Schmekel Interview

Morty: Hey! Okay, my first question is how long have each of you been playing your instruments?

Ricky: I started playing keyboard and piano when I was 12, 13ish. I’m 26.

 
Simcha: I started playing the drums at age nine, so I’ve played for almost 16 years.

 
Lucian: I started playing guitar when I was ten. I’m 29.

 
Nogga: I started playing guitar when I was 8 and then bass when I was 14. Then I didn’t play anything for ten years and then I joined this band.

Morty: You are all very seasoned musicians, very cool. Okay, so I was reading the article that just came out in the New York Times, congratulations on that!

ALL: Thank you!

Morty: I really love when a larger publication prints something about trans art related stuff. Was it a dream to get in the NYT?

Lucian: My real dream is to be on the Daily Show, but yeah, of course I am super thrilled to be in the New York Times.

Morty: Has anything occurred after the New York Times article came out?

Ricky: Yeah, we got an email from Rabbi Steve Greenberg inviting us to perform at a retreat. That’s pretty big.

Morty: Wait, should I know this Rabbi? Is he big cheese?

Simcha: He is the Rabbi in the movie Trembling Before God. He is the first openly gay Orthodox Rabbi who is in that movie.

Morty: And he has a retreat?
 
Lucian: Well, so he emailed us saying “Hey, we’re looking for a fun show for this Orthodox retreat,” and he asked for a demo of our music and I emailed him a song of ours called “I’m Sorry It’s Yom Kippur,” which has lyrics about all these really appalling things that we are atoning for. Well, not really appalling. Like leaving your dildos in the sink and things like that. And so far he hasn’t written back.

Morty: If he read the NYT article then he had to be aware of what your songs are about!

Lucian: Yeah.

 
Simcha: Oh, I didn’t realize we hadn’t heard back…

 
Morty: Perhaps he is mulling it over right now.

Lucian: I mean, he has to know, we’re called Schmekel, so….[Ed note: Schmekel means little penis.]

Morty: Well, so, I’m curious. Did this band really start as a purely fun thing?
 
Lucian: Yeah, it legitimately did start as a joke. The three of us went over to Ricky’s house and this is before I even knew Simcha, and we just wrote “Pharoah/ Moses Slash,” which is about Pharoah and Moses having crazy anal. Then Ricky went to teach a piano student, but before he left…

Ricky: Yeah, I said “You know what rhymes with oil? Mohel!”  And walked out and then you all wrote “The Mohel Song.” 

Lucian: Its true. “The Mohel Song” is about a trans Jew who starts T and his dick starts growing, and he realizes he has a foreskin and doesn’t know what to do.

Morty: Yeah, I saw you perform that on a Youtube video. I loved it! Even though these songs are hilarious they are also, for lack of better word, poignant.

Simcha: I think Lucian and I have talked about employing humor to address serious subjects and that he feels really comfortable doing that kind of thing. That’s kind of like, our ethos, that its more effective to employ humor to reach an audience to get them to the kinda harder issues, than using a more serious strategy. When people are laughing, they are open, their hearts are open. So, they’ll be more receptive to paying attention to what they are laughing along to.

Lucian: Also, at the very beginning of the band, it was all very silly. Like “Pharoah/Moses Slash” is a really ridiculous song. The only thing that is substantive in that song is a part about BP spilling oil into the Nile. There is nothing real in that song.  But then after we started writing more we got more interested in looking at serious subjects and then finding ways of making them funny and making them accessible.

Nogga: We don’t just use humor to open up to other people, but its kinda like…but for me personally its also about dealing with personal issues. We write a lot about our own experience and I think that’s what really helps us speak to people. We’re not trying to write songs about every Jewish trans person.

Lucian: No!

 
 

Nogga: We are writing from our own experience and its really therapeutic. We’re making art about these things that we can examine…and we’re a band that’s very much like a family. We process together. I have a primary relationship and that relationship is with my band, and that’s where I do most of my processing and communication.  When I have issues, the first people I talk to are my band mates. Like when I was really upset about the guy who couldn’t suck my dick because I’m a transguy and he doesn’t want to have “straight sex,” you know? Its just very therapeutic and I constantly tell Lucian “you’re writing my life when you write these songs!” I mean, this stuff actually happens.

Lucian: A lot of songs are about real things, for sure.

Morty: I totally sensed that, you feel this is real experience.

Lucian: Yes, the Craigslist songs are real. They are about Ricky.

Morty: Do you all take part in the writing of the songs?

Ricky: Lucian is a lyric writing machine. We write a lot of music together. I wrote “Fondle the TSA Agent.” “Sex With Pans” we wrote together. We just wrote our first collaborative song.

Lucian: On the road!

Ricky: Yeah, and it’s about chest binging and its called

Lucian, Nogga, Ricky: THE BINDING OF ISSAC!

Morty: Very cool! So, you would need to know a bit about Jewish history to understand the song. It may go over people’s heads.

Lucian: When we do college shows we print out a glossary of Jewish and Queer terminology. It has a little J for Jewish and a Q for Queer.

Ricky: And that glossary keeps getting longer…

Lucian: We hand it out at the college shows and have people look it over before we start playing. Then people can yell out their favorite words. And they get to keep it.
 

Morty: Which just segued into my next question. As trans artists some of us, not all, do a lot of educating. So, you make it a part of your art, to do the educating?

Ricky: A lot of people we’ve performed to, where there weren’t a lot of trans people, are a lot more open to trans stuff. And I think if we talked to them in any other way, of like, say, sitting down and talking about their cis privilege or what have you, they’d be like no, fuck that. But if it’s a joke they are with us.

Lucian: I really like doing it in this context because when I was first finding out about trans stuff and trans vocabulary and language about 10 years ago, I actually hated workshops on gender and was always super uncomfortable. They always felt very preachy and I always felt alienated and awkward, and I think a lot of people who are turned off by seriousness, that don’t like to feel like they are being lectured, it makes the subject more accessible to those people.

Ricky: I think we’ve gotten a lot of attention from people we otherwise wouldn’t get to know. Like, the people at a lot of our shows, from the college shows to the show we did at the Jewish Community Center. Many of those people probably didn’t have a lot of trans friends and some were just progressive Jewish folks who weren’t queer. So, we wouldn’t really know them but there they are at our show.

Lucian: A lot of cis gay men who wouldn’t be interested in trans stuff are really receptive to our band. I have a personal investment in that.

Ricky: Some dude bros came up to us at a show and said “Are you dudes really dudes!” And then they started quoting our lyrics. “Suck my matzoh balls! That’s funny!”

Nogga: Yeah, they asked me if we were all really trans.

Lucian: They were laughing their asses off!  Also, a lot of Jews who aren’t queer love us. Even older Jewish ladies who do not know anything about the Brooklyn queer community have seen our show have come up to us and said how much they loved us.

Morty: I love that!

Lucian: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun.

Morty: How much about being trans influences you? I mean, is being trans a big impetus for your artistic expression? And I’m including any art you do beyond being in the band.

Lucian: For myself, I would definitely be writing songs and making music if I weren’t trans, but I don’t know if I would still be doing it if I weren’t queer, if that makes sense. Being queer is a big part of my urgency to write the lyrics I write, but it wouldn’t need to center around transness. I think I would have to be queer in order to feel like I have something to say.

Simcha: I agree, being queer and then specifically genderqueer and then being Jewish and then all these identities together are what drive me to want to assert myself. I feel like I occupy a really ambiguous space and I don’t think a lot of people see me the way I would like them to see me, so that is a big impetus for me to assert my presence. So that I’m not erased. I think that is what drives me to create art.

Ricky: I don’t think that is as true for me. I had an awareness of myself as an artist before I had an awareness of myself as queer. And I think if I wasn’t trans and I wasn’t queer I would still be a musician, I’d probably just be singing about something else.

Lucian: I wrote songs when I was young, like 12, but they just weren’t very good. They were too emotionally angsty, arrhhhhh! songs. I just think, yeah, maybe I’d be writing songs but they wouldn’t be relevant to many people. I think being queer gives my songs relevance to people outside of myself.

Nogga: Well, I’ve been a photographer for a long time. I was a professional photographer for nearly ten years. I got my first camera when I was 8 years old. I wanted to do journalism and art and travel around the world taking photos and that had nothing to do with being queer. I think I’ve been able to focus the work I’m doing now because of my trans experience. I make art based on my experience and what I’m feeling. I’m sure if I wasn’t trans or queer I’d be making art about something else.

Morty: What would you say to a trans or gender variant artist who wants to make art but is feeling insecure about putting their stuff out there?

Ricky: There are people who want to hear what you have to say, so, fucking do it.

Lucian: You have to make bad art before you make anything good, so practice making bad art. Don’t pass judgement on it for a while and just create things.

Ricky: Also, the world needs to hear you. The world needs more representation from people like us.

Nogga: I think the most important thing for me personally is to make sure I really broke through and found out what my medium was, and where my strongest energy came from was when I was not making art to please other people. So, just to make a point to myself first, to write, draw, do photography. I found that when I was making a project for myself and it affected me it had a much greater impact on people around me. I had art teachers say, “I get your concept but why do you have to be so flamboyant in this way, or push this issue, or why do you have to push this envelope.” And I would say, “I’m not pushing anybody’s envelope but my own.”

Photo By Melody Mudd

Simcha: I had dreams of being a rockstar from age 12 until about age 18. I went to Portland to pursue that and I totally bombed my dreams after I realized how the real world worked. I never expected to be able to return to playing drums. I stopped playing drums at age 18 pretty much until I started in this band. What is happening now is exactly what I wanted when I was 12. So, if you have the passion, which I did, I had a lot of humps to get over. Mainly it was about people’s musical passion versus my own. I was always told I was taking things way too seriously, that I had too much ambition. I was really driven, but then I let it go, and it’s funny because once you let go of something and decide that you don’t really need it is when it comes and is given to you.

Lucian: Also, making something very specific is really much more interesting for people than making something general that will try to appeal to everyone. When you try to encapsulate the essential trans or queer experience, it usually comes off as really forced or didactic or presumptuous or just not real. So, do your best to hone in on your own experience and it will probably make your art much more interesting.

Morty: Do you call yourself a “trans / gq artist” or just an artist?

Simcha: Yeah, I think that what people are finding compelling is that we are identity whores, which I am using ironically and as a joke, and kind of building our music off of that. Which I think is fine because there aren’t enough voices out there to represent. I respect artists and writers who just happen to be trans but aren’t working from the angle of being trans or genderqueer, but I do still think there is a need for artists who are using their identities as part of their art.

Nogga: From a personal standpoint I can identify as both depending on the art I am working on. Sometimes I am a trans artist and other times I am just an artist who is trans talking about things like love and my father or just being a sad emo person. Those times it’s completely genderless. In this band I am a trans artist and outside the band, the art I do has to do with working out my inner emotional battles.

Ricky:  Some stuff I write is directly about being trans. Other stuff I write is affected by being trans but is about something else and sometimes I can write stuff where the person listening would never know I’m trans but would find out more about my personality and my politics.

Lucian: I’m probably more of a trans artist than I am a trans anything else. For example, I’m not a trans ESL teacher, it just doesn’t ever come into play.  The most I really think about being trans is when I am writing songs. Schmekel is where most of my artistic energy is going right now. So, when I am working on my music in this band, I am thinking about my identity as trans, but in my day to day life I don’t really think about the fact that I’m trans.

Morty: So you have a new album out now! Tell me more!

Lucian: Yes, it is officially out! This is our first full length release. It’s called “Queers On Rye.” It is produced independently with the help of Riot Grrrl, Ink. It has 11 songs.

Here is the track list:
1. I’m Sorry, It’s Yom Kippur
2. Shark Attack
3. Tranny Chaser
4. I’ll Be Your Maccabee
5. Pharoah/Moses Slash
6. Super Transsexual Brothers
7. I <3 Str8 Men (Butt Not 4 Sex)
8. The Mohel Song
9. Fondle the TSA Agent
10. Sex With Pans
11. Surgical Drains

You can buy it on our website for ten dollars. We are keeping it cheap and not going to sell out ever!

Morty: Really? So, if some major label called you up right now to sign you, you’d say no?

All: Yeah, we’d say no!

Lucian: For a lot of reasons. For one, Ricky has a Bachelors degree in studio recording and can do it all. So, we don’t need someone else to record us. We also know how much artists get screwed over by those deals and don’t end up making much profit.

Ricky: It’s a sketchy business all together.

Simcha: Yeah, for sure.

Lucian: Also, we get to control the environmental stuff and whether the people we work with are unionized, so the political control is important too.

Nogga: If we work independently, we can stick closer to our politics and keep things accessible and just really concentrate on the things we want to stand by. Being an independendent artist facilitates that a lot better.

Morty: If any trans, queer, genderqueer or gender variant people have questions for you can they get in touch with you?

Ricky: Yes! They can get in touch through our website.

Morty: You answer ALL your emails?

Lucian: Yes, we answer them all.

Nogga: We have a system.

Lucian: Also, whenever we get any angry, mean emails we always reply with one sentence in Yiddish that means “may you grow in the ground like an onion.”
Morty: Do you get a lot of negative feedback?

Ricky: We did get one person that asked us why we can’t be trans goys [Yiddish term for a non-Jewish person]

Lucian: Yeah we also got someone who left a nasty message on our Youtube channel saying that we weren’t real Jews and that if we wanted to be transgender we should “renounce our Jew”.

Nogga: And if they knew anything about Judaism, they’d know you can never leave the club. Once a Jew always a Jew. Done and done!

Lucian: I actually am a bit surprised that we haven’t gotten more negativity. I was surprised about the particular people who are really positive about our band.

Nogga: We’ve gotten a really positive reception from sometimes the weirdest places, like those 3 dude bros who came to our show! My mom’s friends are calling my mom up and asking “Did you know Nogga and his friends are in the New York Times?!”

Morty: Does it kinda feel like the ball is really rolling with the extra attention from the New York Times..

Lucian: It’s showbiz!

Morty: Yeah! Like, now we’re hitting the big time!

Lucian: Sure, but we’re nerdy.

Ricky: And Jewish.

Lucian: And don’t know exactly how to take the extra attention.

Nogga: What’s crazy is someone in South New Jersey ordered 6 copies of our album!

Morty: Whoa! Yeah! Well, the album would make a perfect Hannukah gift.

All: Yes! It would!

Morty: So, what’s the future for Schmekel?

Lucian: We have already begun to write more songs.

Morty: When are coming to the West Coast?

Lucian: We are obscure famous, but we are not rich, so a university or organization needs to help bring us out there.

Morty: I might be able to help out. Let’s discuss. It was so nice to speak with you all!

All: We had a great time! Thanks for the interview!

Go to the SCHEMEKEL WEBSITE NOW!! www.transjews.com