Yo La Tengo Cover Lambchop With Kurt Wagner, The Clean With Mark Ibold At First Hanukkah Show: Watch

Yo La Tengo have an annual tradition. Every year, the New Jersey indie lifers play eight back-to-back Hanukkah shows at New York’s Bowery Ballroom. (The shows used to happen at Maxwell’s in Hoboken before that club shut down.) For their Hanukkah shows, YLT bring out surprise guests and play unexpected covers, and the whole affair always stands as a joyous occasion. Last night, the band kicked off this year’s Hanukkah shows, and some of their peers showed up to help out.

As Brooklyn Vegan points out, Yo La Tengo played last night’s Hanukkah show at the Bowery Ballroom with two openers, comedian Liz Miele and old-school soul-rockers Barrence Whitfield And The Savages. YLT played most of their set with CJ Camerieri and Mike McGinnis on horns, and Savages’ Peter Greenberg joined them on guitar for the encores. Those encores also included a bunch of Leiber & Stoller songs with Barrence Whitfield. Before those encores, a pair of indie legends also came to the stage.

Midway through the main set, Lambchop mastermind Kurt Wagner joined Yo La Tengo for a version of “Or Thousands Of Prizes,” a song from the 1994 Merge compilation Rows Of Teeth. Ira Kaplan said it was the first song that Yo La Tengo had ever seen Lambchop play live. At the end of their main set, YLT also paid tribute to the Clean’s Hamish Kilgour, who died earlier this month, by covering the Clean’s 1981 song “Point That Thing Somewhere Else.” For that cover, Pavement’s Mark Ibold helped out. Watch videos of those two covers below.

Brooklyn Vegan has a lot of photos and videos from last night. Yo La Tengo’s new album This Stupid World is out 2/10 on Matador.