Sitting in with Yehuda Ashash at the Blue Hall

Every once in a while, when Noam Yadgar double-books or goes on vacation, I sit in for him with Yehuda Ashash’s band. It happened a couple of times last week, and I documented one of those evenings.

We played the “Blue-Hall” – some kind of cross between a sports bar, a dive and a banquet hall. It’s one of Jerusalem’s longest standing bars, but it used to be very different, with just the cave walls surrounding it, and one main space with a long bar. Also, it was called the “Blue Hole”. It underwent a major renovation and rebranding when the Music Square was put together.

I played there from the very first week of their line of live shows, about five years ago. A friend was doing the booking there and I was thrilled at the opportunity to book four shows a month for my country cover band The Mottis, which was still in its infancy.


At some point the place decided it wanted less volume, so it got rid of the guitar amplifiers, and then replaced the drum set with an electronic one. At that point playing classic country there felt out-of-place and we stopped.

Yehuda Ashash’s band, on the other hand, seems to fit in there great. He plays alot of Top 40 stuff, so the electronic drums actually work in his favor. There’s a bunch of Shlomo Artzi, Idan Raichel and Zohar Argov songs in his setlist, which, being as recognizable as they are to the Israeli crowd, get a response from the audience even at modest volumes.

Yehuda’s band seems to rotate frequently. I’ve played with him three times, and got to meet two different drummers and two different guitarists. He has an iPad with a whole bunch of charts on stage. The charts don’t take into account his capo’s position – so if it’s a song I don’t know it’s an interesting exercise in transposing on the fly.

You can check out Yehuda’s Facebook page right here:
and Andrey’s (the soundman) right here:

And if you enjoyed this video do check out my webpage at:

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