Photography by by Annie Martineau
This is intended as a compliment, of course: Brothers Lazaroff tend to make a production of things. Or, to put that another way, seldom does a show of theirs go down in usual fashion, following the typical script of a band arriving at a traditional venue before unloading, plugging in, and playing their tried-and-true set. On Thursday they’ll be featured at the singularly unique Joe’s Cafe in the DeBalivere neighborhood, and for this one they’ll be bringing in a real variety pack of twists.
For starters, the band—fronted by guitarists/vocalists David and Jeff Lazaroff, and augmented by their usual band of drummer Grover Stewart, bassist Theodore “Teddy” Brookins, violinist Mark Hochberg and keyboardist Sam Golden—will be joined by backing vocalist Anita Jackson, poet Rabbi James Stone Goodman, DJ Boogieman (aka Andrew Warshauer), and horn players Ben Reece and Adam Hucke. All of them have had extensive previous experience playing with Bros Laz, save for Jackson, who is featured on the group’s later-in-2019 release, Sisters and Brothers. The title track will be a featured song on this gig.
Mind you, that’s one of two completely different works that the group will be releasing this year, with the first one, Thanks for the Fear, released at this May 2 show. It emerged from a series of Thursday-night open-jam sessions that had a Fight Club–style set of rules: Show up ready to play, don’t discuss what to play, then play. Over time, these jams—which David Lazaroff notes would mysteriously wind up around 30 minutes apiece—were sent to another longtime collaborator, Paco Parano, who deconstructed then reconstructed the source material in a more ambient work than their norm.
“I felt this pull to play more around the beginning of 2017,” David Lazaroff says. “Paco participated in some of the jams. Or he would give us some sounds to improvise on top of. We’d start at 8 p.m., and we wouldn’t say anything. The jams would flow for about 30 minutes and then we stop to have some conversation. We found this a really healing thing to do and did it for a good, long time. Different people would float in and out and we learned to play really free. We recorded everything and sent the individual WAV files to Paco. He created the sound design that he was used to doing, adding to the full band stuff. Most of this has his pulse.”
Warshauer, who worked on production for Sisters and Brothers, will be using some of the new album in his DJ sets, while the main sets from the Brothers will include a blend of material. There’ll be some cuts new to the audience (as they’ve only played one show since December), some old favorites, a “choice cover or two” and, if their form holds, an extended jam somewhere within it all.
Joe’s Cafe, a venue they typically pack at their occasional shows there, was the place that they wanted to book when bringing this particular, multi-purposed gig to life.
“It’s just this perfect mix of intimate listening room and funky local treasure,” Lazaroff says. “It’s inspiring walking in there. Since we started playing there around four years ago, it’s really propelled our thing, because that’s a place that people like to go anyway. So there are fans of ours and fans of Joe’s. And they’re great about a listening room situation. You know that every note counts and that people are listening closely. That gives you a heightened sense of awareness. It really puts you in a place, a setting, and we’ll try to fit that feeling live, putting together a show that reflects its sense of artfulness.”
