Fri. Sept. 14

     Firewater was formed by singer-songwriter Tod A. (Ashley) in 1995 from the ashes of Cop Shoot Cop in Brooklyn. The band was into the creation of what you might call “world punk” before Gogol Bordello, DeVotchKa and Balkan Beat Box revved it up and made a mark in the alt-rock world. Firewater has not been on any kind of career path. The last album – well before the new one (Sept. 11, the day we talked) “International Orange!,” came out in 2007, followed by an extensive tour. But Tod A. is a restless sort and his entire life is not rock ‘n’ roll, as he explains in the interview below. He’s a world traveler, both in music and real life. Firewater, a sextet from all over, started its 2012 US tour Sept. 12 and plays the Brighton Music Hall Friday Sept. 14. Klezmer music has been at the root of much of Firewater’s music. Tod says he is “technically not Jewish, quasi-Jewish.” (There was a recent family discovery about lineage.) But, really, Firewater goes every which way. Time Out New York put it this way: “a funky fumous boillabaisee of fuzzy Gypsy-punk guitars, tart Bollywood strings and throbbing hand drums” and the New Yorker aptly notes the new music “crackles with exoticism, while keeping Tod A’s wry insight and punky swagger.” Tod and I talked over the phone, pre-tour from what used to be his home base of Brooklyn.

JSInk: Is klezmer still the root source for you?

There’s two guys in the band now that are very much in the school, that grew up with it. Nimord Talmon (trombone, melodica) and Adam Schellan (bass). [Tod used to play most of the bass; now he sings and plays occasional guitar, bongos and melodica.] But we incorporate a lot of elements and Klezmer is only one of them. But I still love it, that happy/sad dichotomy it has, laughing while you’re crying through the tears.

Yes, listening to the record, I thought “Yes, I have heard Tod run through these kind of sentiments before.” You seem to keep mixing desperation and hope, intertwining them. Think that’s in your DNA?

I try and find the humor in every tragedy and I think every life is a tragedy, so you just have to try and laugh about it.

Is that difficult to put across in humor? Sometimes, humor is the hardest thing to convey in music.

Not everyone is gonna laugh at the same jokes. The humor, where it is, is really dark. But it’s not a concern. I hope people see that there’s a more lighthearted side of Firewater, that we would not be perceived as dour and 100 cynical – only 75% cynical.

It's been a while between records. And you settled in Istanbul, right?

I’ve been based in Istanbul for the last two years. The last four years, since “The Golden Hour” came out I was based in Bali, Indonesia and back and forth between there an Phnom Penh, Cambodia, working saving the rain forest baby! It was an NGO called Wild Aid, now they’re called Wildlife Alliance, doing graphic design work and just giving me the opportunity to hang out and see the rain forest. They were doing eco-tours and development in the Cardamom Mountains, the last supposedly unspoiled piece of rain forest in Cambodia, although a lot of it’s been chopped down. We’re doing a lot of re-forestry and trying to develop alternative careers for people that were shooting animals and selling them to the Chinese, chopping down redwood trees …. It was really fun to hang out in these little villages. It didn’t pay much, but I really love the jungle.

Do you still do this or is this something you did and is in the past?

Well, I’m not doing currently but who know what’s going to be next? It’s an opportunity that I had and I was in that part of the world and so I did it. I’d love to go back. I live life pretty spontaneously, so I don’t know what the next opportunity will be.

When you went there, did you make a decision to put music aside, or were you playing music too?

I just felt that one of the advantages of working with indie labels is nobody is breathing down your neck to put out the next record. So, I was enjoying life and experiencing things, gathering stories, writing songs, but was in rush to put out a record. We basically toured for two solid years on “The Golden Hour,” so I wanted to take some time off and do something else for a while.

It’s a great luxury to do that. Maybe not luxury. Maybe your desire is the right word …

Oh, I live a life of luxury, don’t mistake that. I’m riding in a limo right now, having a pedicure.

Is champagne involved?

Of course. .. (laughs) I would probably have more money in the bank if I paid more attention to career. Actually, it’s 9/11 today and eleven years ago I was standing outside my apartment building watching people jump off very high buildings. I think it struck a chord in me. If you can die at 9 o’clock on a Tuesday morning, do you want to die by the water cooler by the coffee machine or do you want to die doing something you really love. So, a lot of people have talked about this, but I really try to live the moment.

To set aside your “career,” and to doing some, well, “good” in the world, that’s part of who you are I guess.

It was an interesting opportunity and an interesting experience. I’d never lived in the rain forest before and I just followed my gut. When I left New York about six years ago, my goal was to put myself in situations where unexpected things might happen. I’d been in New York for 18 years and life became a bit predictable – make a record, tour, make a record, tour. I kind of wanted to interrupt that cycle and give myself a chance to find human inspiration in new places.

That certainly has to have inspired you as a songwriter. This record was recorded in Istanbul and Tel Aviv, right, the Arab Spring going on all around you. How did that affect the making of this disc?

Well, I might view this more hopefully than others would, but it’s inspiring to me to see people rising up and expressing their will and taking charge of their destiny. I wish I could see that kind emotional investment, politically, in this country. We haven’t seen that. The average age in Turkey is about late 20s, early 30s and if they don’t like something they’re out on the street protesting, fighting tear gas. They care, obviously. Every country has its problems, but I’m inspired by a place where people really give a shit and are out there doing things they disagree with.

Sort of like the line in the first song on the new record, A “Little Revolution,” where you sing it’s “tough to trust, but better days are coming soon.” You keep stirring the pot.

Yeah.

You start this week in your old hometown. What are your ideas about the set, new vs. old?

I’d like to leave that as a bit of a surprise. We have more songs than we can possibly play. We’re going to try and keep it pretty spontaneous on this tour. We have the whole new record. We’ve been touring “The Golden Hour” for two and we have some greatest hits and misses we’ll be  bringing back. So, new, last and early Firewater. We do about an hour and a half.

A genre question. People have a hard time categorizing you and have coined the “world punk” term.
Make any sense to you?

Better than most. Everybody in the band has extremely wide-ranging taste in music. We’re listening to everything from Indian wedding bands, bhangra, New Orkeans funeral marches to Mexican mambo to Cambodia psychedelic music. It’s extreme, it’s crazy, it’s rock and roll no matter what country it’s from.

I think in a sense, you sort of take off from where the Clash left off with “Sandinista!” I think. Make sense to you?

I would be honored if anyone said that.

    The last time I saw ‘em was 2003 at the Paradise. This was my takeaway …."Welcome to my daughter's wedding!" exclaimed Firewater singer- songwriter-bassist and bandleader Tod A. a third of the way through their show at the Paradise. And, though he meant it jokingly, Firewater's 85-minute concert did have a celebratory "Hava Nagila" feeling about it. The New York-based band even entered the house by winding its way through the crowd before taking the stage. Mind you, the songs were not celebratory in every way. The gravel- voiced Tod A. enjoys nothing more than traveling a gnarly, tangled path in his music - "The Man on the Burning Tightrope," "Another Perfect Catastrophe," "Dark Days Indeed" - but the songs were pumped up with lively leads from the horn section, saxophonist Ori Kaplan and trombonist Dana Leong, and crackling rhythmic backbone provided by drummer Tamir Muskat and himself.
    In that aspect, Firewater recalled the heyday of English ska- punk. It's hard to think of a current rock band that's as reliant on its horns. (In the past, Firewater has used strings for layering and flavoring; not now though.) Throw in some keyboards and accordion from Justin Asher and you've got a soundtrack for some demented circus.
    Firewater is doing for klezmer what the Pogues did for Celtic music - turning up the volume and punkifying it, but not disrespecting it in the least. As it happens, Tod A., who was once in the band Cop Shoot Cop, is not Jewish; he was turned on to klezmer music about 10 years ago by a producer friend. "It made me smile and cry at the same time," he said backstage after the set. "A lot of it's in minor keys and melodramatic, but that appealed to my personality. It's like Middle Eastern blues."
    Three members of the lineup - Ori Kaplan, guitarist Oren Kaplan, and Muskat - hail from Tel Aviv. But Tod A. doesn't think the ethnic component to klezmer is essential. "It's a soul thing," he said, and he's right. Firewater has got soul. They bury into deep grooves and fill their music with exuberant bursts. There were only two sad, slow songs, one being "Too Many Angels," and its sadness was exquisite and elegant, with Tod A.'s voice asking: "And how does it feel when the reel finally reaches the end? What can you do when the stars that you know are all fading away?" The other, "Another Perfect Catastrophe," began as dour and dirge-y, but midway through the band accelerated into fifth gear. And though Tod A. is a class A lyricist, he's happy to step back for an instrumental romp, punctuated by his whoops and hollers. In those moments, Firewater sounds like it's creating its own spy movie soundtrack. The concert hit a peak near the end with the epic "Tightrope" and the second encore, "Dropping Like Flies," where Firewater ratcheted up the noise and put us all in a hypnotic frenzy.One guy in the crowd saw me taking notes, leaned over, and offered, "This is the coolest bar mitzvah ever!"
   To which we say: L'chaim!

The Brighton Music Hall show’s at 9 with Mighty Tiny and Skeleton Key opening. Tix: $14.

158 Brighton Ave., Allston, 617-779-0140 www.brightonmusichall.com