Marc Revenson grew up around music but always took it for granted.
“For starters, I grew up around grandparents who had a real passion for Yiddish,” Revenson, known to his fans as Lil Rev, says. “The older that I got, the more of an appreciation I began to have for the uniqueness that is the wellspring of Jewish folklore and music. There’s a real richness to it that’s something to be celebrated.”
Lil Rev will perform music of those bygone eras of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and vaudeville when he comes to Bellevue on Sun., March 1 as a part of Temple B’nai Torah’s cultural arts series.
He can list off the names of famous musicians of the era from the tip of his tongue: The Gershwins, Joel Grey, Gus Kahn, Fanny Brice, Sophie Tucker.
“That whole Tin Pan Alley era was dominated by Jewish songwriters,” Revenson says. “There’s a lot of great history and music wrapped into those pieces.”
He also mixes in a smattering of songs he’s written himself. Add in Yiddish stories, Jewish folklore, and some jokes (“A lot of humorous stuff, like wherever there’s smoke there’s salmon, and things like that,” he says), and one guy on a stage fills the room for an evening of what he calls “Fiddler on the Roof meets O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
Revenson is a one-man band on the many instruments he plays — guitar, harmonica, recorder, ukulele, banjo and mandolin. True to the style of the troubadour, he generally travels light. He’ll be bringing only one or two of his instruments to Seattle, so he expects to find a couple to borrow when he gets into town.
That shouldn’t be a problem. Revenson tours extensively throughout the year, performing at synagogues, Jewish retirement homes, and schools, and he’s built quite a following for himself in local ukulele communities as well, including in the Northwest.
Revenson’s life, even when out of his Lil Rev persona, is surrounded by music. He began playing guitar at the age of 11, then moved on to harmonica — his grandfather played as well — but then picked up the rest of his instruments during his 20s as his fascination with the old-style music grew.
Revenson is also a music history lecturer at the University of Wisconsin’s Milwaukee campus, which is where he calls home. It was through his research that he began to connect to his Jewish musical roots.
“I really am fascinated with the immigrant era in song and story, and what that teaches us about what we are and who we were,” he says. Though the immigrant era can be defined as the 1870s through the 1950s, most of Revenson’s material covers the music’s heyday, from the 1890s—1920s.
He’s also published three books in how to play the ukulele and is working on another for the harmonica.
“I do a lot of instructing and clinics around the world, particularly with the ukulele, and then teaching the music history at colleges and performing and touring around country as much as I can,” he says.
But the soul of his music, he says, comes from hanging out with what he calls “the elders in the Yiddish community.”
“Just that connection to those who came before adds a lot of shmaltz to everything you do,” Revenson says. “You can only go so far with…what you’ve read and what you’ve gleaned from sources other than human beings. Most of the music I like came from a time when it was more of an oral process.”
Them Tin Pan Alley Jewish blues
