photo by Sandlin Gaither field
Sometimes, unusual combinations end up making a lot of sense.
Take Zoe & Cloyd's Klezgrass music. Natalya Zoe Weinstein is a classically trained violinist from Amherst, Mass., descended from jazz and klezmer musicians. (Klezmer is a traditional folk music originating among Eastern European Jewish communities.) John Cloyd Miller is a twelfth-generation North Carolinian who comes from bluegrass royalty: his fiddling grandfather, Jim Shumate, introduced Earl Scruggs to Bill Monroe, and he played with both.
While bluegrass makes up much of their set list and album material, the Klezgrass music they've developed that honors their ancestors sets them apart.
“We just did the Gray Fox festival a couple of weeks ago,” Miller says. “Even though we only did probably a couple of klezmer songs in each set, people just were so excited to hear that kind of music. And even down south, for people that are not as familiar with klezmer, they really are drawn to it. They're like, ‘I've never heard that before!’ Not every band has that stuff in their repertoire. So, if somebody wants something a little bit different on their bill, we can provide that.”
Weinstein was exposed to bluegrass music by college friends in Amherst. She attended an anthropology conference in Tacoma, Wash., where she was given a ticket to the nearby Wintergrass Festival.
“It was so incredible to me. Somebody handed me a fiddle, and I played ‘Angelina Baker’ with people I'd never met before. And that was kind of the turning point for me. So, I moved to Asheville after I graduated from college just to kind of learn more about bluegrass and old-time music, to sort of be in the heart of it.”
She said she met John, and they played some gigs and started hanging out. “And then I found out that his grandfather was a bluegrass fiddle player. And he just was super welcoming and always up for playing. Every time we'd go down, he'd say, ‘Did you bring your fiddles and your banjos?’ He was a huge influence on me for sure.”
She explained how Jim was basically self-taught and a super bluesy fiddle player who just slid into everything. “His timing was real syncopated and it was completely the opposite way of playing the instrument than I was used to. So, it really helped me to kind of loosen up and learn bluegrass from that side.”
Miller plays banjo, guitar, and mandolin and sings and writes the duo’s original compositions.
“I didn't grow up as a kid playing bluegrass instruments,” he says. “That's something I came to a little bit later in life, and I'm still working on. But singing comes a little bit more naturally to me. That’s my main form of expression.”
One of Miller’s recently recorded songs, “Chestnut Mountain,” is a wistful account of a place his grandfather knew. However, his subjects include timely topics such as polarization, tolerance, and the environment.
“I like story songs. I like songs about relationships. I just kind of write what I feel like writing. I write about the things that I'm interested in and the things that I'm passionate about and move me. And I'm an outdoors person. The environment's always been an interest of mine, as it should be to everyone.”
Miller had never heard of klezmer music until Weinstein played it for him. Klezmer tunes are typically instrumentals and often feature elaborate and dizzying violin and clarinet passages.
“The music really mirrors in a very overt way human emotion,” Miller explains. “It can be happy, it can be joyful and spontaneous, and all of a sudden, it can be really sad. It sort of dovetails with bluegrass pretty well because most of these songs are in a minor key. They're not unlike ‘Lonesome Midnight Waltz’ or ‘Lonesome Blues’ or something like that.”
Weinstein and Miller are more than musical collaborators--they married 14 years ago. That’s a lot of time together at home and on the job.
“You have to be able to find that balance between not letting the band take over your entire life,” Miller says. “We're definitely aware of trying to keep a balance between our private life with our daughter and fun stuff, and not just talking about the band all the time. That can be challenging. I think a lot of small business owners, no matter what they're doing, struggle with that.”
Zoe & Cloyd perform both as a duo and with a band that features Bennett Sullivan, an inventive and mesmerizing musician who has incorporated bluegrass banjo into klezmer. Bassist Kevin Kerhberg rounds out the quartet.
In the summer, Zoe and Cloyd can perform farther away from Ashville than usual. They’ve toured in Ireland for the last two years and were heartened by the warm response they received this year for their unique music.
“We did everything from a fiddle workshop to a set at a kind of historic pub,” Weinstein remembers. “And we hosted a gospel hour in this beautiful centuries-old Protestant church. The Catholic priest was there as well. So, it was neat to kind of bring all these people together in this sacred space, no matter what their religious backgrounds were. And we did a Klezmer song there. That was pretty cool.”
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