for the label, Hogs on the Highway, was released along with the information that White had decided to leave the band. It was announced that he was to be replaced by Bob Grant, though Grant's tenure with the band did not last long. Both White and Grant appeared on Hogs on the Highway, which received enthusiastic reviews from Sing Out! , praising Barnes' "quirky and inventive" original songs, and the Old-Time Herald, admiring the "considerable skill" with which Barnes crafted his lyrics. The Austin American-Statesman agreed that Barnes was "an entirely underrated songwriter" as well as a "banjo wizard", while The Washington Post lauded his "timeless, deadpan voice". The Sydney Morning Herald was appreciative of the "beautifully controlled ambience" of the entire album.
Shortly after the album's release, Barnes moved from Austin to Port Hadlock, Washington, though he and Rubin continued to work closely together on the score for the Richard Linklater film The Newton Boys as well as the Bad Livers' next album. Although the soundtrack was admired by The Village Voice and Entertainment Weekly as well as the Austin papers, the film did not fare well at the box office, and the soundtrack album did not sell well. The Bad Livers' second album for Sugar Hill, Industry and Thrift, was released in September 1998 with only Barnes and Rubin credited as members of the band, though the album features various guest musicians, including members of Rubin's side project, Rubinchik's Orkestyr, who are featured on the track "A Yid Ist Geboren inz Oklahoma". The album garnered positive reviews, and the Chicago Tribune selected it as the best bluegrass album of 1998, while The Times of London admired its "genuine originality". Industry and Thrift did not receive as much attention from the press as Hogs on the Highway had, however, and as Barnes lamented, the album "fell off the face of the earth".
The Bad Livers' final album, Blood and Mood, was released in February 2000 and featured, as The Austin Chronicle noted with astonishment: "Electric punk rock, sample-based tunes with drum tracks, and a shocking scarcity of juiced-up banjo playing". The Independent named it "the leftfield album of the week" and found that it "brims with enthusiastic ideas", while The Washington Post was puzzled but invigorated by a live show supporting the album, concluding that it had been "Fascinating. Even refreshing". Although it left No Depression depressed, Daniel Wolff found the album to be uniquely evocative of a "rural eccentricity" that had not yet been extinguished and formed a kind of continuum with punk and old-time country: "Either the Bad Livers pick up where 'I Wish I Were a Mole in the Ground' left off, or Bascom Lunsford discovered the punk aesthetic in the 1920s."
The Bad Livers were inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame in 2007.
Since 1996, Rubin has been a driving force in the "klezmer" music world as a bassist, tuba player, instructor and pedagogue. His credits in the Jewish music world include long time collaborations with Frank London’s Klezmer Brass All-Stars, The Other Europeans, and Andy Statman, as well as two decades on faculty at KlezKamp. He has been featured performer and instructor with multiple appearances at Toronto's Ashkenaz Festival, Yiddish Summer Weimar, KlezFest London, KlezMore Wein, Klezmer Festival Furth, Festival of Jewish Culture Krakow among others. His Jew of Oklahoma show debuted as a special feature at Ashkenaz in 2016. For three summers in the mid 2000s he toured with the Serbian Romani Brass Band Boban Markovic Orchestra in the "Brotherhood of Brass" project.
In 1990, upon learning of the death of San Antonio-based legendary accordionist Santiago Jiménez Jr.'s bassist Juan Viesca, Rubin became his full time string bassist, mastering the old-fashioned Hispanic "tololoche'" slap style. In 1991 he arranged a 3 record A&R deal for Jimenez Jr. on the Austin TX based Watermelon Records label. The first "Corason de Piedra" garnered a Grammy Nomination.
In 1992, Rubin began working with Eastern European immigrant musicians from in and around the Houston area from the Polish and Czech speaking communities. Rubin produced or appears on releases for Texas-Polish dance band fiddler Brian Marshall and his Texas Slavic Playboys and Texas-Czech Accordionist Mark Halata and Texavia, appearing with both groups on the National Council of Traditional Arts touring roster for over two decades.
Rubin as a bassist is featured at the annual Festival of Texas Fiddling, as its founder noted the festival was "based on his fieldwork."
Rubin was tapped by Director Richard Linklater to provide period music to his film the "Newton Boys" in 1996 for 20th Century Fox. He was called upon again as Music Consultant by director Douglas McGrath for the film "Infamous" for Warner Independent. And he created the sound-alike Hank Williams tracks for the George Wallace documentary "Setting the Woods on Fire" for PBS. So convincing were his versions that the rights holder initially accused the production company of digitally manipulating the original recordings.
Along with former roommate Kevin Smith (current bassist with Willie Nelson,) Rubin released the seminal video on the "slap" bass technique for upright bass, essentially kick starting the revival of a once lost art of bass playing. Closely associated with roots music, Rockabilly and Americana, literally a generation of musicians cite their video "The Ungentle Art" as their introduction and lexicon to the style. Rubin has travelled internationally as a teacher and clinician since the mid-1990s to present day.
In 2013, Rubin, along with Sean Orr, released the album "Texas Fiddle, Okie Guitar". [6]
Rubin was featured along with three other principals in German documentary film "Der Zerbrochene Klang" ("The Broken Sound") about his participation in the Other Europeans Project; a collective of Jewish and Roma musicians from 9 different countries. [7] As of April 2014, Rubin lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana as a freelance musician, music writer and cultural critic. [8] He is currently penning his memoir.
In 2015, Rubin released a solo album, "Southern Discomfort", which contains nine original songs and three covers. [4]
In 2017 he released his first truly "solo" effort, "Songs for the Hangman's Daughter," recording 11 original compositions accompanied by either guitar, banjo or mandolin. Rubin explores themes centered around the duality of being a Jewish identified Southern Musician and tours solo across the US and Canada. [9]
in 2021 during the height of the Covid epidemic, Rubin released "Triumph of Assimilation" to great reviews:
No Depression said "There’s no better distillation of Jewish American identity couched in Southern culture than a 30-minute yarn seesawing between humor, horror, and rage relating to the ways the region’s legendary hospitality clangs with Jewish custom. For most Jews, “hostility” is the likelier word. For Mark Rubin, the Jew of Oklahoma himself, the luxury of just being plain old exasperated is welcome by comparison. ...In the South, Jews are acknowledged merely as Jews. Rubin’s radical argument is that maybe they should be treated as people."
Folk Alley said "Mark Rubin is a legend from back in the alt country days, known for his pioneering work in the 90s with his band The Bad Livers in Austin. While he’s never left behind his earlier punk bonafides, his new work in recent years, billed as Mark Rubin - Jew of Oklahoma, has been more focused on the complexity of his identity as a Jewish person of Southern descent. With his new album, The Triumph of Assimilation, he masterfully melds old-school roots music with Yiddish protest songs and brutally acerbic ruminations on the long history of American antisemitism."
The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History called him. "One of the great American Jewish musicians of our time."
When not touring, Rubin is tenor banjoist and vocalist for the Panorama Jazz band of New Orleans.
Klezmer is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for listening; these would have been played at weddings and other social functions. The musical genre incorporated elements of many other musical genres including Ottoman music, Baroque music, German and Slavic folk dances, and religious Jewish music. As the music arrived in the United States, it lost some of its traditional ritual elements and adopted elements of American big band and popular music. Among the European-born klezmers who popularized the genre in the United States in the 1910s and 1920s were Dave Tarras and Naftule Brandwein; they were followed by American-born musicians such as Max Epstein, Sid Beckerman and Ray Musiker.
The Yonder Mountain String Band is an American progressive bluegrass group from Nederland, Colorado. Composed of Dave Johnston, Ben Kaufmann, Adam Aijala, and Nick Piccininni, the band has released five studio albums and several live recordings to date.
Hitchhike to Rhome is the first studio album by American country/rock band Old 97's, first released on November 1, 1994. The title comes from the song, "Stoned," and refers to Rhome, Texas.
Frank London is an American klezmer trumpeter who also plays jazz and world music.
Danny Barnes is an American banjo player, singer, and composer whose music is influenced by country, jazz, blues, punk, metal, and more. He has been described as a "banjo virtuoso" and is "widely acknowledged as one of the best banjo players in America." He was a founding member of the Austin trio the Bad Livers, with whom he toured and recorded extensively from 1990 to 2000. Since then, he has performed and recorded as a solo artist, as well as collaborating with Bill Frisell, Dave Matthews, Jeff Austin and other musicians. In 2013, Barnes and Max Brody formed the Test Apes. In September 2015, Barnes was awarded the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass, in recognition of his role as "one of bluegrass music’s most distinctive and innovative performers." Martin’s website said of Barnes’ work: "The raw and unpolished musical breadth of his compositions has propelled him across the industry today."
Pete Krebs is an American musician from Portland, Oregon, best known as a member of the punk-pop band Hazel, and for No Confidence Man, a split single with Elliott Smith.
The Fabrangen Fiddlers is an American Jewish folk music band. Founded in 1971, the Washington, DC-area group was the first music collective devoted to the rediscovery of Jewish folk music and the development of new Jewish liturgical folk music.
Erik Hokkanen is an American fiddler, guitar player, and composer living in Austin, Texas. Erik is known for performing and composing an array of musical styles, including gypsy music, western swing, surf rock, rock music, rockabilly, bluegrass music, and classical. He moves effortlessly among instruments, often playing violin while an electric guitar hangs down his back. A third generation Finn raised in Florida, Erik has toured extensively throughout Scandinavia, playing major festivals and clubs with top Finnish musicians.
The Devil Makes Three is an Americana band from Santa Cruz, California, United States. The group blends bluegrass, old time, country, folk, blues, jazz, and ragtime music. The group's members are guitarist Pete Bernhard, upright bassist Lucia Turino, and guitarist and tenor banjo player Cooper McBean.
Joel Rubin is an American clarinetist, klezmer musician, ethnomusicologist, and scholar of Jewish music. Since becoming involved in the klezmer revival in the late 1970s, he has been researching, teaching and performing klezmer music and related genres. He has been a member of, or performed with, such groups as Brave Old World, the Joel Rubin Ensemble, and Veretski Pass.
Jeff "J.D." Pinkus is an American bassist best known for his work with American punk band Butthole Surfers from 1985 to 1994 and the 2009 reunion.
Andrew Edward Statman is a noted American klezmer clarinetist and bluegrass/newgrass mandolinist.
The Strangers were an American country band that formed in 1966 in Bakersfield, California. They mainly served as the backup band for singer-songwriter Merle Haggard, who named them after his first hit single "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers". In addition to serving as his backing band, members of the Strangers also produced many of Haggard's records, sang lead vocals on select tracks, and co-wrote many of Haggard's songs with him, including the No. 1 singles, "Okie From Muskogee" and "I Always Get Lucky with You".
Margot Leverett is a New York-based clarinettist. Born in Ohio, she lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Buffalo, New York before studying at Indiana University School of Music. At Indiana, she was classically trained. Leverett later became interested in klezmer, a traditional musical style of the Jews of Eastern Europe. She studied with klezmer clarinettist Sidney Beckerman and was a founding member of The Klezmatics in 1985. The Klezmatics, a band associated with the Klezmer revival would later become the first klezmer band to win a Grammy Award.
The Bad Livers were an American band from Austin, Texas, United States, whose inventive musical style defied attempts to categorize them according to existing genres. Their influences included bluegrass, folk, punk, and other musical styles. The original lineup, formed in 1990, included Danny Barnes on banjo, guitar and resonator guitar, Mark Rubin on upright bass and tuba, and Ralph White III on fiddle and accordion. Barnes composed the majority of the group's original songs. When White left the group at the end of 1996, he was briefly replaced by Bob Grant on mandolin and guitar. Barnes and Rubin then continued to perform and record as a duo until unofficially dissolving the band in 2000. The band has neither toured nor recorded since then, but Barnes and Rubin have played a few live shows with Grant in 2008, 2009, and 2014.
Ralph E. White III is a musician from Austin, Texas who has drawn inspiration from traditional blues, old-time country, rock, African and Cajun music, among other traditions. He principally plays banjo, fiddle, accordion, guitar, kalimba and mbira. He was a founding member of the innovative and influential Austin trio the Bad Livers, formed in 1990 with banjoist and singer/songwriter Danny Barnes and bass and tuba player Mark Rubin. During the early 1990s, "White's sizzling dexterity on fiddle and accordion" was a "cornerstone of their buzz."
Killbilly was a Dallas, Texas-based band active from 1987 to 1994, which described its music as being a mixture of bluegrass and punk. Critics have variously described the band's style as a "fusion of bluegrass and shred metal", and as "a genuine bluegrass band playing straight, fast and loud." The Dallas Observer's Robert Wilonsky described the band as "irreplaceable" and their breakup in 1994 as the "end of an era".
Horses in the Mines is the second album by the American band Bad Livers, released in 1994. It was released a month after their gospel album, Dust on the Bible, was reissued. Horses in the Mines was Bad Livers' second album for Quarterstick Records; Bad Livers signed with Quarterstick, in part, because major labels considered the band to be a novelty. The band supported the album with a North American tour.
Michael Winograd is an American klezmer clarinetist and composer. He has performed with such groups and artists as Vulfpeck, Tarras Band, Geoff Berner, Socalled, Adrienne Cooper, Daniel Kahn & the Painted Bird and Michael Winograd and the Honorable Mentshn.
Christian Dawid is a German clarinetist, Klezmer musician, educator, and composer. He is generally regarded as one of the top Klezmer musicians in Germany, and has performed with groups such as Trio Yas and Khupe, as well as with international Klezmer groups such as Brave Old World, Daniel Kahn & the Painted Bird, Ben Caplan, Budowitz and The Other Europeans.
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