Sandcatchers produce fresh, contemporary sound

Sandcatchers, a band that blends the Middle Eastern sounds of the oud with Americana-infused musical textures of the lap steel guitar, was formed two years ago at Cheryl’s, a soul food restaurant in Brooklyn.

Guitarist Yoshie Fruchter was learning to play oud and wanted to get some practise in, and Cheryl, the restaurant’s chef and owner, was willing to give him a weekly gig. Then Myk Freedman on lap steel, Michael Bates on double bass and Yonadav Halevy on percussion joined Fruchter, and together they forged a fresh, contemporary sound. Sandcatchers perform at Toronto’s Ashkenaz Festival this summer.

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Lap steel is associated with Hawaiian and country music, but the band’s lap steel player, Freedman, studied the instrument with top experimental jazz artists. “The music we play is closer to Americana with some Middle Eastern stuff. It’s not very complex, it’s not very crazy or loud,” Fruchter said on the telephone from Brooklyn. “I approach the oud in a different way just because I wasn’t born in a country that has the oud as a traditional instrument. So both of us have these unique approaches to the instruments.”

The sound of Sandcatchers’ self-titled EP is a departure from the music of Fruchter’s other group, Pitom. Pitom’s two recordings, on John Zorn’s Tzadik label, are an adventurous combination of jazz, klezmer, rock, surf and heavy metal. Fruchter, an observant Jew, also explores themes of God, religion, repentance and redemption on the recordings.

“I was not the sort of person who was mining old recordings for trying to play them exactly. I was more interested in seeing what Jewish music is going forward,” he said.   

Fruchter, 34 – who also freelances in a Pakistani/American group, an afrobeat band, a doom metal band, Frank London’s Shekhina Big Band and Abraxas, who perform Zorn’s avant-garde Jewish music – said his early exposure to Jewish music helps him to keep an open mind to various styles of music.   

“My upbringing with Jewish music, Jewish song and prayer – to me that  informs everything. In some ways, it’s enabled me to have this open mind and the ability to adapt to certain situations because of that environment of being around music that was not just music for music’s sake. It was music for something deeper. That enabled me to understand that all music has a depth to it that can be felt even if it’s not immediately apparent,” Fruchter said.

He has collaborated with his musician father, Chaim, an occasional chazzan, on an album of songs that explore critical moments in the lives of various biblical personalities.

Speaking about his family, Fruchter revealed their astonishing connection to Elvis Presley, who at 15 was his dad’s babysitter. Fruchter’s grandfather, Alfred, a rabbi who lived in a poor section of Memphis with his family from 1948 to 1954, shared a house there with Elvis and his mother, Gladys.

“When my dad was born in 1952, he [Elvis] held my dad,” Fruchter said, adding that Elvis sometimes turned on the lights for his grandparents on Shabbat. A recording of Elvis’ early hit, That’s Alright Mama, was first played on the Fruchter family record player.

“They [the Presleys] were too poor to own a record player,” Fruchter said. “To me, it’s kind of cool that my grandparents’ record player played one of the first Elvis pressings.”   

His grandparents also helped the Presleys pay some of their utility bills. Some six months after the Fruchters left Memphis, Elvis shot to fame.

“I believe that later in his career Elvis gave a lot of money to Jewish communities and I think there was a connection,” Fruchter said.


Sandcatchers play Montreal (Aug. 31), Guelph (Sept. 1),  Hamilton (Sept. 2)  and in Toronto at the Ashkenaz Festival on Sept. 3, at 6 p.m. in the Brigantine Room at Harbourfront Centre (admission is free). For more information, visit www.ashkenaz.ca and  www.yoshiefruchter.com.

To download Sandcatchers’ EP, visit Bandcamp.com.