Brothers Lazaroff’s long-awaited ninth full-length album, “Memphis,” which was recorded in one day at the legendary Sun Studio in Memphis, is set to debut Thursday night (May 11) with a special show, during which the entire album will be performed. The show is sold out, but fear not, you can still enjoy the music, and the special documentary about the making of the album.

Memphis

The idea for “Memphis” was born during a trip brothers/bandleaders David and Jeff Lazaroff took in April 2022 to the iconic music city to see Bob Dylan perform at the Orpheum Theatre and take a tour of Sun Studio. After discovering the studio was open to the public at night for bands to record after tour hours, they created a plan to bring some of their extended musical crew down for one night – May 24, 2022 – Bob Dylan’s birthday.

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Joined by frequent collaborators Rabbi James Stone Goodman of Central Reform Congregation and their cousin, Mandocaster player Stuart Rosenberg from Chicago, Brothers Lazaroff made the pilgrimage to Sun Studio to record Memphis.

“We went down with our own engineers and gear to augment their two engineers and their vintage gear and recorded eight songs,” said David Lazaroff in a release. “Some we wrote during the pandemic and hadn’t been able to record, others are based on poems by Rabbi Goodman, plus a couple of brand-new ones and a couple of pieces of the rabbi’s that seemed appropriate for the setting.”

“Memphis” was recorded with all the musicians in the same room and no overdubs.

The session and album were produced and mastered by Maxwell Citron, founder of HOMHOMHOM Records and Goodman’s son-in-law.

“We were tapping into the original setting of the space. We didn’t want it too clean or pretty,” recalled Goodman in a release about the album. “There was a natural grit that belonged to the place, its geography and history. More than ambiance, the ghosts of the originals who recorded there presiding, in the café in the next room some of the guys jammed Elvis tunes on guitars we picked off the stands in the studio.”

In addition to Goodman and Rosenberg, the new album features regular band members Teddy Brookins on bass, Sam Golden on upright piano, Chris Hansen on percussion, Mark Hochberg on violins, Adam Hucke on trumpet and Freddy Spencer on drums.

You can listen or download Memphis right now off iTunes or Spotify.

Memphis (2023 Brothers Lazaroff documentary)

In addition to the album, Brothers Lazaroff is releasing a short documentary about the trip to Memphis.

“We’ve been busy in the labs preparing a little micro-doc of our 24-hour trip to Memphis,” wrote the band on social media.

The story is told through the eyes of Goodman and opens with a nostalgic nod to the iconic St. Louis Bagel Factory, where the band picked up nourishment before heading south on I-55 to Memphis.

Ted Isla captured the video, Annie Martineau did the photography, and Brian McClelland handled the editing and animation.