Album Notes

With "Wedding Dance of the Widow Bride", Geoff Berner
continues with his mission to "Drag klezmer music into
the bars kicking and screaming".

This is a project that began with the 2005 release
"Whiskey Rabbi", which received rave reviews in
Canada, the U.S. and Europe. "...Widow Bride" is all
at once dirtier, prettier, more deeply rooted in
klezmer scholarship, and more transgressive. The
lyrics are sometimes humourous, sometimes
frighteningly dark, and often both at the same time.

"Because klezmer is largely wedding music, I decided
to write a wedding album. But it`s my wedding album,
so it`s a bit fucked up." observes Berner. "It`s not
a `concept` album, but all the songs are linked to a
general theme. The theme is this idea of wondering
how much of our happiness is built on the misfortune
of others."

The album features 9 original klezmer punk songs, and
a blistering, discordant cover of Leonard Cohen`s
"Queen Victoria". Several of the originals are based
on song concepts that appear in the Jewish wedding
ritual, such as "Weep, Bride, Weep"--a re-imagining of
the traditional "Song to Make the Bride Weep", and
"The Fiddler Is A Very Good Woman", based on the folk
tune "The Fiddler Is A Very Good Man". But with their
explicit sexual and political lyrical content, it`s
unlikely that these new songs will ever be mistaken
for their source material.

The trio of Berner, violinist Diona Davies and
percussionist Wayne Adams returned to the Factory
studio in Vancouver, with Adams also running the
board, recording live off the floor to create a raw,
emotionally powerful, acoustic sound that emphasizes a
mix of "joyfullness and despair" of traditional Jewish
music, combined with a raging energy.