November is a cruel month. The weather starts to turn from the charming autumn to downright chilly. All those gorgeous red and gold leaves on the trees have turned brown and become a nuisance to be raked up. And like the second quarter of a marathon, the school year is well underway, but the specter of summer is still so far away. So what’s a despondent kid to do? What gets you through these early dark evenings and dissipating dreams of a report card full of A’s?
Why, memories of camp, of course! And what better way to do that than to get your camp friends together for a sing-a-long? That’s the basis of the CD released this year by the folks who brought your little brother or sister OyBaby, the Jewish music CD and series from local couple Rob and Lisi Wolf.
“Songs like “˜Leaving on a Jet Plane’ to this day conjure memories of my years as a camper, then counselor at Jewish summer camp,” says Michelle Koplan, executive director of B’nai B’rith Camp in Lincoln City, along the Oregon Coast.
Based on songs that Lisi herself sung as a camper at B’nai B’rith Camp, We Sang That At Camp is an album of songs, both in English and Hebrew, sung by OyBaby veterans (and sisters) Kim Palumbis, Stephanie Schneiderman and Lisa Schneiderman, joined for the first time by Portland-based musician Justin Jude.
The musicians put together a strong album of old camp standards with some of the daily prayers mixed in. The Schneidermans and Jude have a nice chemistry that sounds good on a kids’ album. “Erev Shel Shoshanim” in particular is hauntingly beautiful. And “BaShanah Haba’ah” feels like that classic style of Israeli folk song one of my own camp music directors would bang out on his beat-up guitar. Younger kids (probably preteen) giving this album a listen will love it. Older teens might not find enough bubble gum, and Dylan and Van Morrison fans might cringe at the sanitized reinterpretations of “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Into the Mystic,” but the kiddies are probably too young to get the nuance at this point, anyway.
As the product of many years of Jewish summer camp, I have fond memories of my bunkmates banging on the tables and singing at the tops of our lungs after Shabbat dinner, or sitting on the grass and hanging out with the song leaders for music time. To me, if there’s anything missing from this album (aside from today’s new standards, i.e., anything by Adam Sandler), it’s the kids.
Which is why I think that while We Sang That At Camp is an album that can be listened to alone upstairs in the bedroom, or with Mom and Dad in the car, or on the iPod, for it to truly feel like camp — to get that awesome, soul-raising, eardrum-smashing, huge-smile-inducing experience — you need to make some hot chocolate and popcorn, invite over your camp buddies, and sit in the family room and belt out these songs at the top of your lungs. You’ll be smelling the cedars and feeling the grass under your bare feet in no time at all.
Then again, when I put on my headphones and gave the album a listen earlier this month, the heavy winds outside died down and the sun came out. That has to say something.
We Sang That At Camp is available at www.oybaby.com/jewishcampsongs.