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ABOUT "ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE"

For my third Ruach Rock studio recording project, I’ve been thinking about building community and teaching text through music in a whole new way. After crowdfunding my first two albums of Jewish piano rock in NYC produced by my friends and colleagues Glenn Grossman (the 50s Rock & Roll-styled “With All Your Heart,” 2010) and Toby Singer (the 60s Motown-inspired “They Tried To Get Us, We Won, Let’s Rock,” 2014), I was ready to make my first Chicago recording project in early 2020.

A few events led me to this moment in time. First of all, I no longer had a child under 2 (which also influenced the timing of my last project). In addition:

* A congregant at Temple Sholom of Chicago had recently told me that my theme song from 2014, “Ki Karov Eilecha - It’s Near To You,” still resonated with him, to the point where he had brought it up at family dinner on more than one occasion, and he asked if I planned to record it.

* I received a voicemail from my former teens from Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City telling me that they were traveling on their confirmation trip to Europe and started singing my theme songs from a decade ago.

* I walked by a Religious School classroom at Temple Sholom and overheard a teacher saying, “...and what does B’chol Le’vav’cha mean?” Several hands shot up and the correct answer came in chorus, “With All Your Heart!”

* I ran into a rabbi at a shiva and we played Jewish geography for a bit before realizing that our paths had crossed more than a decade ago, at which point he began singing my theme song from 2009 when we had worked together, “We Are All Connected.”

* A new Religious School faculty member sent me this note regarding my latest theme song ("We Are Together"): “Somewhere in Olam Ha-bah (the world to come), Debbie Friedman is smiling.”

Each of these interactions reminded me that you never know the impact that you may have on another person, and that music touches souls in such a unique, precious and lasting way. Over the years, I’ve accumulated a number of Jewish texts that my current and former students still remember and recite because of my songs - some of which are fairly obscure!

Meanwhile, I was busy writing on a variety of subjects: adaptations of Jewish texts, social justice, t’filah (prayer) and family life. My theme song texts from the past few years at Temple Sholom included Psalm 150, Lo Bashamayim Hi, and the 1000th version of Hinei Mah Tov. I also started creating my own English interpretations of prayers, with a focus on the Amidah (standing prayer), and wrote new songs for my wife and children. Finally, I have been moved to compose several times over the years in Iight of numerous tragedies involving gun violence, an issue that not only impacts Chicago, but the American Jewish community as well, and indeed our whole country. I did a lot of my composing on guitar, late at night, and on the porch swing at URJ Camp OSRUI, where I originally recorded a cappella versions of several of these songs way back in summer 2019.

As an educator, I naturally started thinking about curriculum that I could build around these concepts, similar to my HUC-JIR MARE Capstone Project - “Ruach Rock T’filah: Creative Prayer for Teens,” which I piloted fully at the Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School in 2017. I continue to be passionate about making Jewish concepts and text relevant and accessible for all ages. (I’ve also come up with a few solid Passover song parodies!) In 2020 I began leading an online "Attitude of Gratitude" service which included many of the compositions that ended up on this album.

My greatest musical joys over the past few years have included forming a Berklee College Brass Band to perform with a talented group of my musical friends at the URJ Biennial in Boston, touring the country with my “Mi Chamocha Freedom Songs” creative prayer experience, and leading late-night singalong jams at the Hava Nashira Jewish Music Conference at URJ Camp OSRUI. I’ve also had the pleasure of leading T’filah with my Religious School students, teens and preschoolers since 2014 as Director of Lifelong Learning at Temple Sholom of Chicago.

Since 2018, I’ve been blessed to be part of an amazing new Jewish musical community, Jewish Rock Radio's “Chicago Sings,” co-founded by Laurie Akers and Rick Recht. Every few months, Laurie gathered a growing lineup of local(ish) Jewish singer-songwriters for collaborative musical performances sharing their original Jewish music, which have been supported and broadcast by Jewish Rock Radio. This group has been feeding my musical and spiritual soul, and I can’t get enough!

As I started to contemplate putting a new collection of songs out into the world, and how it could honor the community connections I’ve built in Chicago, I couldn't think of a more fulfilling way to make it happen than with my “Chicago Sings” community. So I invited these talented people to join me in bringing these songs to life with some good old-fashioned group singing that has defined our communal sound. Ultimately, I hope that the recordings will evoke the feeling of sitting in a living room with friends gathered around the piano, singing out in joy and sorrow.

I was all set to record in early 2020 when the pandemic hit. And so, I put the project on hold, even though I could feel the songs pushing to be heard. As so many of my musical colleagues got creative about socially distanced possibilities for collaboration, I started to see a way to make this music beyond my original vision of gathering in a local studio, and this also afforded me the opportunity to work with a longtime friend and jam partner, Zach Singer, based out of Austin, Texas.

Zach is a guitar genius who began defining his own production sound during the pandemic. We met in 2005 at Hava Nashira and for many years would jam on our favorite classic songs into the wee hours of the morning. I was inspired by his energy, his creativity, and the bond of our friendship to work together via Zoom, text message, and occasionally email to bring these songs to life. Zach found a way to connect the music and the people together in a way that I couldn't have imagined, but for which I am so incredibly grateful. Making this album was a dream come true in so many ways, and I could not have done it without him. He put together a narrative through the songs that tells a story of struggle, community, gratitude for family, acceptance, longing and identity. Zach found the musicians, created the arrangements, played every single guitar note, and tweaked each song to my specifications while keeping his eye on his vision of a jam-soaked 70s funk journey through time and space.

As Zach says: "Put on your headphones and get your gratitude on."