Local musician Bob Friedman is about to have “an incredible dream come true.”
Friedman, 49, will be playing keyboards and saxophone when he leaves this Saturday on a six-week, 20-show tour in Australia and New Zealand with the famed Milwaukee rock band, the Violent Femmes.
Though it’s exciting, Friedman said he’s aware that it “might get tiring.” But he feels “a huge sense of luck” about being able to participate in “something this wonderful, big and exotic as a tour to another country. Every show I play with them feels like a real gift.”
Friedman’s love of music began with classical piano lessons that he started at age 10. “I wasn’t too crazy about taking classical,” Friedman said, but he enjoyed the lessons.
“What turned me on was another [piano] teacher, Tommy Sheridan. He would just give me the music for any popular song that I named,” Friedman said. “That gave me another kind of exposure to lessons and music.”
Later, Friedman took clarinet lessons, which “gave me training in woodwinds,” and eventually led to him trying the saxophone, he said.
Another “huge piece” of influence for Friedman, was the music of the 60s. Friedman remembers when The Beatles and other “British invasion” bands first became popular in the United States.
“There was a gush of music everywhere,” he said. “I would wallpaper my walls with the Top 20 list from WOKY, who played the Beatles and the current hits. I just lived from week to week. I’d hear a song, fall in love and sing along.”
However, Friedman’s inspiration didn’t come only from rock n’ roll.
“When I was at [Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun] as a kid, they had this incredible cantor,” he said. “He trained me for my bar mitzvah. He was a real inspiration in the world of Jewish music.
“I would go to the synagogue alone on Friday nights just to sing along with and hear his music. It was so beautiful. It’s really a burning memory. That was what drew me to the synagogue.”
‘First in line’
In his early teens, Friedman formed a series of “garage bands,” he said, that “would play at bar mitzvah parties.” In this way, he met the band’s then drummer Guy Hoffman, who became Friedman’s connection to the Violent Femmes, though Hoffman is no longer with the group.
Friedman credits his brother, Jim, with his current involvement with the Violent Femmes. Jim, who played in a band in San Francisco, urged Friedman to get in touch with Hoffman about letting Jim’s band open for the Violent Femmes on a tour of the west coast.
“They ended up getting to open,” Friedman said. “I just came along to see my brother play.”
Friedman was backstage at the first show in Salt Lake City, when the Violent Femmes saxophone player said to him, “I have an extra sax. You can play with us.”
“I continued to play [with them] when they were in Milwaukee and Chicago,” Friedman said.
It just so happened that the Violent Femmes were in need of a keyboard player for some recent shows in Milwaukee — and for their coming tour. “I happened to be first in line,” Friedman said.
Friedman and his son Noah, 15, (the eldest of his three children) also recently both played saxophone with the group at a tsunami benefit at the Pabst Theatre.
In addition to performing, Friedman, who has lived in Milwaukee most of his life, has also owned and operated a recording studio in the Third Ward called Sound-Sound, for the past 15 years.
At the studio, Friedman said he has recorded acts ranging from the BoDeans to the Hillel Academy school choir. Friedman also is part of a piano-singing duo, Nev and Dupah, that performs at local restaurants, bars and clubs.
Aside from running his studio, Friedman also runs a property management business.
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