When you go to hear the Kosher Red Hots, the stories about the songs are part of the fun. The exquisite vocalist, Sheila Fox, has done extensive research into many types of songs within the Jewish traditions, and not only Klezmer! The band's huge repertoire includes Yiddish cabaret songs, musical comedy and rarely heard Ladino Songs of the Jews expelled by Spain in 1492. As informative as an evening is, don't expect it to feel academic! This music is rendered by consummate practitioners of passion. You've heard most of them in local bands. Liz Dreisbach is the conductor of the Sedentary Sousa Band. Eugene Jablonsky has played with every swing band Spokane has shipped Seattle in the last ten years, and Laurie Andres is known for playing definitive music for square and contra dancing.

Though the band shares an open and chatsy rapport with the audience, Sheila Fox is definitely the great verbal communicator. She is a wise story teller and a Betty Boop with a huge voice, and her words and songs provide continuity and emotional content throughout the show. She takes joy in every note, obviously a woman with a history (I wonder!) and a future.

There is also a rare quality in the instrumental music: it speaks. Every phrase is shaped with meaning through very strong dynamics. If anybody else played curves that loud and then soft, we would think it vaudeville or sensationalism, but this is a safe yet emotional dynamic style—you can dare to get carried away. Melody-specific compelling dynamics have always been part of Laurie's style, and it is stunning to hear it in four-part unison.

The whole room smiled in the presence of such enthusiastic expertise.

The eclectic blend of klezmer and Ladino music on the Kosher Red Hots' newest album represents traditional Jewish music at its best, “One With Everything On It” as its title implies, covers a wide body of music, from the Yiddishkayt refrain of clarinet and accordion to the throbbing guitars of Spain and exotic Middle Eastern scales.

These are the songs that exist in the Jewish subconscious, whether one is of Ashkenazic or Sephardic heritage, the songs your grandmother sang whether she made couscous or brisket for Shabbat dinner.

Along with the traditional Jewish songs, the album also includes select jazz standards. By turns flirtatious, naughty, mournful and traditional, Sheila Fox's vocals span a range of cultures, languages and narratives.

Fox is the vocalist and leader of the Kosher Red Hots. She is 2nd clarinet. She is also a massage therapist and a grandmother. Fox grew up in Santa Fe, NM in a musical family. Her father played trumpet, her mother played piano, and her great-grandfather was a klezmer musician and played trombone in Czar Nicholas I's army band. As Fox tells it, first he was drafted into the army band, and then sent to the front, and then he just kept on going and didn't stop until he reached America.

Fox says her relationship with klezmer music is in her heart.

“It hasn't been easy, it's huge commitment, but my life just isn't complete when I am not doing it,” she said. “I feel like it is part of my cultural work, my social change work to help keep this culture alive.” She explains that there is a great deal of wisdom in both Yiddish language and music.

This Seattle trio of Liz Dreisbach on clarinet and alto, Laurie Andres piano accordion and piano and Sheila Fox vocals and clarinet have since this 1996-97 recording added in a bass, Eugene Jablonsky. The musicianship is both joyous and professional. You easily get carried away as they romp on “Der Glater Bulgar” with its driving, spirited clarinet solo and then a swirling note accordion. The music is defined, accurate while remaining passionate. Sheila Fox is so expressive and theatrical as in “Der Rebe Elimeylekh” and the song from the film Mamele “Abi Gezunt.”

She is more pensive with that same passion on the holocaust song “Under the Little Green Trees.” The tight accordion-clarinet is lovely and quiet to start “Der Rebe Elimeylekh” with a dramatic vocal then they drive home the song that is almost scat like with the vocal. “Yiboneh/Moishe Emes” starts with jaunty Andres accordion lifting your body to motion, and the first clarinet joins lightly, then the tempo picks up and still has this light yet driving mood. “Der Terk in Amerike” has that hesitation, almost stutter Yiddish dancing step rhythm and the double clarinet and accordion work in the darting notes move in wondrous unison. Klezmer music at its best. —Chris Lunn