Ann Arbor “modern klezmer” band Schmaltz tackles first album after years of live shows

This story is part of a series about arts and culture in Washtenaw County. It is made possible by the Ann Arbor Art Center, Destination Ann Arbor, Larry and Lucie Nisson, the University of Michigan Arts Initiative, and the University Musical Society.

For several years, the Ann Arbor “modern klezmer” group Schmaltz has been exclusively a live band, playing regular area gigs that include a near-monthly residency at the North Star Lounge. So the process of recording the six-piece outfit’s first album came with some unexpected challenges.

Schmaltz released its first full-length studio album, “The Seltzer Man,” recorded live at Big Sky Recording, on Dec. 19. The band will follow that up with a major album release party (or “celebration,” as drummer Jack Harris puts it) at 8 p.m. on Jan. 6 at the Ark, 316 S. Main St. in Ann Arbor.

While the band draws plenty of inspiration from traditional klezmer, Harris says his band offers “a modern spin” on the genre, citing an amalgam of influences from hot jazz, Balkan-, and Latin-infused styles to polka and funk. Their sets are “high-energy” and “exciting,” Harris adds. With three different horn players (a trumpet player, saxophonist, and a trombonist), Schmaltz makes a big sound.

“It can be pretty in-your-face and fun and chaotic, which is how we feel klezmer music should be,” he says.

Asked to define Schmaltz’s approach to making music, Harris says, “I wouldn’t say it devolves into chaos, but there [are] moments where none of us quite know what’s coming next.”

With that in mind, the band’s members decided to take a slightly unusual approach when it came to recording their first album.

“In order to capture that energy … we decided that we wanted to record it live in front of other people,” Harris says. Their worry, he adds, was that things wouldn’t feel right if they were playing to an empty room, and they might not “get that unique, spontaneous energy that we want[ed] the album to have.”

“It’s just a different feeling when you’re playing if no one’s there. If it’s just you and the band in the room, it can feel like it’s missing that crucial little bit of stakes,” Harris says.

With no audience in the recording studio, he says, “we weren’t feeling that energy. Things weren’t clicking at first.”

So the band brought in a few friends and family members to serve as an impromptu audience. Then, Harris says, “it felt like, ‘Okay, this is it. We’re on for real.’”

“If we messed something up dramatically, we would stop; we’d start over,” he says. Otherwise, he says they barreled on through, and, as a whole, “it was really like bringing an audience into the recording experience.”

The setup gave them the energy of a live show, which Harris says “is where our music thrives.”

“The Seltzer Man” is made up of nine original songs: eight written by saxophonist/band leader Ryan Schildcrout and one by Myles Murphy, Schmaltz’s former pianist, who also provided the arrangement of “Sunrise, Sunset,” originally from the musical “Fiddler on the Roof.” (Harris describes that tune as “a very beautiful song” that “we obviously bastardized into a Schmaltz banger.”)

For their Ark show, Schmaltz’s members plan to spend one set playing all the songs on the album straight through in the order they were recorded. But for the other set, they’re having a reunion of sorts, replete with special guests. 

“Everyone who’s ever performed with Schmaltz under that name, we’ve invited to the show [to] sit in and play with us,” Harris says. “If they’re available, obviously — we won’t be able to get everyone.”

Meanwhile, Harris says he’s glad he and his bandmates recorded “The Seltzer Man” the way they did, even if it made things more complicated in the moment.

“I think it’ll hold up in a few years, when we look back on it and [we say,] ‘Yeah, I think we did this the right way,’” he says. 

“The Seltzer Man” is available for download here.

Tickets to Schmaltz’s Ark show are available here.