Benny’s Favorite Topic and Postville Solos | Take 2 With Benny Friedman

[Music] welcome back to mr barca's take two where the faces and names familiar to you from the pages of magazine come to life you get a deeper look a closer glimpse today's guest benny friedman saying his name brings a smile to my lips i'm not even sure why it feels it sounds a little bit like bob i'm having around this is a lava thing that it's just an incapability of just being here because because fashionably late would have been but i you did better i did more than one up there yeah more funny more than what's necessary that's what i did it's very special we're very grateful for that benny i have a question for you if you don't mind yeah i feel like why aren't you out there aren't you releasing more singles we don't hear anything from you i'm serious like what just so quiet since the last album three years ago you come out didn't put out anything why you laugh um energy cereal they asked me this question it's real for real you haven't put anything out in a few years i go are you are you serious i put out every two weeks i put out something what english many admirers adherents and fans and i think across all demographics like salt lamborgh but there's such a thing called over exposure you're putting out a lot of stuff you are everywhere there there's boneyola mandarabelum and the muras and ukraine and you just you don't stop it every week there's a new single tiny growth spending feedback how many books have you put out the last year this is not about me another day we could talk about me um it's a it's an interesting question i don't know i think that in today's overexposed world right where where where you post something like it's on social media and it's in its shelf life is maybe six and a half minutes right until your yesterday's news i'm not sure that there's such a thing called overexposure okay people forget about things so fast you know so it's a little bit strategic even that means you don't you don't buy into this thing of uh laying low and popping up every six months or every year i don't think so i don't think so i don't believe in it you know my father i told my my father once landed from a a long trip and he came to my uh grandmother's house for some supper and he had a meeting later that evening and so he's like at the table he's showing signs of exhaustion so my mother said maybe you cancel the meeting you know and get a good night's sleep and my father went you know he grabbed his energy and said some no pushing things off beautiful so if you have a song you have a project you have an idea you have a thing you have to do it as fast as possible because mashiach is coming out and and uh you know what i mean then the whole thing changes so cold man we're here in golis that means even if you wanted to think you would have time um this is this is something interesting to me the world is changing the last two years at like a rapid pace 50 years in the last two years of of bachmann tragedy like we've never seen before ups and downs does that affect the music do you would you say that that affects the the sound that's coming out and the messages that you're producing um it certainly did um i i never would have touched a song like uh yet never breaks um before you know before 2020. i would i would have been morally opposed to it you know it's such a sad song it's so it's yeah it it it may be lit fish i don't know it it turns hopeful but it's very dark you know for most of the song it's very dark and i'm against it now we're young and we're hopeful and we're not depressed and we're yeah we conquered the whole world and then we were pushing in a matzah of it's a dark time [Music] the crowds dispersed on the streets that were once filled with love for the brilliant light emerged from deep inside our hearts [Music] instead of looking out for inspiration [Music] so it's a dark time that we are trying our very best to see the positive side of it which is what that song is is about all the way down to let's say nikolai which is probably the most recent thing you put out which again is a response in real time right uh yeah interesting and also it's a it's a it's a claudius wrote sorry you know yeah ukraine and and and kovit these are two things that was it wasn't like uh like somebody's experiencing a tragedy and i'm gonna make a song about it which i didn't like um but claudius it all together you're experiencing i mean we're all experiencing this together okay uh well let's talk a little bit about benny feedman if you don't mind you know which is my favorite topic [Laughter] the uh you very much you have that your father son think to you also this this like self-awareness thing the you do the sweater the cardigan i didn't give you a dress code you could do you do you um although i have to say that i'm pleasantly surprised could have been worse i try to no i mean this this very that's nice uh the healthy way you talk it's very nice favorite topic is the tell me tell me how we ended up over here that means uh you're a kid not so long ago in post film software uh with a good voice i've very few it's not few and probably a little bit to the point that it probably you wouldn't have minded your own identity i'm assuming this that you wouldn't have minded having another last name or being just being a regular guy and not always being is that correct like shoved into that when i was a kid in postville um and there's video documentation to prove this i didn't have a good voice really i just love to sing i wouldn't stop singing i wouldn't looking at the footage i didn't have i don't have a good voice i didn't have a good voice um but i i i love music i love singing and uh so i just did it all the time and there were people there for example jean-marc bashkin who who noticed it and encouraged me to his uh just to be clear to the viewers you didn't you grew up in minneapolis you went flying in shiva and posted the sifter yeah okay i was impossible for three years and i would sing at the shabbos table at the rabashkin house i sang at the malkus that he had every mata shabbas i sang at the uh at the lag boyimer events that he was always pushing me to sing and looking at the footage going how did he put up with it [Music] yeah we just sing together now we just did a beautiful shabbaton we were saying it's beautiful anyway um so no i don't think i i never i never uh was bothered by the fact that i have this name associated you know the name association um you know could be worse uh you didn't bother okay it didn't bother me at all and people say you know you sound like your uncle i go are you serious i sound like my uncle shh that's the highest compliment and it's the highest compliment not it's not even for me if you told anybody in jewish music you know you sound like avraham freed go no kidding how about that that's a fantastic compliment okay you're getting older you love to sing people are telling you you have little promise and then what you went out with your wife and said i want to be a singer um i decided i was going to try being a singer before i met my wife i actually warned her about it first time i met her now could i ask you a question i'm just questioning this is very sure where you're sitting not so long ago your uncle sat and he said i would never let my kids be singers 900 singers on the scene who had the same dna as you all started because they have wrongfully something but none of none of your own kids are there yes that means everybody who's second [Music] you had no problem with that decision did you ask him i asked him and he told me the same thing okay he told me you asked me my advice i recommend against it but uh are you asking me my advice and i said no like who whose advice did you ask your father you must be yeah you i i i spoke to my father about it i spoke to my mushri about it and i spoke to my uncle about it but i really i wasn't asking um for permission because i my mind it wasn't a choice it wasn't like to become a singer an actuary a singer it wasn't like that it was this is what i'm doing since i'm and it's and and if i know and if i can if i can sing is public if i can make a living off of it you know what i mean like this was the direction that i was going so i was asking for help i was asking for advice i was asking for but i wasn't asking if okay what i want it for my children i think also it's not for you if it's a choice okay because it's not the easiest way to live right i would love to talk about that too so so you you're going with your wife and you say i decided that i'd like to be a singer professionally and she said um i said to her basically i said i'm i believe that i'm looking into a future that is difficult why because man of shock i'm going to try this if i'm not successful i'm going to be very very heartbroken and very down and hard to live with and if i am successful i'm going to be very very hard to live with so uh you know what i mean and my wife said you're great at marketing you should look into that and she went with it and he went with it thank god and you went to producers you put out a you weren't doing events then really i was i was already i was already working on my first record already remember izzy talbonville from samyak music came across a recording somebody sent him of a dinner that i sang at and he contacted uh avermee guerrari it was it was would it make you feel bad to say i remember when your first album came out that you were really just writing on the fact that you have pizza nephew no that's okay yeah i i i was thinking to myself if i can convince people that i sound like avraham freed boom i'm in the door because we all know already that people like the way having freed things so you'll just be that was a consciousness i'm free from aliexpress right so but i did what i did do was i stopped listening to i'm freed music wow to in order to like i was listening to a lot of other music to try to adopt other natures and tenuous and stickers you know what i mean because when i sang i would sing exactly that gotham fred was like a caricature so i was trying to get away from that doesn't become yourself yeah um but uh i gave that up really quick that went back to i went back to listening back where i belonged wow okay so you become a singer and your first album was successful was it successful it i think it was it wasn't uh it was before yeah right so it wasn't a sensational runaway hit but for uh for a debut album i mean compared to some debut albums that came out when i came out together uh was it was it was very well received um didn't it didn't hurt but it wasn't the life-altering mm-hmm that sort of yeah it was the song you'd say that every single would need that kind of song to make a career go to the next level even if they have a great voice and yeah great everything else even if you don't have a great voice really yeah but the right thing it's all about material wow it's all about material and the song like yesterday is a is a matana from hashem that doesn't come around very often can i ask you a question does do you ever feel like i'm not saying that this is the case but i even know there's some things in my own career that when you're when you have a big success when you're younger some people i was like that's nice but it's not that so you're just living with your own demons that you created for yourself you mean as far as uh okay it's a good song whatever song you're making but it's not yesterday right you're stuck right like my greatest success is behind me right right it's it's awful it's the case no it's an awful thought it play it what you call it haunts you it wants you but the vert is it's very it's a very hard avoidable but i heard shmuley marcus after after he had the success of yalili one of his songs in the next record it said don't let the hits hit you over the head one of the lines of his songs i don't know what he meant wow i never have that but to me it meant you had a tremendous hit okay doesn't mean you can't do anything else ever wow you could don't let it impede you don't have a success in the people don't let your hits make you a handicap so i the next next song i had was todah that was a great song when i did it i knew i said it's a good song so so you know don't let the hits hit you over the head it's a good song record it it was uh it was like uh yeah sure it was a conscious thing uh and you were always only singing full-time you never did anything else in parasaur yeah because that's it that's a very courageous and maybe others was a foolhardy decision to make most singers don't start out doing their full-time they do other things and they hope right there aren't that many it's a very small group of people who are doing it full-time the the confidence and the i'm not sure if it was confidence or if it was maybe just plain stupidity i don't know but i i i never you know even when i was struggling and you know it wasn't like man i should uh you know i should well albums every couple of years so what the weddings the album is not barnosa album is his investment really so homeless investment is events dino says events yeah but how many events could there be already there's no not a lot of concerts going on no you don't mark yourself as a big wedding singer i guess you do that but that's the bread and butter's weddings really yeah for sure in the beginning for sure even today most most of of a singer as far as i know um unless you're like a planish thing most of the income for singers acidic singers for sure i think is weddings so you do a lot of weddings still yeah do you enjoy doing weddings most of the time i enjoy singing right i enjoy singing and when when [Music] all the pieces are in place that means the sound is good right i can hear myself and it's the good the the settings are correct the oil is into it the band knows what they're doing and i'm feeling good the gas mias it's it's it's a greatest pleasure you love it when things are not going great then it's like like schlepping uh it's like work for the rest of the world right with the rest of us which is not what i signed up for ever let's talk about this week you were telling me a little bit off-camera about your schedule this week tell me ah my schedule this week was we originally scheduled this interview you said you're going to be jet-lagged because you're coming back from israel right overnight right i was supposed to land this morning back from here to surreal i was supposed to be from matsushabas till this morning in our teacher for a big concert that was going to take place on tuesday in yerushalayim and instead i was home this week because because prime kanyevsky passed away heir of shabbos so we canceled the show who made the decision to cancel when um i have a team in israel who have been working on this concert for months and months with blood sweat and tears um mostly sweat um and they made the decision and of course you understood right away that that was the right thing i said right away i was i was uh sleeping it was after purim i woke up in the morning and i have a frantic phone call from my artist they said as soon as it's going to be shabbos over here we're not going to be able to communicate but just want you to know this terrible news i hate to wake you up in the morning with this news but uh looks like i said okay listen yeah it's heir of shabbos whatever it is don't make any decisions without consulting a rabbi call arov and whatever thereof tells you to do that's overdue i don't know who they spoke to but i said the matajab is my flight send me a notification i'll see it mata shabbas if it's thumbs up i'll get on a plane if it's thumbs down i'll not get on a plane and the notification whatever was thumbs down so what that means just to talk this out is that you had no jobs this week because you had the plan to be nice as well right so what did you do your shoes with your kids you did some homework yeah i got to know my kids yeah yeah helping my kids again so people don't understand that part of your industry which is that i assume that it's it's minute to minute so to speak that means those rights things like that happen yeah things like that do happen it's not often right it's it's generally you have a schedule you have a calendar the conversation we had at the winning the co-founder and you told me right that was like a shock you know you you live one way and everything shuts down and you count on these events it's not a monthly salary that someone's paying you yeah it was a it was that was a very scary moment it was like total wipeout you know just select all on your calendar delete finished all right i did one job i came home like a week after purim i had a check i said to my wife this is it this check that i hold in my hand is the last check that i know that we have after this so what happened i have no idea what happened was that um we we got tight for a long time i went on unemployment you've got a also very skinny you've got the skinnier is that for that well that i you know when you when you get covert you lose weight and then when you recover and then you're just sitting at home you gain weight right everyone the covet game so i uh like everybody went but but the the hasidic music industry thank you hashem it's very resilient and i spoke to actually my uncle about it he said also his calendar was wiped out and he said i said today booster everybody knows parnosa comes from you it's very easy to say that when your calendar is full and things are normal okay things are not normal now calendar is empty let's see let's see let's see you uh you know this will take talent i think i have a debris figured it out yeah and like the industry changed probably for the better um all these singles every every organization was doing online so and then live jobs it's hard for people i have brothers and sisters who live outside of the tri-state area the brooklyn area they don't understand you know they were in you know montreal it's hard to even it's hard to even imagine but i would say from us until tish above or maybe not maybe from tish above rosh hashanah time was like the busiest i ever was it was you know it speaks to people in the in the velvet musicians then we talk about post covert a number of years ago we sat down for an interview with you you said to me i don't know if we wrote it or if it was off the record or on the record but now it will be on the record the statute of limitations runs out of things you said something along the lines of you had put several albums already three or four albums and you were like you feel like you had a brick wall type of thing you're like i'm doing it it's okay it's nice but i want to be doing something different i want to be singing differently a different style from it i think you said like from a different part of you maybe in a different way you were just putting out kuala lumpur then it was a new album and you were very nervous and hopeful and playful that you you had just started working with donnie gross you did daniella fryam um and and you were trying something new and i would i'm not a a music pundit or anything just an observer it looks like shaman worked out for you it looks like the careers in a good place what what was that about what did it was like well you're here like what happened take us through that whoo very very interesting yeah i met donnie um and and uh and everything changed everything changed mama mamish everything um first of all tsv silberstein i met him and he schlepped me kicking and screaming to donnie gross basically he hired me right to sing with him a duet and he said but the condition is that you record where i tell you to record and i said okay whatever you i'm against it you know i record where i record i'm very comfortable but if you know i mean you're the boss you tell me you tell me she let me do donnie that was it it's jewish music that was it no it's i'm not being cute it's not because you're sitting here you're very you know people like you think donnie changed jewish music right let's talk about that for a minute i'm a dining fan yeah very much enough to be let's talk yeah that is special i was just listening to a lecture on hasidic history of hasidism just from a historical perspective no shtick history what's ever documented we can document historically danny gross changed the face of jewish music ace journeys now joey joey evans he his fingerprints are all over what is today all together you see this tremendous thirst for a certain style i i don't have my phone on me they make you take it off before we get miked up here but somebody said a lot of times today i didn't see the context of it but i would i would love to read it to you on ear something along the lines it was about endnote about jewish music all these what was what is the new sound they wrote there's a singer that never changed and that's benny friedman a random reader just came in on today's letters that benefit is just true to who he is true to his roots and this style you never you never really bought into that we need to be like them to be relevant you could be like us and be relevant well you could be like us and be relevant to us no i'm saying donnie dani brought back a thirst you see that other singers are trying to recreate that they're trying to go back jewish music is going backwards in that sense that means it's sophisticated and the sound is better but the style is going back to what we grew up with right you know they were always consistent but i don't want to talk about donnie i'm we love talking about that i want to talk about you what happened you almost i would say hit rock bottom in the way i saw it in your face then and and you you picked yourself up and and just flourished what was that you know tell me about the inner part there was a there was a guy there's a comedian who speaks about the this 12 people who walked on the moon in history of the world [Music] neil armstrong [Music] who yes maybe one other guy that people know about i can't remember his name now but what about the 10 other people that walked on the moon this guy's name is i think schmidt got his last name schmidt he walked on the moon nobody knows who he is okay so the guy must be thinking to himself just as the comedian what do i have to do to get famous i walked on the moon nobody knows who i am so at that point i was sitting with you i was like i understand yesterday was an international sensation through the stratosphere what i gotta do to get famous i'm not famous but like you know there's a to headline a show a big show uh you need to be that you need to be the type of three or whatever yeah people negotiating my prices and giving me a hard time about this and that's like oh my goodness what i got to do there you know how much what i have to do to prove i it was like i felt like you said i felt like i was like my my tires are in the snow and i'm pushing full throttle and it's just am i going anywhere that's a good minneapolis marshall yeah yeah again montreal got it yeah um so that was the feeling that i was feeling then um then i started working with donnie and donnie says some principles first of all is sipoc you need to work on projects that you enjoy working on no doing projects just because you think this is a good business move because if you're doing a business move you'll hear it you're not into it you don't love it and and and then you don't enjoy your life why sit hours and hours fixing over a project that you don't actually care for you're just doing it you know if you love it let's do it if you don't love it don't talk to me about it which is a a tremendous life-changing principle if you live by it if you're able to if you're able to and and musically you know it's it's much more sensitive if you have a job you have a job you know i mean people love the job people don't love the job it is what it is musically you are trying to create something that comes from your soul which is another dani principle oh my goodness tanya emphasized something that everybody i think understands but he takes it to another dimension music needs to move you emotionally what moves you emotionally the vocal the voice singing the song is where you will touch the person on emotional level so the first thing that you need to do is is find that perfect spot where the singing will be emotionally evocative if you don't find that you have nothing if you don't find that no matter how good the arrangements are in the voice you're throwing money down to the drain if you know shama is not there with technology we can edit every node we get to break things down i always tell you know singers sometimes you're saying i'm like that's great like yeah it's like it's you know so it's off tune i said tune the pitch we can fix a little bit i can't create a heart a singer does not singing with emotion he's not single feeling i can't create that maybe they'll maybe they'll come to that point but at this point we can't do that so so you have to find the right key you have to find the right tempo you have to find the right song and you have to you have to you have to it has to be the singer has to connect with the song so those four ingredients would be the singer the song the key and the tempo everything else pirusha everything else is detailed so you think everything fell into place for you once you bought into that i think so falling into place we're still working on it does bingo baby help your career or hurt your career it only helps i remember my brother was living in in brooklyn he just got married and his first baby was born with down syndrome um and in new york you have all types of help and you have all types of services and things like that and he was offered a scholarship opportunity outside of new york and he wasn't sure what to do so he asked my father having a baby who needs a lot of services and this you know therapies and things and i can move on where it will be a lot more difficult a lot more expensive and my father said i didn't send a question is the bracha not staying away from children and he went her to cleveland and his son is doing fantastic work hashem it's a mysterious nefesh no nobody said this is a walk in the park not saying others aren't but you're you really there's not even a genre that i can associate with you but i'm able to you could sing israeli like an israeli you think hasidis i think you've done events where you don't even think english songs real events in lakewood you're a household name i don't know that anybody gets around like you do and i'm like the esther malcolm of uh of hasidic music welcome to everybody good with you or hashem thank you hashem i don't know what genre do you see as your own uh modern hasidic music i don't know whatever that means i think album i would love to do it it would probably be a little bit different rimmel um first i'm always uncomfortable calling him my friend because my grandmother was always don't call your uncle by his first name you say feter okay so uh with that disclaimer i'll say fat there now and it goes for all the avraham that i'll say he was part of the vad of the baal monogamy in in his affinity his feelings for chabad nagum is very very different from mine mine is as kilo a little kid observing it he was in this metana in the um right now like online backhand recordings are are are surfacing of him singing like the first uh renditions of the nagonam that they made for didaba's birthday or whatever it is um so he's a much more of a purist than i am so if i would do uh right if i would do chabad collection it would be different what will it be i don't know but it would be probably different and and one final question do you feel um that we're just getting warmed up this is part one do you feel like you started your career i was like okay he's just riding on the family name he's writing on his good dna to make himself relevant we don't know how to figure out if your last name would be something else loved off could be where you are today do you feel like you've answered that question like you first arrest the the fact that unless you were born at top of the mountain so you benefited from easy pass do you feel like you've you've taken care of that um i i don't know because i don't have a problem with it i don't mind it you know you know if my uh if my name was uh was uh if my name was alevaychek and i became uh uh a big rush yeshiva you know i'm fine with that yeah you know if you compare me to my uncle the the love that's fine i i don't i mean i don't i don't i don't i don't mind it i don't mind just give me the microphone and let me sing yeah i mean yeah and if and if i can if i can sustain it for for an extended period of time thank you hashem looking forward to what comes next i have no set no doubt that your greatest successes are ahead of you thank you for coming thanks [Music] you