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Barry Reisman, Program host, WNWR AM 1540, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Barry Reisman - WNWR AM 1540 Philadelphia
VETERAN MUSICIAN RELEASES A CD AFTER A HIATUS
By JOSEPH SERGE
Arts Editor
It may have taken him a few decades, but veteran musician Allan Soberman has finally gotten around to recording a collection of his own songs.
His indie release Hold Tight is actually not his his first CD. In 2001, after the death of his father, Morris, cantor of Beth Tzedec Congregation for more than 35 years, Soberman created A Dedication, a tribute to his father that included his father’s traditional songs and prayers. Shortly after, he released Searching for My Voice, in which he combined the music his father loved — traditional Jewish music — with the popular music he loved. "I just started to record Shalom Aleichem and then went crazy with it,” Soberman, 57,
says. “I did Adon Olam on a 1 2-string guitar and just continued doing it. It’s like [Pink] Floyd meets Lubavitch, or as someone described it, Beach Boys with a yarmulke.”
Now, Soberman has released Hold Tight, a collection of 12 original retro-sounding pop-
rock songs that reminds me of the Travelling Wilburys, the Byrds and Tom Petty. Soberman admits that his songs are rooted in late ‘60s, ‘70s influences. “I love jingle-jangle bands [the Byrds] and songs with harmonies like the Beach Boys.” Some of the songs on this album have been sitting around since the early ‘80s, though they’ve all been newly recorded.
“I’d written a lot of tunes over the years that people liked, but I just never got around to doing an album,” he said. “But recently I felt this just had to get done.” In a sense, this is a comeback for Soberman, who’s been in the business since the ‘70s, but quit for a while and joined an accounting firm.
He started out, like so many, in a bar mitzvah band but began to take it more seriously when studying commerce at the University of Toronto. “This was during the big folk scene of 1973 and ‘74.” Soberman played with artists such as Grammy Award-winners Dan Hill and Ben Mink, Canadian folk band Stringband and Brent Titcomb, and toured around North America opening for the likes of Billy Crystal, Billy Joel, J.J. Cale, Steve Goodman and many others. “There’s a lot of names I could drop,” Soberman jokes. “It was a very soulful time, I was always playing.
“In the late 1970s, [at the height of the punk rock scene], a lot of acoustic acts went to Nashville.” A music publisher be knew hooked him up with some songwriters, but nothing really came of those sessions. “I was in Nashville, on and off, for six years. I got to play at the Bluebird Cafe twice [a club famous for intimate, acoustic performances.]”
Soberman had two singles released in 1981 on Toronto’s Boot Records (a rootsy label founded by Stompin’ Tom Connors), which garnered widespread Canadian airplay.
He quit the business for a while, but his father’s death inspired him to start recording again. “Doing Searching for My Voice was a nice, comfortable combination of the different states I was in. Here’s what I do and here’s what my father did.”
Soberman admits there was a lot of “bumping heads” with his father. “He didn’t like the stuff I was doing,” he says. “Even in my formative years in a bar mitzvah band, he would whisper to the guests, ‘He’s got a commerce degree.”’
But all that’s behind him now, and with the release of Hold Tight, on which Soberman plays virtually all the instruments~and harmonies, he is testing the waters to see if he’s “still got it.”
The songs have strong harmonies and are radio friendly, with strong, catchy hooks. The choruses on songs like I Want to Run, Still a Part of Me and Just Another Night tend to stay in your head for hours.
"Just Another Night" has been sent out to radio stations, and he’s hoping for some airplay on adult contemporary stations.
“I want to keep doing what I like to do and hopefully something will happen,” be says. “If it does happen, I’d like to get out and play a bit, but at this stage of the game, I’m not going out on the road for months at a time,” the father of two adult children says.
“I just want to get the songs out and have people hear them and maybe get some publishers interested.”
For more information about Soberman and his CDs, visit www.sobermanmusic.com, where you can listen to a selection of both his secular and spiritual music.
Joe Serge - Canadian Jewish News (Sep 27, 2007)