JDub Records

Dear Friends, Fans, and Supporters,

I have to share some unfortunate news. After almost 9 years in operation, JDub’s Board of Directors has decided to wind down the organization.

The decision to close was entirely financial, as the challenges facing our business model are too great to overcome. We were never a normal record label, nor were we ever just a record company. We always knew that in order to discover, curate, and promote unique, proud Jewish voices and role models in the mainstream we would need to rely, at least in part, on philanthropic support. In addition to buying our albums, sharing the music with your friends, and attending our concerts and events, so many of you supported us as donors, talent scouts, and street teamers. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

JDub would never have grown into the organization that it was without you.

JDub earned half of its annual budget from mission-related revenue, including album sales, concert tickets, and consulting fees, and the other half from foundations and individual donors. The collapse of the music business in the decade that JDub has existed, combined with recessionary effects and aging out of the cohort of Jewish “start ups,” made securing the necessary operating support an insurmountable challenge.

We have shared some incredible memories - bringing 3,500 people together for The Unity Sessions at Celebrate Brooklyn; watching Balkan Beat Box play to sold out crowds of Gypsy bikers in Portland; jumping into a spontaneous hora at The Independent in San Francisco while a half naked Golem played frenetically onstage; putting many of you onstage at the Bowery Ballroom for an American Shmidol karaoke battle; being told “I’ve never felt Jewish until tonight.”

We’d love to hear your memories and reflections as well. Please post them on Facebook, or tweet them to @jdubrecords.

Just as JDub modeled what a new Jewish organization could look like and achieve, we will also model how one appropriately winds down. We plan to share as much information as possible, and seek appropriate homes for our successful programs and assets. We hope that our albums will continue to be available on iTunes, Amazon, and record store shelves long into the future.

We are extremely grateful to all of our fans, funders and supporters, the creative and inspiring artists with whom we’ve had the pleasure to work, their devoted fans, and our innovative and energetic team. We close with heavy hearts, but incredible pride in our collective accomplishments and impact.

We hope you will join us for the last official JDub event this Sunday night on the Roof of the 14th St Y in NYC, where Deleon will play songs from their new album, Casata, which you’ll get, along with free beer, when you attend.

Thank you again for supporting us in all our endeavors. It has been a true honor.

Sincerely,

Aaron Bisman
Co-Founder & CEO, JDub

A final JDub snapshot:
- 150,000 event participants in 472 cities
- 35 album releases
- 3 Gold Records
- 3,500 attendees at The Unity Sessions, the largest Israeli/Palestinian concert in the history of the United States
- 52 songs placed in major films, TV shows, or ads
- 800+ mainstream press stories including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, MTV, CNN, NPR, David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Rolling Stone, SPIN, Billboard, and Pitchfork
- 26 foundation and Federation funders
- 630 individual donors
- 2.7 million unique visitors to Jewcy.com since JDub’s adoption

A legend in his own right, the Gangsta Rabbi is a one man machine, playing flute, bass (backwards and upside down) and a myriad of percussion machines and pedals. By day, a town comptroller, by night– Steve Lieberman is the Gangsta Rabbi, a snarling, savage beast on stage and in his home-studio.

Recorded by JDub, the following videos are only the first two in a four-part documentary series meant to give fans an inside look into how the Gangsta Rabbi came to be, and how he has evolved both as a musician and a man living “against the grain.”

PART ONE: ORIGINS
Read More »

I can see those JDub CDs sitting in your virtual shopping cart, waiting to be purchased. Hey, I get it! It’s been a busy spring at JDub, you have 5 new albums to check out, and they are all awesome. Tough decisions…

Allow me to solve your problem: now when you donate $25 to the I AM JEWCY fundraising campaign, you get a FREE album download in JDub’s store. Get that album you’ve had your eye on, plus donate to a great cause.

-Donate $100, get a FREE album download plus a Jewcy t-shirt.

-Donate $500, get a FREE download, a Jewcy t-shirt, and your name listed on the Supporters page of Jewcy.com

-Donate $1,000, and you’re baller. And you get the entire JDub Records catalogue. And you’re baller. Way to donate to a good cause, amigo.

A donation to Jewcy means we keep bringing you creative, fun, thought-provoking Jewish content year ’round. Yes, we cover everything from interfaith families and Israel to sex and bacon. And we can only do this with your help.

JDub adopted Jewcy almost two years ago. We were thrilled to expand our mission and we are proud of it’s growth thus far. Please help us keep writing about Jewish cat costumes, 100 great works of Jewish fiction, and ways to make your seder not suck. Donate today!

CASATA, the new album from DeLeon, is now available on Amazon, iTunes, and in the JDub store for the special price of $8.99!

Download the album’s first singles for free below!

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“More Than Wine” is the first single off Casata, the groundshaking, dance move making new album by DeLeon!

The track’s only lyric, “nothing makes the world cry more than wine” (sung in Ladino and English), is an old Judeo-Turkish proverb. Says bandleader Dan Saks, “I’m frequently drawn to music with simple, repetitive lyrics. I like how a simple phrase can shift meanings the more you hear it until you no longer hear it and it just becomes another melodic or percussive element to the song.”

Listen to this catchy new summer tune below and you’ll find yourself moving to the beat just as Dan promises!

Things are getting steamy up here in NYC- which means it’s time to pump up those summer jams. Cue CASATA, DeLeon’s new album out June 14th! You can now pre-order your very own copy for $8.99.

CASATA is DeLeon’s re-imagining of ancient melodies into contemporary indie-rock pieces. The band’s groundbreaking global pop sound successfully marries ancient Sephardic melodies with the celebratory symphony of modern life. DeLeon is front-man Daniel Saks, along with bandmates Kevin Snider, Justin Riddle, Amy Crawford and Andrew Oom.

Elements of African guitar funk and doo-wop come together in one song, while Ladino-English lyrics preside over another– one song even manages to find the unlikely common ground between El Guincho’s tropical grooves and Tom Waits’ clangs. Stories of wedding celebrations, forsaken lovers, and the births of biblical prophets are all told through upbeat, roaring, rocking melodies that even at their quietest banjo-picking moments, still make you move.

To be released June 14th, 2011 on JDub Records, CASATA features stomping, whooping, soaring trumpet and sensual slow jams. Pre-order today!

For the second year in a row, the Atlanta Jewish Music Festival is featuring an amazingly talented JDub band! Last year, both Girls in Trouble AND DeLeon traveled south to perform for our friends down under (the Mason-Dixon line). This year, The Sway Machinery heads to Georgia to perform at the festival’s closing night concert celebration. They’ll be performing songs off their newest album, The House of Friendly Ghosts Vol. 1!

Read More »

“A dynamic folk-rock group” - The New Yorker

“One of the year’s stellar albums. Alicia Jo Rabins is one of my favorite singer-songwriters, and her storytelling skills continue to amaze me.” - Largehearted Boy

HALF YOU HALF ME is the sophomore debut of folksy indie pop group Girls in Trouble!

“Girls in Trouble is Brooklyn songwriter, violinist and Bible scholar (yup) Alicia Jo Rabins, who pens songs based on stories of Biblical women. Fans of Andrew Bird and Joanna Newsom are likely to dig her (no theological expertise required)” writes Time Out New York. Read More »

Welcome to a JDub Kids and Kveller Passover movie production, “starring a talking, walking, fame-obsessed and more-glam-than-glam seder plate.” Your kids just might pause in their hunt for the afikoman to catch a glimpse of Seder Plate and his fabulous friends, Maror, Charoset, Karpas, Z’roa, and Beitzah!

For more music by The Macaroons, check out the big SEDER SALE on the JDUB and JEWCY store!

Girls in Trouble’s Upcoming Album

Half You Half Me

Brings the Stories of Biblical Heroines to Light

“I find myself often going back to that record [Girls in Trouble] and marveling at the storytelling skills of Alicia Jo Rabins… Half You Half Me is another captivating collection of first person tales of women in the Torah.”– Largehearted Boy

On May 17^th, 2011 JDub Records will release Half You Half Me, the sophomore album from “hauntingly lovely” (LA Weekly) group Girls in Trouble. Through Girls in Trouble, unrecognized Biblical heroines are given a voice to tell their side of the story. Brooklyn poet and multi-instrumentalist Alicia Jo Rabins’s lyrics bring these women to life with tales of androgynous storm demons, jealous sisters and knife accidents.

The album is already available for pre-order through iTunes! California tour information below! Read More »