It's self-effacing, it's hard-luck, the shtetl stories. All those Coasters things are an amalgam of Yiddish and black humor.
When I became religious, it was full-force for me. And, through the lifestyle of being out on the road with non-Jewish musicians, in non-Jewish nightclubs and going all over the world - getting out of the shtetl - opened me up to having experiences that other religious men might not have to think or worry about.
You can take a Jew out of a shtetl, but you cannot take a shtetl out of a Jew.
