A new Cucumbers album is being released in conjunction with a novella by The Cucumbers’ Jon Fried.
Deena Shoshkes and Jon Fried’s love story and musical partnership began freshman year at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1975. They were housed in the same dorm, on the same floor, and sang their first harmonies on The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood.” Two children later — and many years negotiating the joys and challenges of life — they continue to enhance their creative collaboration.
Now, with the Valentine’s Day release of “Hello George,” a novella written by Fried, and As You Heard Me, an accompanying Cucumbers album written by Shoshkes, they have created a love story that resembles, in some ways, their own.
Fried created the fictional story of country music singer George Krott, who reclaims his position on the charts by recording a song written by the reclusive Daisy Steinberg. Music publicist Barry Marcus connects Steinberg’s song to Krott and the three engage in a charming, resonant tale of love and redemption.
Daisy’s voice, as described by Fried, sounds a lot like his wife’s effervescent voice and other details connect the two women, including their time spent in Vermont with their boys. But there are differences, too. While Daisy has led an often mysterious and disjointed life, Shoshkes has remained grounded in Millburn, surrounded by loving family and supported by fans.
The song “There’s a Crop Circle on My Daddy’s Land” (listen below), co-written by Shoshkes and lyricist Vaughan Daniel, inspired Fried to create this engaging love story. As always, Shoshkes’ voice fills a room with sunshine and her clever and sensitive lyrics appeal to empathetic listeners.
Jon Fried and Deena Shoshkes.
Shoshkes and Fried formed the beloved indie band The Cucumbers in the 1980s, performing frequently in Hoboken. Their song “My Boyfriend” was featured on MTV and college radio stations. They continue to play together as The Cucumbers, and with the band The Campfire Flies, also featuring John and Toni Baumgartner, Ed Seifert and Matthew Davis.
Songs written by Shoskkes, Fried and John O’Neil were recorded by Jackson Browne, Dar Williams, Marshall Crenshaw and others for the 2009 Songs of the Spectrum charity album.
You can catch Shoshkes and Fried at the Ridgefield Public Library on Feb. 14 and April 28, and at their record release celebration at 503 Social Club in Hoboken, on March 29. Bob Perry of the mid-’80s band Winter Hours will also perform in Hoboken with a dazzling band including Sean Seymour, Paul Moschella, Scott Anthony and Stephanie Seymour.
Shoshkes and Fried will also perform at Prototype 237 in Paterson, April 11; the show will feature a reading by Fried and
they will share the bill with Speed the Plough and writer Rick Moody.
For more about them, visit thecucumbersmusic.weebly.com. To purchase the album and the novella, together or separately, visit bandcamp.com.
I talked to both of them recently.
CINDY STAGOFF
Jon Fried and Deena Shoshkes at Little City Books in Hoboken, in 2019.
JON FRIED
Q: I love your novella. What inspired you to write about an aspiring music publisher’s search for a reclusive songwriter?
A: When Deena wrote the song “There’s a Crop Circle on My Daddy’s Land” with Vaughan Daniel and a Nashville publisher signed it in the hopes of turning it into a country hit, I dreamt up George Krott, the country music legend who would score his 22nd No. 1 hit with this song. When I decided to expand that joke into a piece of fiction, I needed someone to bring together a New Jersey songwriter and a country music legend, and an up-and-comer in the publishing world seemed a reasonable choice. My narrator also combines what I’ve experienced in the music biz with years at office day jobs.
Q: You describe Daisy’s voice in the book as “Sweet, simple, with the faintest Jersey accent and no affectation of any kind; no rock and roll slurring, no bluesy belting, no country twanging, no breathy confession. She just sang the words, the melody and the heart.” Is this also Deena’s magical voice that you are describing?
A: To answer this, I quote the front matter of the novella: “any resemblance to actual people or songs is purely serendipitous.”
Q: So Deena has inhabited Daisy? Or the other way around?
A: Yes and yes.
Q: Does this novella reflect your frustrations in the music industry in the 1990s?
A: Actually no … in the ’90s, we were raising kids and were lucky to find some small indie labels willing to put out our music and support us as best they could. We were in no position to deal with and had no interest in dealing with the big money part of the industry — and the big money part of the industry had no interest in us. In Barry’s story, the love of music has a place in the business, even if Barry eventually gets himself out of the fast lane and into a much more appropriate back road.
The cover of Jon Fried’s novella “Hello George.”
Q: I understand you’ve written other stories before. Tell me about your work and about your writing process. Where can we find your other stories?
A: I’ve been writing fiction for a bit longer than I’ve been writing music, starting in high school. I’ve been going back and forth ever since, though for the most active years of The Cucumbers and raising a family I’d write a short story a year if I was lucky. In my 40s I got back to prose in earnest and have been writing pretty much every day since … even if just a few minutes. Still got a day job. I’ve published some … there’s a page labelled “Fiction” at jonfried.net. There’s a lot more I haven’t published.
Q: Who is the character Barry Marcus based on, other than your imagination?
A: I almost never base the characters in my short stories on people I’ve known or known of, although I often say that I’m every character in my fiction, the way some say we’re every person who appears in our dreams.
Q: Who inspired the character George Krott?
A: The inspiration was the person of the same name in a long-running joke Deena and I shared. We joked about it so long he became kind of real to me. But he’s not based on any actual country music legend.
Q: In your book Barry says: “For many, if not most, the songs that matter are the old songs, the ones that imprint in the raw mud of adolescence and remain stuck in the remnant of that pain and pleasure center. For me, there are always new ones. It comes with the day job. Even if I don’t love them, or love them despite myself, they take over, they do the job of pushing other songs aside — especially helpful when your marriage is fading out and you’re stuck on some old breakup ballad.” Can you discuss a few songs that have imprinted on you?
A: There are so many … when our kids were young and we’d be driving around with the radio on or listening to some album, I’d hear a song and say, “This is my favorite song!” Soon enough our boys pointed out that I would say that about many songs. “But this is my favorite,” I’d say. “And the last one was, too.” I’ve fallen in love with a lot of songs.
Q: Can you tell me about your lives beyond this new release: work, family, play or whatever makes you smile?
A: We’re delighted that our sons both live close by in New York and have partners we love. One son is getting married in June on the palindromic date of 6/20/2026.
Moderating my news intake to manage my fury at the state of our nation is a struggle. I go to every protest I can get to.
I am insanely grateful to Deena for hatching up the idea of this joint release and helping me get some of my writing out there in the world. She put in an amazing amount of work to make it all happen.
Q: What’s next for both of you?
A: We have a new musical project in the works that will feature Deena on bass, me on banjo and a drummer friend on djembe or cajón … probably to debut in 2027 or later in ‘26. The bass and banjo (B&B) combo inspired the band name: Hair B&B. We will be wearing wigs.
JOHN NIEDZWIECKI
DEENA SHOSHKES
DEENA SHOSHKES
Q: I love the songs on As You Heard Me. How did you select them? Did they come from different eras? Where were they recorded?
A: Jon selected the songs when he included them in his story, and I was delighted. They come from all different eras of my songwriting and experiments with home recording. The oldest song is “Statue of Liberty” from 1983. It was recorded on a four-track cassette recorder, a “porta studio.” “Waiting (Impressions of Chrysanthemums),” “Unattainable” and “Cut it Loose” were written in 2024.
Every song on the album was recorded in my home studio. I played all the instruments with the exception of the piano part on “Reeling Feeling.” The piano was played by our son Jesse when he was 13!
Q: Can you tell me about what inspired “There’s a Crop Circle on My Daddy’s Land”?
A: Lyricist Vaughan Daniel! I’d never have come up with that on my own! Collaborating is great because it takes you places you’d never go on your own. I’d been listening to a lot of country music, old and new, because I had begun collaborating with two lyricists from Tennessee (David Graham and Vaughan Daniel). I was trying to understand and catch up on where they were coming from. The atmosphere of the music they soaked up and grew up with is quite different from mine. Vaughan sent me these lyrics and they jumped off the page and into the song. It’s all his fault!
Q: What do you think of the character Barry Marcus’ comment about your song in the book. He said it was “a rough and irresistible home recording with drum machine and rudimentary electric guitars and banjo — banjo played by someone who clearly didn’t know how to play banjo but plucked a devilishly catchy three-note riff. The whole thing shimmered with cheap, guileless magic, and it was all her: ‘Written, played and produced by Daisy Steinberg’ in messy blue ink. The song was about a guy and girl chasing each other around a corn field on a delirious moonlit night and the next day they need an excuse for the girl’s daddy: it wasn’t them trampling the corn, it was aliens making crop circles. Easy to dismiss as a joke, and a low-fi one at that, so on my first listen, charmed as I was, I stopped the cassette maybe a minute in and went on to the next tape in my demo pile. But the chorus hook — and that banjo lick — kept coming back to me, so I dug it out and played it again.”
A: I love what Barry said. He heard me!
Q: What inspired the song “You Are the Sweetest Dream”? Have you had the experience of waking from a dream and wondering if it was real?
A: Real love — love that visits you in dreams and love that you daydream of — mingle in the song. I tried to describe the intangible blend and wonder of the merging of fantasy and reality.
Q: What inspired the song “Counting,” about looking for someone you can rely upon?
A: This song was inspired by David Graham’s lyrics. I’m very, very, very lucky and blessed to share my life with Jon. He wrote “Hello George” to cheer me up when I was recovering from a terrible illness. He took great care of me and proved every day that I can count on him.
Deena Shoshkes and Jon Fried in the ’80s.
Q: What do you think of Barry’s comment about Daisy: “And then there’s the way she bends my heart with the whammy bar on her Fender Mustang. And how the layers of that voice in harmony and answer become that woman’s truth.”
A: That’s why Daisy kept sending him songs.
Q: How did you merge these songs with Jon’s story?
A: For Side A, Jon did that merging, it was all part of his writing process. Side B, “More Songs for Barry,” I selected — in character, I suppose.
Every musician and songwriter dreams of a sympathetic listener. Once Daisy knew that Barry “heard” her, she threw a big heap of additional songs his way.
I jumped at the chance to get more of my home recordings out in the world. They are a special side of the music I create. They are very quirky and wouldn’t fit in the various bands or live configurations I’ve played in. Most people who have heard my music over the years haven’t heard them. In a way I feel like it’s the work that has the most of my heart and soul. My medium is home recording. They’re small, intimate and some are on topics I’d never come up with myself, like “Crop Circles.” Since Barry was charmed by them and so encouraging, I thought I might be brave enough to let them out.
Q: Have you ever used your songs like this before?
A: Never!
Q: Did you feel they came alive in this story?
A: Certainly! But I also think that you can read the story without hearing the music and imagine what it might sound like.
Q: Have you been busy working on other songs or projects?
A: Yes! I have a collection of songs I’d like to record with a band. I am also working on a collection of recordings I’ve made with a Norwegian producer that go off in a totally different direction.
_________________________________________
CONTRIBUTE TO NJARTS.NET
Since launching in September 2014, NJArts.net, a 501(c)(3) organization, has become one of the most important media outlets for the Garden State arts scene. And it has always offered its content without a subscription fee, or a paywall. Its continued existence depends on support from members of that scene, and the state’s arts lovers. Please consider making a contribution of any amount to NJArts.net via PayPal, or by sending a check made out to NJArts.net to 11 Skytop Terrace, Montclair, NJ 07043.
