Filmmaker Beth Lane Celebrates her Family As Holocaust Survivors in the Documentary “UnBroken”

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Thursday, 26 June 2025 13:57

Written by Brad Balfour

Beth Lane photo: Chad Batka

In light of all the attention on antisemitism and the Jewish people since the October 7th massacre by Hamas terrorists, there’s been a desire for a story of triumph in the face of bloodshed and slaughter.

So when filmmaker Beth Lane embarked on an international quest to uncover answers about the plight of her mother and her six siblings, she found a story to inspire. As children, they had escaped Nazi Germany by relying on their own youthful bravado and the kindness of German strangers. Their self-rescue resulted in this documentary, “UnBroken” — the story of the seven Weber siblings, ages 6-18, who evaded capture and death following their mother’s incarceration and murder at Auschwitz.

After being hidden in a laundry hut by a benevolent German farmer, the children spent two years on their own in war-torn Germany. Emboldened by their father’s mandate that they “always stay together,” they used their instincts to fight hunger, loneliness, rape, bombings and fear. Separated from their parents, the siblings had to declare themselves orphans in order to escape to a new life in America. This salvation would become what finally tore them apart, not to be reunited for another 40 years.

Daughter of the youngest Weber sibling, Lane set out to retrace the family’s steps, seeking answers to long-held questions about their survival. The film examines the family’s journey as told through conversations with the living siblings — now in their 80s and 90s. Lane and her crew made a road trip across Germany, following the harrowing path taken by her family over 70 years ago.

As her feature debut, this documentary is both a professional milestone and a personal effort to immortalize the Webers’ incredible story of the siblings’ survival. They’re the only family of seven Jewish kids from Nazi Germany known to have lived and emigrated together.

Lane is also an actress, singer and dancer whose driving force has been to display empathy through storytelling, design and meditation. She has curated and served on panels and hosted over 40 episodes of a weekly Instagram live on-camera podcast, “Banter with Beth.” “UnBroken” was named Best Documentary Feature Film in Indianapolis at the 23rd Heartland International Film Festival in 2023. That was just one day after the terrorist organization, Hamas, attacked Israel — the worst assault against Jewish people since the Holocaust.

Q: When you realized you had this rich history, how much investigating did you have to do to put the whole story together?

Beth Lane: I was six years old when I learned that my mother was adopted at the same age she had been when she arrived in America. She didn’t tell me about the Holocaust then, or how her mother died, but she did mention that she had six siblings I would never meet. Like any child told they can’t have something, I wanted it all the more. I didn’t know why I longed to meet those siblings, only that I did. Even then, I had the curiosity of an actress and the daydreaming powers that have never left me.

Years later, that longing found form: my mother reunited with her siblings. One of them, my Uncle Alfons, wrote a 40-page memoir marking the 50th anniversary of their arrival in America — a personal history woven with survival, loss, and love.

Over time, I came to realize that the story of my family wasn’t just poignant — it was extraordinary. My grandmother Lina, whom I never met, was a Jewish resistance fighter in Berlin. She helped others escape Nazi Germany, forging visas and passports in secret. But she couldn’t save herself. She was murdered in Auschwitz on December 1, 1943, at exactly 11:35 in the morning.

Whenever someone asks, “If you could have dinner with anyone, past or present, who would it be?”—I never hesitate. Queen Elizabeth I, perhaps (we share a name). But more truthfully: Lina. My grandmother. A woman I never knew, but whose courage and sacrifice run in my blood. As my Aunt Ruth says in our documentary “UnBroken,” “She believed that if you help others, you help yourself.” That belief— that legacy — is how I know I come from a rich history: the Weber kids in 1946

I began researching in earnest the moment my mom decided she wanted to return to Berlin and Worin for the first time in over 70 years. That was the summer of 2017 — and I haven’t stopped since.

What started as a personal journey quickly turned into something much bigger: unearthing family documents, tracking down distant relatives, translating letters, and digging through archives in multiple countries. Each discovery led to more questions, more layers, and more truths that had been buried for decades.

There’s a book I need to write. A museum exhibit I need to launch. This story isn’t just about the past — it’s about preserving a legacy that still echoes through the present. The research? It never ends.

Q: When did you decide to make a film about it?

Beth Lane: I decided to make a film about it after that life-changing trip to Berlin and Worin with my family. We visited the farm where my mother and her siblings were hidden during the Shoah. Seeing the place where they endured such unimaginable hardships deeply moved me. I made a vow then to tell their story — not only to honor the bravery of the Weber siblings but also to highlight the courage of those who helped them survive.

Q: How did you organize the film and map it?

Beth Lane: Organizing the film was a massive undertaking. We had over 200 hours of footage from three days at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, three weeks in Germany, and three weeks in the United States. We started by dedicating six weeks just to watching every single minute of that footage. From there, we made scene selects and gradually whittled it down to around 20 hours.

It’s a process of constant refinement — you keep shaving it down until the footage starts to tell you what it wants to be. Once we had a story lock, we moved into the next phase: incorporating animation, original music, and graphics to bring emotional depth and narrative clarity to the story. It was a long and deeply immersive process, but it allowed the heart of the story to emerge organically.

Q: At one point you decided to add animation — talk about that decision and the process of doing it.

Beth Lane: The decision to add animation came from a deep desire to have the audience experience these stories through the lens of a child — just as my mother and her siblings had lived them. The sisters are now in their 80s and 90s. And while their memories are vivid, animation allowed us to bridge the gap between their adult reflections and their childhood experiences.

For me, it was the most powerful medium not only to visualize those memories, but also to engage the audience’s imagination. Animation gave us the freedom to express moments that couldn’t be captured through archival footage or reenactments — moments of fear, wonder, confusion, and even resilience — all from a child’s perspective.

Q: There’s lots of travel involved to get this done. Talk about managing it.

Beth Lane: Managing all the travel for the film was definitely a huge undertaking, but I was lucky to have a fantastic line producer who was incredibly organized — especially with Google Maps. We used a 40-page narrative written by my Uncle Alfons. He created it for the 50th anniversary of the Weber siblings’ emigration from Germany to America. That document became our roadmap.

I went through and circled every place, street, and city mentioned. Then my line producer turned all of that into detailed maps and itineraries. It was a real team effort. That level of planning was crucial in helping us retrace the journey and capture the emotional geography of the story.

Q: How did your family react to being filmed?

Beth Lane: They were surprisingly open — each in their own way. My mom, a dancer and performer for years, was the easiest to convince. Aunt Gertrude welcomed it, and Aunt Ruth wouldn’t stop talking. It was marvelous. But these are deeply tender topics, and the emotional weight was real.

Aunt Ruth chose not to see the final cut. Aunt Renee initially declined but ultimately agreed. Her contribution is stunning in brevity, humor, and depth. Aunt Judy abstained from filming but attended a recent screening in Dallas, where she felt deeply seen and heard.

Most cousins were enthusiastic, though a few declined. My kids were skeptical at first, since this was my directorial debut. But later, they admitted that they underestimated me.

Aunt Senta, who was in hospice, couldn’t participate, but she supported the film financially. That support gave me the confidence to tell their story. I used it to found The Weber Family Arts Foundation, a 501(c)(3) dedicated to combating antisemitism and hate through the arts.

Q: Were they happy with the results?

Beth Lane: Absolutely. None of us expected the film to win awards, have a nationwide release, or stream on Netflix. When I told my mom that “UnBroken” had ranked #5 in the top 10 U.S. Netflix films within 24 hours after its launch, she nearly fell out of her wheelchair.

Q: Did the film change lives among the subjects or beyond?

Beth Lane: Yes. One cousin converted to Judaism after being raised Catholic. Others who had lost touch reconnected by attending screenings and meeting me. It’s powerful to see the story reconnect our family and remind us all of our shared humanity in a divided world.

Q: What were the profound discoveries that you and your family made that were unexpected?

Beth Lane: Three weeks after I committed to making “UnBroken,” the Charlottesville rally happened. White supremacists marched through a Southern town under the guise of protecting Confederate monuments. But we knew it was really an attempt to spread hate and amplify antisemitism. That was a moment of clarity: our story couldn’t wait. It needed to be told — now.

Fast forward to October 8, 2023: our world premiere at the Heartland International Film Festival. Just 24 hours earlier, news of a devastating terrorist attack broke. Watching such horrific violence — families torn apart, civilians targeted — shattered something in us. What was most painful was the wavering moral clarity surrounding it.

I was in Manhattan when the Towers fell on 9/11. Back then, there was no question about what was evil. Today, that certainty feels like it’s slipping away. That loss of clarity was one of the most painful realizations of this journey. 

There’s a “before and after” for me and our family now. But with that, I’ve gained spiritual clarity. I’m more grounded and prepared for the unexpected. That makes me sad — knowing to expect wrongdoing.

Q: “UnBroken” is a stand against hate in all its forms. It’s a bridge to remind us all to be human and simply to do unto others as you would wish to be done unto you. This isn’t a political or religious film. It’s a spiritual film. A personal story about staying human in a world that too often forgets how.

Beth Lane: Yes. And if there’s one message I want to share, it’s this: Even in the darkest moments, there is still light. Still hope. Still connection. “UnBroken” is my offering to anyone searching for that light.

Q: Now that you’ve made a film that’s part of an important legacy of Holocaust survivors, how do you hope it impacts on the world at large?

Beth Lane: I hope it makes people pause and realize how disconnected we’ve become — relying on texts instead of calls, online likes instead of real conversations. “UnBroken” is a reminder to cherish our neighbors and to practice kindness. Antisemitism isn’t just a Jewish problem; it threatens society as a whole. As a daughter of a Holocaust survivor, I feel a duty to speak out against hate and bigotry — and I hope others feel inspired to do the same.

What sets “UnBroken” apart from other Holocaust or family-history documentaries is that it’s a woman-led story spanning generations, told through a deeply personal and spiritual lens rather than a political or historical one. It blends humor, pain, and healing in unexpected ways. It’s urgent given today’s climate of antisemitism and global unrest.

Q: What’s next for you? Other films, books, etc.?

Beth Lane: I’ve been invited to give keynote addresses, which has been incredibly meaningful. I love connecting with audiences — sharing stories that remind us we are more alike than different. That sense of oneness is the heart of this work. I hope “UnBroken” continues to lead us toward that. I have a book and museum exhibit in development, plus three more films in development that need funding. The Weber Family Arts Foundation is growing, and we’re seeking resources to hire an executive director to increase our impact.

NOTE: To watch “UnBroken,” support the foundation, or to host a screening, visit:
http://www.theweberfamilyartsfoundation.com

Rocker-turned-Writer Larry Kirwan Debuts His Latest Novel, “Rockin’ the Bronx” and Spurs ’80s Recollections

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Wednesday, 28 May 2025 14:15

Written by Brad Balfour

During the annual Origin 1st Irish Festival, legendary Irish rocker Larry Kirwan presented a book launch, reading and performance of his latest novel, “Rockin’ the Bronx,” in April. Hosted by the New York Irish Center, this rare event added one more unique element to this festival of plays and readings of contemporary Irish works.

The bushy haired Kirwan is one unique guy in the course of Irish immigrants coming to New York. Born in Wexford, Ireland, Kirwan now lives in NYC and was leader of the aggro rock band Black 47 for 25 years. The political rockers played 2500 gigs, released 16 albums and appeared on every major US TV show.

The 70-something has also written three novels, this current one, “Rockin’ The Bronx,” “Liverpool Fantasy,” and “Rockaway Blue” as well as a memoir, “Green Suede Shoes” and “A History of Irish Music.”

In addition, he has written or collaborated on 21 plays and musicals. Among them, the Tony-nominated “Paradise Square” which he conceived and co-wrote put him further in the spotlight. The full-blown Broadway musical garnered 10 Tony Award noms including one for Kirwan and a win for its lead vocalist, Joaquina Kalukango.

Also a political activist, Kirwan has expressed his views as an Irish Echo columnist and celebrity host/producer of Celtic Crush on SiriusXM Satellite Radio. He was president of Irish American Writers & Artists for five years and received the 2022 Eugene O’Neill Lifetime Achievement Award.

“Rockin’ The Bronx” can be ordered at all stores, at Amazon and all digital outlets. Autographed copies of the book can be purchased through SHOP at www.black47.com

Go to https://www.fordhampress.com/ where a discount of 25% off, plus free shipping (paperback and eBook) can be had. Use the code: ROCKIN25-FI

Q: What were the most challenging things in crafting this book, the characterizations or the plotting itself?

Larry Kirwan: “Out of character comes story!” So saith Aeschylus, the great Greek dramatist, and who am I to disagree. I always start with the characters whether it’s play or novel writing. Unless the characters are interesting, the story won’t grab a hold of you. Rockin’ The Bronx presented a problem though. I had played the bar scene in the Irish Bronx through the late ’70s and ’80s and recognized that something unique was happening up there.

Droves of young Irish immigrants swamped the area, drinking like fish, taking the subway at the crack of dawn down to Manhattan building sites, or nannying in yuppie apartments, six and even seven days a week. From the band stage it was like being in the midst of an immersive play, akin to being back in the Five Points during the huge Irish migration of 1847. I knew the scene had the makings of a great novel. I just didn’t know how to begin it.

Many years later, after Chris Byrne and I had made a success of Black 47, I took the two characters of our song Sleep Tight in New York City and used their story as the basis of Rockin’ The Bronx. That was a magical song to perform, and we always finished it with a long improvised instrumental coda, cinematic in scope. You could almost see Sean Kelly and Mary Devine materialize in the crowd and live out their story. The plot of the novel took some crafting and needed the introduction of another couple, Danny Boy McCorley from Belfast and the rambunctious Kate from Co. Mayo, but the lyrics of the song provided a great foundation.

Q: How much do you deviate from things you pull from memory and things that have evolved throughout your career?

Larry Kirwan: When you’re writing a novel you scavenge from all quarters. Is it fiction, is it fact? Who cares? You use what comes to hand. I never lived in The Bronx, I was an East Village guy, but I was part of the musical scene up there. I had also lived a fairly edgy life, so I had a store of experience to contrast with what was happening around me.

Ultimately, however, fiction takes over, especially in relation to plot which becomes more important as soon as characters are established.

Q: When you decide to write a book, does it take long to gather steam or does it kick off and keep going?

Larry Kirwan: Books are hard to write so when you begin one, you’ve really got to apply yourself as it will take years to finish. The trick is: deciding which idea or subject you will pursue –- which will be the most fruitful, which one are you best suited to handle? Writing a novel –- or a play –- is very time-consuming. You’ll lose faith, that’s only natural. Many times you’ll question your ability to write something original and worthwhile. But you just keep plugging on and hope for the best.

Q: When writing a book which incorporates the musician’s experience, how does that affect the parameters?

Larry Kirwan: It’s much the same as the parameters a carpenter might have, or an accountant. Perhaps, the boundaries might be more fluid for a musician, mostly because of the era you’re writing about. In the early 1980s –- when “Rockin’ The Bronx” took place — I was playing many different kinds of music.

The Punk/New Wave [I played] with Pierce Turner in Major Thinkers led to us touring with Cyndi Lauper, UB40 and many more. We were also playing improvisatory music behind the poet Copernicus, in CBGB and Max’s Kansas City, not to mention four sets a night of whatever songs and styles that would get us hired in The Bronx and other tri-state bars.

All of those experiences leaked into the writing of “RTB.” Because the Irish Bronx was such a wild and vibrant scene, we were trying to blow away audiences up there and not just play what the crowds wanted to hear. This, of course, led to tension and aggression.

Everything that happens to Sean and Danny on stage in the book actually happened to me in real life over the years. In our early Bronx days, Black 47 seemed to pose an almost existential threat to some of the “New Irish,” probably because we used Hip-Hop and Reggae beats and made our political leanings obvious with edgy lyrics. So, I had much to draw on.

Q: What is there about the Bronx that makes the experience of writing and then, reading this book different?

Larry Kirwan: The Bronx has always been the dead center of the New York immigrant experience. It’s traditionally been the poorest borough and arguably the toughest. But, for whatever reason, it’s always been very music oriented. Look at the South Bronx – it has spawned Rap/Hip-Hop, for many decades now the most universal and successful music style, you hear it in every country of the world. Then take the Irish Bronx. Bars up there had far more live music than any of the other four boroughs.

Gigs were plentiful for musicians. That’s why Chris Byrne and I took Black 47 to the Bronx immediately – you had a chance to play four one-hour sets a night, and get decently paid. After a year of that bruising, but important, experience, we were a band with our own unique sound, and, within another 18 months, we were a national touring act appearing on Leno, Letterman and O’Brien. That’s what The Bronx did for us, and that experience is reflected in “RTB,” even though the book is set 10 years previously.

Q: Which of the characters in the book came first and how did you plan the book’s evolution?

Larry Kirwan: Sean Kelly and Mary Devine came first. But more than anything, the book is about Sean’s undying love for Mary, and his need to understand why she left him and Ireland behind. Despite the socio-political trappings, Rockin’ The Bronx is a love story, and through Sean’s eyes we learn about Mary and the nature of her attraction to The Bronx. But, despite everything that happens, Sean never stops loving her.

We also learn about New York and what it was like in a period that encompasses the deaths of John Lennon and Bobby Sands. Very little has been written about the many young Northern immigrants who were familiar with the killing fields of Belfast and South Armagh – that’s why Danny McCorley is so important to the story. “RTB” is no fairytale, it deals with conflict, sexuality and many other issues, but it’s also a tribute to the young Irish immigrants of the ’80s who came to a very tough city and made lives for themselves over here.

Q: The challenges of imbuing the book with textures of the era — to make it distinct — are huge. Besides your own memories, were there other resources you used to enhance the book's authenticity?

Larry Kirwan: What other resources did I need? I lived it 24/7, like all the other Irish who arrived in that period when Ireland couldn’t provide for them. You don’t get that experience from books or academics, no matter how well meaning. The streets and the memories provide the material and the inspiration. The only thing you have to be careful about is making sure that you don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees – in other words, tell the damned story. I was always a reader and hung around the somewhat literary Bells of Hell and the Lower East Side. At that period I was reading a lot of Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac and, of course, the columns of Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin, and other hands-on lecturers from the University of the Streets.

Q: How is the writing alike and different to writing your previous books?

Larry Kirwan: Each book is different but I’m struck by how youthful the authorial voice is in Rockin’ The Bronx. I was writing through the eyes of Sean Kelly, then in his early 20’s.There are also echoes of the Hip-Hop cadences of the South Bronx mixed in with the various vocal rhythms of the characters, Sean and Mary from County Wexford, Danny from Belfast, and Kate from rural Mayo, with just a smidgin of the run-on tempos of Kerouac to highlight the transitory nature of the rugged Irish Bronx we knew.

That style is very different from “Rockaway Blue,” my last novel, which tells the story of a family and city still reeling from 9/11, from the point of view of a Vietnam Vet/ NYPD detective in his late 50s. The writing in “Rockaway Blue” is more chiseled, then again such a controversial subject calls for a certain spareness. There’s more room for youthful excess and exuberance in RTB so I ran with that.

Q: Did it go easier or was this one tougher?

Larry Kirwan: They’re all tough, including the 21 plays/musicals I’ve written. You’re trying to capture a time, a place, and do justice to the people who lived there and the drama of their story. Mystery plays a large part in my stories – what’s Mary Devine’s secret that sends Sean to The Bronx in search of her; what was Lieut. Brian Murphy doing down in the World Trade [Center] right before the planes struck, and why can’t his father, Det. Jimmy Murphy let the past be? Or for that matter why did Paul McCartney change his name to Paul Montana and leave his three Beatle mates behind in my first novel, “Liverpool Fantasy?”

The importance of “Rockin’ The Bronx” to me is that a very special time and place is finally captured in print. There’s barely a trace of the old Irish Bronx left behind. This book shows us as we were in the final big surge of Irish emigration to New York.

Many were fleeing warfare in the North of Ireland, others were looking for the opportunities denied them in the Republic, and, some of us just came for adventure and the hell of it. The city was changing and we changed with it. One thing you can be sure of –- you’ll never see the like of us again.

Q: In writing this book did it inspire you to get up and play — to rock out? Now that you’ve gotten this out of your system will you do something very different or do you hope this will be the basis of a movie or another theatrical piece?

Larry Kirwan: I don’t write to inspire myself but I think “Rockin’ The Bronx” gives an insight into what it’s like to be a musician. Not just Sean and Danny on guitars, but also Shiggins on drums, Bugsy on bass, and especially Johnny Crowley on fiddle. I was close to Lester Bangs, the great rock critic.

He wrote many wonderful pieces about music and musicians, but at the same time I always felt that he was missing something, because he had never felt the inner fire and magic when contributing on stage to a great rock band. Hopefully, some of that essence is captured in “RTB.”

There’s already a theatrical version of “Rockin’ The Bronx.” It had three different productions here and in Ireland. It’s a straight play but I use a recorded score of Black 47 music to highlight scenes and characters.

And you’re right, I’m working on a very different project — “Rebel Girl” — a musical about the life and times of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the Irish-American labor activist and her union The International Workers of the World (Wobblies). It takes place between 1912-1922, a great melting pot period for Folk, Blues, Jazz, Swing, Gospel & Opera, but I treat those influences in a contemporary manner.

Oddly enough, the setting closely resembles current America with its immigration issues, income inequality, racial unease, and partisan divide. The seven characters include songwriter Joe Hill and birth control activist Margaret (Higgins) Sanger. The story centers on the intense love affair between Elizabeth and Italian revolutionary Carlo Tresca. Life goes on…

For more info, go to: www.black47.com

Classic Rocker John Cafferty Returns with a New Album after 37 Years — “Sound of Waves”

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Thursday, 08 May 2025 20:00

Written by Brad Balfour

For many bands having a song in a film can boost one’s career. But for John Cafferty and his Beaver Brown band, they not only wrote and performed songs for the soundtrack to “Eddie And The Cruisers,” but they provided all the musical content performed by actors in the film. The music was a hit and established John Cafferty as a force to reckon with.

Nonetheless, Cafferty and band continued writing, recording and performing for years. After a string of records that came out in the ‘90s, he continued on without releasing anything new as an album.

On April 10, 2025, John Cafferty and his band released their first album in 37 years, “Sound of Waves,” a 13-song collection of original songs written by Cafferty. This milestone was celebrated with a media industry release party at the legendary Cutting Room in New York City. Radio DJs, music writers, influencers, and fans attended the SRO event. iHeart New York’s Q104.3 afternoon drive DJ Ken Dashow was the MC.

Cafferty and band achieved mainstream success in the ‘80s with the music recorded for the “Eddie and the Cruisers: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack.” A 1983 American musical drama film directed by Martin Davidson with the screenplay written by the director and Arlene Davidson, “Eddie and the Cruisers” was based on the novel by P. F. Kluge. A sequel “Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives!” followed in 1989.

Music Supervisor Kenny Vance asked Davidson to describe his fictitious band and their music. Initially, Davidson said that the Cruisers sounded like Dion and the Belmonts but with elements of Jim Morrison and The Doors.

However, due to the fact that the Cruisers were essentially a Jersey bar band, Davidson thought of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. The filmmaker told Vance to find him a band that could produce music that contained elements of these groups. The director was getting close to rehearsals when Vance called and said that he had found the band — Providence, Rhode Island’s John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band.

When Davidson met them, he realized that they closely resembled the band described in the script, right down to a Cape Verdean saxophone player, whom he cast in the film. Initially, Cafferty was only hired to write a few songs, but he did such a good job of capturing the feeling of the ‘60s and ‘80s that Davidson asked him to score the entire film.

After successful screenings on HBO in 1984, the album suddenly climbed the charts, going quadruple platinum. The studio re-released the soundtrack in the fall of ’84. Nine months after the film was released in theaters, the main song , “On the Dark Side”, went to number one in the country on Billboard’s Mainstream, Rock, and Heatseeker charts; and #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Another single from the film, “Tender Years,” peaked at #31 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The album sold over three million copies and went on to become certified triple platinum by the RIAA. Their hit single “On the Dark Side” maintained the number one position on Billboard and HBO for five consecutive weeks.

The band saw further success when their 1985 follow-up album “Tough All Over” made the Top 40. “Voice of America’s Sons” was the featured theme song of Sylvester Stallone’s action movie “Cobra,” while Cafferty’s solo track “Heart’s on Fire” was featured in “Rocky IV.”

Over the years John would continue to place over 30 songs in major motion pictures, including “There’s Something About Mary” and “Dumb and Dumber To.”

Today, John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band continue to tour and bring their live shows to fans around the world. In 2012, they were inducted into the Rhode Island Music Hall Of Fame.

In order to reestablish his presence in the world at large, Cafferty spoke with the press about his re-emergence. In the course of this interview, Cafferty revealed his Irish roots and how he connected with this on a trip to Eire.

Q: How have you managed to maintain your love of rock and roll for this long and yet not put out an album for 37 years?

John Cafferty: We had a wonderful opportunity for a few years in the ‘80s to be able to make records and to be in sync with what was going on with both radio and MTV. And as you know, music sort of moves on. It evolves and revolves. Styles and trends change. When that happened with us in the late ‘80s, we just went back to what we’d been doing before. We were a band that had been together for like 10 plus years before we made records. We went back to being a band for many years after we made records. We never stopped. We never stopped playing; we just weren’t in the record business anymore.

Q: All this time, you’ve survived by touring and obviously doing things that ended up in albums, in movies?

John Cafferty: When we went back to playing after the hit records, it was a bit easier because we had songs people knew. We weren’t playing civic centers anymore, but we played small theaters, showcase clubs, doing what we knew how to do. Every Saturday night we’d be in a crowded room, watch the dance floor fill up and see smiles on the people’s faces.

Q: Your music has been in a number of movies, obviously with “Eddie and the Cruisers.” When showcasing your music, were you meeting the actors? Did you meet the director? How did that work?
 
John Cafferty: It was a double-edged sword. It got the music out there to the point where 40 years later the songs are still being played on radio. That’s a wonderful thing that happened, but it didn’t necessarily shine a spotlight on the band for any length of time.

Q: It led to people putting you in other movies. Movies sometimes have a longer shelf life than an album as a way to keep the cash coming in.

John Cafferty: It was a very unexpected surprise and turned into our career. We were a bar band extraordinaire. We were very good at what we did and still are. We have the history of rock and roll at our fingertips and that magic wand in our hands every Saturday night. That’s what we set out to do. 

I look over my shoulder at 74 and see a life of my choosing. I see days and nights spent doing what I wanted to do. The movie stuff was something that we never saw coming. It was just an unexpected surprise. It wasn’t anything that we pursued before “Eddie and the Cruisers.”

It was just that we’d had some success in a very unusual way. Not necessarily in the theaters, but on cable television when they played a film we provided music for. All of a sudden, we sold a million records from people watching it on television. Probably our little quirky footnote in the history of rock and roll was that we sold platinum records before they’re being played on HBO. To my knowledge, that didn’t happen before or it hadn’t happened to that extent at that particular point.

Q: It led you to other big films. That’s the craziest thing. It doesn’t always happen that way. You did “Rocky” and these other films.
 
John Cafferty: [chuckles] Sly was always wonderful to us. He was in a film called “The Lords of Flatbush” many years ago with Henry Winkler. You got Rocky and the Fonz before those characters were even created. The director of that film was Marty Davidson, who went on to direct “Eddie and the Cruisers”. 

Sly was aware of us, or at least of the project. When that film became a hit, especially the music, he was very happy with it. He was instrumental in finding a company to put out the soundtrack album. Somebody gives them a chance and they record a soundtrack. Their music comes out of the mouths of actors, but then goes on to triple platinum success and Top 10, number one records. You could write that story.

Q: What did you think of the story of “Eddie and the Cruisers?” 

John Cafferty: Marty made a very honest attempt at telling the story of a band. It wasn’t a big budget project, and he had a history of working with unknown talent, but talent nonetheless. The people who were in that movie went on to major successes, us being part of that.
 
I wasn’t really involved in the movie, so much as I was involved with the music. I didn’t really have a say in the film. I didn’t really have much input into it, other than every time Michael Pare opened his mouth on screen, my voice came out to the audience. I wish he had a guitar in his hand.

Q: Had you known the music producer/supervisor for the film, Kenny Vance, before the movie? Vance is in the movie.

John Cafferty: Kenny Vance went on to become one of my closest friends and one of my mentors in life. Not just for the music business, but how to become a man in this world. I always appreciated him. No, we didn’t know one another. I did know of him or his band anyways, because we were very steeped in the history of rock and roll. His band, Jay and the Americans, had just great songs and their producers were Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller — the famed producers and songwriting team. 

To have Kenny welcome us into a family tree that traces back to Lieber and Stoller is a big honor. He’s a guy you need to talk to. That guy has more stories than you can believe. He opened for The Beatles and the Stones. He was on Ed Sullivan. He lived in the whole rock and roll fantasy.

He just made a documentary called “Heart & Soul” that’s unbelievable. It’s about the Doo-Wop era and some of the people in it. It got picked up by PBS. It’ll bring a tear to your eye. It’s just unbelievable.

Q: In the beginning, you had that association with Bruce Springsteen (whose sound was the inspiration for Eddie) coming out of that same sort of Roots Rock experience.

John Cafferty: It’s not a bad association. It’s a good association.

Q: It’s a great association. Your songs work just as well as many songs that Bruce Springsteen has produced. Just as that same association was laid on a bunch of other writers, songwriters like Elliot Murphy. It’s a great school to be in, or a great crowd to be a part of.

John Cafferty: The fact that he was a friend and offered so much encouragement both in the early days and even in recent years. I mean, you’re talking about a one in a billion songwriter. The guy plays stadiums in front of people who know every word to every song that he’s written. 

He’s an immense talent. For him to come and sit in with us and be on stage with us and talk to me about songwriting, talking shop, talking old rock and roll records. What we liked about ’em and, “Hey, do you remember the words to this? You remember the chords to that? And the drum sound to this?” It’s so much fun. I always saw it as a wonderful thing for us.

Q: This new album carries on your legacy. The opening song is fabulous and it leads right into a lot of great stuff.

John Cafferty: I didn’t really realize that people would think of it as being New York and New Jersey. It was actually California that I was talking about. My wife and I were living out there in the early eighties and I wrote a song about the reawakening of wanting to dream or continue to dream: let’s dream like young lovers out on the Palisades. It was about that moment of my life, and I guess it’s a good thing that people would hear East Coast in it as well. But that was a song about the West Coast.

Q: Talk about the songs on the album, some of their origins. I think of you as a purely East Coast band and a real grassroots guy when you’re coming out of Rhode Island as opposed to say LA or New York. You have these LA connections, as well. So, tell me a little more about the album.

John Cafferty: About the LA connection, you are correct in assuming that we’re an East Coast, born and raised in rock and roll band. That’s absolutely true. But when we tried to get a record deal for many years, one of the reasons that we took the Eddie and the Cruisers job was to hopefully attract record company interest in what we were doing. After I wrote all those songs, I went out there. My wife was going to school out there. 

We weren’t married at the time; she was out there studying photography. I told the band that whatever’s going to happen with our career, it’s probably going to happen out there. I don’t think they’re coming to Rhode Island to look for us. I’m going to go out there and if someone likes the film, maybe they’ll like what we do. That ended up being the case, and my wife and I spent a few years out there at that point.

Q: How did that influence further songs? Where did some of the other songs come from? Did you reconnect your East Coast past, or were the songs about specific people? 
 
John Cafferty: Musically, the whole album is sort of a reflection of the music that we grew up with. It’s colored by much of the ‘50s and ’60s music that inspired us to put instruments in our hands. We wear our influences on our sleeves. There’s bits and pieces of, or colors, not necessarily musical ideas. But there are colors from that music, sounds from that music or production styles that pay homage to the music we grew up with. 

We come from a tradition of rock and roll based in R&B and blues, and that’s how that tradition was passed on. People heard it, they picked it up, put their spin on it and left the breadcrumbs so that the person next in line could hear what you did and then find what influenced you. 

The record is very much that, musically. We’ve been going for 37 years, or at least we haven’t recorded new music in 37 years. We played new music in the clubs, and in the concert halls we played new music. I’ve written new music over the years, but we haven’t recorded it. It’s just that we’ve been out of the record business, so to speak. 

I always thought I was going to write. I always thought I was going to record the songs that I had written in the interim. But when I sat down to do it, all these new songs came out. It was a reflection of how I feel now. When I look over my shoulder, I see a life spent on doing something of my choosing. 

I’m blessed to have had that choice. And I’ve thought about where that choice came from and the people who made the sacrifices for me to be able to have the life that I’ve lived. It starts with me writing a song called “Palisades.” It’s about the reawakening of that dream, of wanting to creatively share what I was thinking about.

There’s a story being told that’s not really told sequentially. It’s just bits and pieces of things. I’m 21 in one song, I’m 47 in another song, I’m 13 in another. And when I look over my shoulder, that’s what I see. I think of my life in bits and pieces. I don’t see straight lines, I see moments of reflection, and that’s what the record is.

Q: At least three of the songs were written in 2023. Were they any reflection of the Pandemic — written during the pandemic — or is this all in the last year?

John Cafferty: We’ve been working on the record for three years. We had a 50th anniversary that came about. We’re still blowing out the candles and celebrating. Right around that same time, we had a Greatest Hits record come out on Iconoclassic Records.

My friend Jeremy Holiday, who had worked for Sony for many years, was familiar with our career. He called and asked me if I wanted to put a greatest hits record out. Our career is so entangled with films and different record companies and whatever. 

I didn’t think that it was possible, but he did. He put together a package that just said, “Here’s a band and these songs. These are the best of what they did.” He was able to put together a greatest hits package that doesn’t so much reflect on how the songs were used. They were reflecting that this is the work of a songwriter and his band. 

That was wonderful because that’s how we view it when we play these songs at night. I don’t think about …. well, this song was in “Eddie and the Cruisers” and this song was in “Something About Mary” and this song was in “Rocky.” I just think of it as: they’re all our songs that I wrote and were recorded by my band.

Q: In light of this association with movies, have you gotten to meet some of the actors either before, during, or after? Stallone is someone you’re friends with.
  
John Cafferty: I know the Farrelly brothers who are directors and writers; they’re Rhode Island guys. We’ve had a few songs in their films. They’ve been very kind to us over the years by putting our songs in there. They used to come, and rumor has it, sneak into the clubs when they were young and follow my band around. 

I can’t really say that I know a lot of the actors that were in the films that we did. I got a call a couple years ago, the guy looked up my phone and said, “Sylvester Stallone.” I said, “This can’t be real.” I picked it up and he said he was checking on my schedule. He saw that I was playing down in Atlantic City and that his brother, Frank, was playing down there at the same time. He wanted to know if I wanted to open the show for him at the Hard Rock Casino. They would film it for the “Families Stallone” show that they have on Paramount. 

We went out to dinner with those guys and hung out and had a ball. It was so fun. we’re still a Rhode Island band, so I’m not really involved with Hollywood on a day-to-day basis. Once in a while, I’ll get a call looking for something that I’ve done that they wanted to use in a film.

Q: You left LA and came back to Rhode Island. Have you ever come back to New York?

John Cafferty: We wanted to raise a family, and do it back here on the East Coast where our families were. We had a lot of fun living out in California for a brief time. And then we wanted to come home and bring up a family on the East Coast. We’ve had a wonderful life doing that. I got to be a little league coach during the week. Got to be a rock and roll star on the weekends. It was tremendous.

Q:  You’ve been with your wife all along. How many kids do you have? They’re probably adults now.

John Cafferty: It seems like more, but there’s just two of them. I have two sons. They both have their degrees from the University of Rhode Island in business. My oldest son, Shane, is in Hollywood. He’s a comedic actor and improv guy working with the UCB –– Upright Citizens Brigade. My youngest son, Jackson, is a great songwriter about to get signed to a record deal and you’ll probably be talking to him sooner than later. They’re both so talented, and I’m so happy that they’ve found a creative life.

Q: When you moved back to Rhode Island, was it Providence you’re in? Or did you go more out in the country?

Cafferty: It’s a pretty small place. You’re only a half hour from everything. So we’re down at the beach, the “Ocean State,” so we headed south. We’re down at the beach down by the University of Rhode Island. It’s very much a college town and a beach community. It’s wonderful down here.

Q:  The boardwalk is not so far away, like the Palisades. Is there a boardwalk for you?

Cafferty: I’m a half a mile from the ocean as the seagull flies, but yeah, it’s really beautiful here. I wouldn’t come in February, but other than that, it’s beautiful.

Q: Talk about the night of your recent The Cutting Room show where you premiered the album.

John Cafferty: Oh man, it was a very fun night. I have a great friend of mine, Tom Cuddy, who I knew when he was running Pro-FM here in Providence. He stayed in touch with me all these years and came to see me play up at Daryl Hall’s place in Pauling, New York. He heard about the greatest hits record coming out and came to touch base with us.
 
I told him that we were working on a new album and he said, “When you make the new record, we’ve got to have a night in New York to release it.” He followed through with that and put together this wonderful night at The Cutting Room. We just had so many friends and guys from the New York radio, and it was just unbelievable.

Q: Now that you’ve established your presence in New York, you’re going to come back and have a concert just so I can see you live.

John Cafferty: Steve Walter, the guy who owns The Cutting Room, said we have an open invitation. We’re going to take him up on it. It was a great spot. We haven’t played in the City in a long time. The last time I played in the City I was playing with South Side Johnny at Gary, US Bond’s birthday party at BB King’s. We went down and sang a few songs with Gary.

It’s not too big, it’s not too small. Steve, the guy who owns it, is a musician himself. He’s a Berkeley-educated guitar player. We had him up on stage with us. He plays his ass off. It was a very, very fun night.

Q: The next time you come, you get some of the classic people that you’ve worked with over the years. Get Kenny Vance in town.

John Cafferty: I was talking to him and he just played at Mohegan Sun. He did a thing over there with … I’m trying to think. I think Joey D was there, too. He does Doo-wop revival packages that he gets involved with. I know he did that with Bowser for quite a few years, and they were great shows. I always go to see it, but I couldn’t go because he was there last week.

Q: You’ve always been John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, but actually the Beaver Brown Band is really, basically you. It’s changed and evolved obviously for sad reasons that some of your original band mates have passed. Why did you maintain the Beaver Brown element and not just be John Cafferty?

John Cafferty: We’re very much a team, a family unit. We still have three of the original guys and myself. There’s Gary Gramolini, our guitar player who produced a record with me and Michael Antunes, who’s a sax player extraordinaire, was actually the sax player in “Eddie and the Cruisers.” He was in the film.

The guys who came in to keep the thing going with us, they’re guys that we’ve known for many, many years. It’s a small community of musicians here in Rhode Island and Southern Massachusetts, and we just kept it going.

Q: Now that you’ve kept it going and you’re on a roll and performing, do you see another album coming up in the near future? You’re not going to wait for another 37 years, in other words?

John Cafferty: To be honest with you, I didn’t even think that we were going to make this record. I had a bunch of songs before this record that I thought I was going to record but didn’t. We still had that, and I had a bunch of the songs that didn’t make the record. Not because they weren’t good enough –– they were every bit as good as the songs that came out –– but there just wasn’t room on the record. The record is so long, an hour and 10 minutes as it is. I didn’t want to make it longer. This album went through a lot of molding and shaping. 

There were different versions of it, and there were newer songs that I’ve written since I started mixing this record. We put a period at the end of the sentence and said, “Okay, this is the record.” I ended up breaking the record into chapters, little three-song chapters.

There’s four three-song chapters in it, and the songs are grouped together either musically or thematically. At the very end of the record is actually the prologue, which is a story about how I came to discover music in the first place as a kid. It found a very beautiful home at the end of the record.

Q: What was the first record you heard? And what was the first record that made you want to be making records?

John Cafferty: My parents grew up in the ’30s and ‘40s. They were very much radio people. Their entertainment came from a radio, so there was always a radio on wherever I was, whether it was in the kitchen or in the car or on the beach. There was always music in the air. I was drawn to it. I remember walking by my cousin Allen’s beach house — he’s a few years older than me — I had the baseball bat on my shoulder with the gloves sticking off the handle by his house. He was sitting on his porch with a suitcase, but it was a record player. He had a stack of 45s and he was playing “Rebel Rouser” by Duane Eddy. 

The sound of that, the echo on the guitar and the sound of the drums and saxophone coming in to bring the excitement to it: it stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t really know why. I was a kid and got interested in playing the guitar, like a lot of musicians my age.

We went to the movie theater one day and saw the look on the faces of those guys from Liverpool and said, “Boy, does that look like fun?” [chuckles] Next thing I knew, me and my cousin Stevie were starting the band. We’re both in our 70s now and still going strong at it.

Q:  Do you remember the first record you bought?

John Cafferty: Boy, it might have been “Heartbreak Hotel” –– something like that. My mom really liked Elvis. She used to take me grocery shopping and I didn’t ask for anything. At the end of the cash register where you checked out, they had a wall with these spools on it, and there were 45s hanging on the spools. If I didn’t ask for anything, she would buy me a record. It was like the era of Elvis, he was making records and the Everly Brothers.

Those guys were part of the big bang of rock and roll. When we played at The Cutting Room, my wife and I took a walk and ended up out by the Brill Building [it housed offices and studios where some of the most popular American songs were written and was the center of the music industry that dominated in the early 1960s]. I had her take my picture in front of the Brill building. It seemed like in every interview I was doing, I was talking about how much I loved the music that came out in that era. That was the hotbed of it, right there in that building. All that magic that came out of there.

Q:  Of all the songs on the new record, which one do you think of as the most personal record and which one do you think of as sort of the potential hit?

John Cafferty: The most accessible song as a single would be “Day in the Sun,” because that song just sounds like it’s already on the radio. But I’m not really sure. I know that when people hear it, they’re singing it back to you with big smiles on their faces and jumping up onto the dance floor. “Day in the Sun” would be the single.

There’s a song called “Blue Moonlight Drive” that’s one of the most beautiful records that we ever made — a throwback to “Pet Sounds” in a way. Not that my voice sounds like the Beach Boys, but just the sort of the sparseness in the romanticism of it. I really liked that one. Personally, the title track (“Sound of Waves”) means a lot to me and my family. It’s pretty heartfelt.

Q: “Palisades” is a great rock and roll, kick-out-the-jams kind of start of the album. I thought that was fabulous. That worked for me.

Cafferty: That song is very welcoming. It’s got that feeling to it that it seemed like an obvious choice to open the record because it’s a very welcoming song. I mean, there’s a lot of our influences in there of R&B and guys who were influenced by songwriters that I look up to –– like Van Morrison, Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen. 

It’s about reawakening the feeling of wanting to recapture a spirit that we had in the days of old when the world was bright, shiny and new. It’s saying that I want to dream again of my life’s partner. Let’s dream just like young lovers out on the Palisades. I’m thinking I’m driving down or driving up the Pacific Coast Highway, with the top down in my Mustang and with my beautiful bride by my side.

Q:  Did you have a Mustang?

Cafferty: I did. I’m from Rhode Island. I wasn’t going to be out in California without being able to put the top down. I froze my ass off up here in Rhode Island. To be able to get out there and put the top down in February was pretty fun.

Q:  What is your background? Irish?

John Cafferty: Irish and French Canadian.

Q: Do you know where your family is from in Ireland?

John Cafferty: They’re from Cork, but my wife is full Italian. We grew up in a community where it’s around here. There’s a lot of mills and small towns that serviced those mills. A lot of the immigrants came over and met each other across the machines and the pews of the churches and the schools. A lot of those cultures intermingled and grew up with beautiful traditions and great food.

Q: Your family has a Catholic background. The kids have gone to a Catholic school –– that kind of thing, or not?

Cafferty: My kids didn’t, but I grew up in Catholic schools. My cousin Betty organized a trip for about 30 of us. We went over there, a bunch of cousins and took a little tour of Southern Ireland. It was so wonderful. I found myself drawn to the pubs. Not so much for the Guinness, although that was wonderful, but for the sound of the pubs.

I would find myself listening. It wasn’t the big ballads that I was listening for. It was the sound of the instrumentation, the reels that they would play. You would go into one bar and the guy would be playing piano with a guy who would be playing guitar. Another guy was playing a banjo and somebody had a fiddle and somebody had a flute. 

It was just the sound of it all. It was unbelievable. I was so drawn to it. There’s a song on our record called “The Hearts of the Mighty.” It has a bit of that in there, this big storytelling ballad. I don’t mean a slow song by the word “ballad.” I mean a storytelling song. 

A lot of the album “Sound of Waves” comes from that idea. It was just a big, long story of where my life came from. And it’s a story about the courage that people had in order to leave everything they knew and everyone they loved so they could get on a boat and follow a dream and a story.

They just took the boat into the setting sun and followed it to see where it would lead. There was no internet back then. It was just based on stories of a promise, or stories of a dream that they would hear. And they left their countries and came over here.