The eclectic Kalamazoo band Red Sea Pedestrians is celebrating its first decade with a new album, See Through The Eyes of Osiris. Prior to the CD release event at Bell's Eccentric Café on June 25, the six musicians joined Cara Lieurance for live music in the studio at WMUK.
The current members of the Red Sea Pedestrians are Ian Gorman (mandolin, guitar, banjo, bass, vocal), Rachel Gorman (clarinet, vocal), Bill Caskey (guitar, keyboards, bass, vocal), Michael Fuerst (bass, cello, vocal), Cori Somers (violin, vocal), and Benjamin Lau (drums, percussion). All are involved in writing and arranging the original songs and instrumentals of their set. Elements of klezmer, hot jazz, folk, and vaudeville can be heard in their songs, some of which have extended playoffs that become wild dance episodes.
Ian Gorman says the band was first formed as a klezmer-themed opening act for the Corn Fed Girls' 2006 Christmas show, "just for a little balance, you know." Clarinetist Rachel Gorman and violinist Cori Somers discuss internalizing the harmonic minor scale used in Jewish and Eastern European folk music. Cori says it has come to sound like a "grounded, earthy, 'let's get together' kind of place." The most recent additions to the band's lineup, Mike Fuerst, Ben Lau, and Bill Caskey, weigh in on why they were excited to join the group and create a new chapter in the band's storied history.
They play four new songs in the Takeda Performance Studio at WMUK. See Through The Eyes Of Osiris will be available at the release concert on June 25 at Bell's and soon on iTunes, CD Baby, and Earthworks Music.