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Elias Lieberman - News & Reviews

Cape Cod Times article about the making of "This R

From the Cape Cod Times

A rabbi walks into a recording studio...Elias Lieberman of the Falmouth Jewish Congregation works on first album
By Emily Herrington
August 10, 2013

ORLEANS, MA - The rabbi enters a small room and closes the door behind him. He sits, holds an acoustic guitar in his lap and slips a pair of professional-grade headphones over his ears.

He starts strumming his guitar and sings into the microphone.

"The current grabs our boat, sends it sailing around the bend," the song opens.

Elias Lieberman, rabbi at the Falmouth Jewish Congregation, is at a private recording studio, Brick Hill in Orleans, recording his first album.

In the isolation booth next to his is Bart Weisman, a local jazz musician and the executive producer of the Provincetown Jazz Festival, playing the shaker. Weisman is the album's producer and drummer, but today he's just adding the shaker.

Upstairs playing bass in the engineering booth is Jon Evans, who owns the studio. Evans is the engineer, manning the recording equipment that's full of mystery knobs and buttons and monitoring the waves of each instrument on a big screen TV. He knows exactly what everything does and what it means.

If there's an issue with one instrument or some background noise - say, an errant dog bark on the bass track - Evans can isolate the problem and remove it.

After one take, Lieberman says, "That felt pretty good. My guitar on the opening was not." Weisman and Evans can hear him through their headphones.

The three men congregate upstairs where they listen through the track with all of their contributions combined.

Weisman and Lieberman sit on a large couch with a shag rug at their feet while Evans works at the computer, reaching for a knob every now and then. Weisman taps his foot along with the beat while tracking the tempo with a metronome on his iPad, and Lieberman leans forward in concentration, clasping his hands near his mouth.

It's a perfectionist's business, no doubt. The untrained ear can't distinguish a difference or a flaw, but Lieberman hears something he doesn't like. They decide to redo the recording, and the process repeats over several takes.

Lieberman's album is coming to fruition after a successful 30-day Kickstarter campaign - he surpassed his $2,500 fundraising goal by more than $5,000. The extra funding allowed Lieberman to bring more musicians and instruments on some tracks and to hire a graphic designer to create a stylish CD package.

The album, titled "This River," will have 14 tracks, all written and performed by Lieberman. Weisman calls him "a true singer/songwriter" and a "prolific writer." Lieberman has the album's slated release date as sometime in the late fall or early winter.

The process isn't over after Lieberman finishes his recordings, re-recordings and harmonies. Evans then has to individually mix each track on the album and send it all off to be mastered in San Francisco.

Lieberman describes "This River" as folk rock, and a combination of secular music and settings for Jewish liturgy. Some songs are in English, some in Hebrew. He calls the experience exciting, daunting and "a great deal of fun."

"The most important thing is the sheer joy that I've had in doing this," Lieberman says. "It really is a dream that has come true for me." For Lieberman, his music goes hand-in-hand with his position as rabbi and his belief that "the one who sings prays twice."

Lieberman says his spiritual experiences are wrapped up with music. "I feel an extraordinary privilege that I get to do that with my work." He says music is a pure form of spirituality and helps when words may get in the way.

Weisman says, "For Elias, this (album) is his baby."

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