Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
Silver Jews mastermind David Berman plans to quit music, according
to messages he posted on the Drag City Records
Web
site. A Jan. 31 show at Cumberland Caverns in McMinnville,
Tenn., will be the group's last.
"I guess I am moving over to another category. Screenwriting or
muckraking. I've got to move on. Can't be like all the careerists
doncha know," Berman wrote in a post confirmed as authentic by his
publicist. "I'm forty two and I know what to do. I'm a writer,
see?"
He added, "I always said we would stop before we got bad. If I
continue to record I might accidentally write the answer song to
'Shiny Happy People'."
Berman went on to denounce his father, veteran Washington lobbyist
Richard Berman, for his work with organizations that seek to freeze
the minimum wage and raise blood-alcohol arrest levels.
"Previously I thought, through songs and poems and drawings I could
find and build a refuge away from his world," he wrote. "But there
is the matter of justice. And I'll tell you it's not just a
metaphor. The desire for it actually burns. It hurts. There needs
to be something more. I'll see what that might be."
Berman has had an ambivalent outlook on his music career since the
Silver Jews emerged in 1994 with their debut album, "Starlite
Walker." For years, he rarely gave interviews and refused to tour,
but in a 2005 chat with Billboard, he reversed course.
"My attitude about performance is more mercenary now," he said.
"Before, it was something I really felt couldn't be successful and
shouldn't be done. I wasn't in the business of peddling music and
going out and selling myself. I want to go make a record and then
return to my own life. Performance has always seemed like a failure
to me. It's temporary. It's left there. When I make something, I
like to have control over it and its existence afterward. It's just
not the kind of work I've ever wanted to do. But it has gotten the
point where I can't afford to just make money off records."
Since then, Berman has toured regularly with Silver Jews, the live
incarnation of which features his wife, Cassie.