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Yo La Tengo Hanukkah Shows A Go, Despite "Health Scare" for Ira Kaplan

Yo La Tengo are slated to begin their annual run of Hanukkah shows tomorrow. The group will perform at Hoboken, NJ’s Maxwell’s each night of the Jewish holiday, including the nights Hanukkah falls on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. In a statement posted on Yo La Tengo’s website, guitarist Ira Kaplan has confirmed that he recently suffered a health scare. He will perform with his band this week but “will be forced to sit down throughout the performance.”

A note from Kaplan posted on Saturday reads:

Hi everybody, especially those of you with tickets to next week’s shows,

We strive to make our Hanukkah shows unpredictable, and in one unfortunate regard we’ve outdone ourselves this year. I’m going to be a little vague here, but I had a pretty serious health scare earlier this month. I’m well on the way to recovery, but I’ve not yet been deemed ready to Rock. The good news is . . . well, the good news is I’m on the way to recovery . . . but vis-à-vis next week, the good news is that I’ve been deemed ready to sit in a chair and play the concerts that mean more to me, Georgia and James than most anything else we do together. Our sets will undoubtedly be tweaked accordingly. In other words, if you were hoping to be in attendance for our annual airing of “Mushroom Cloud of Hiss,” I’m afraid that is now zooming up the Unlikely chart with a bullet. But we’re confident that it’s going to be a great eight days. We’re looking forward to seeing you all, and to not answering any questions about what happened to me!

As long as I’ve got your attention, I’ll let you know about one other change this year. We’ve filled the walls of Maxwell’s front room with a bunch of posters and other ephemera from our various closets. Some of it will be for sale (all proceeds to charity) and all of it will hopefully be entertaining.

Hanukkahly yours, Ira