Meet the Band that Created a Rock Album for Hanukkah

Some of America’s most famous Christmas songs were written by Jewish songwriters, many of whom wrote under non-Jewish pen names. Jay Livingston (born Jacob Harold Levison) wrote “Silver Bells.” Bob Wells (born Robert Levinson) and Mel Tormé wrote “The Christmas Song.” Irving Berlin (born Israel Beilin) wrote “White Christmas.” Johnny Marks wrote several Christmas hits, including “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and “A Holly Jolly Christmas.”

So where are the Hanukkah hits?! Enter The LeeVees, a band formed in pursuit of expanding the Hanukkah repertoire. Adam Gardner, of the band Guster, and Dave Schneider, whose hockey-themed band is called the Zambonis, lead The LeeVees. They met while the Zambonis were opening for Guster on tour, and they bonded over their shared Jewish heritage.
“I grew up in a school where I was the only Jewish kid in the grade and one of two in the whole school,” Gardner said. “As a Jewish kid growing up, you couldn’t help but feel a little shortchanged around Christmas.”
Gardner said another impetus for the record was – despite the fact a lot of Jewish songwriters penned popular Christmas songs – there just weren’t that many good Hanukkah songs.
“So when [Adam] said, ‘You want to write some songs about being Jewish?’ I just took the challenge. And then we went to the back of the tour bus, and he mentioned we could write songs about Hanukkah. And it just happened,” Schneider said.
Right away, they had “three good songs,” including “Latke Clan” and “Applesauce vs. Sour Cream” (the ultimate condiment conundrum for latkes). At first, they were just writing songs for fun. But when it became clear they had an entire album’s worth of material, Gardner gave it to his manager.
“And within a couple of days, he’s like, ‘Hey, write some more songs. Warner Brothers is interested,’” Schneider said.
Since the pair were touring, they had a limited amount of time. In the true spirit of the holiday, they wrote the album, called Hanukkah Rocks, in just eight days.
“It was a Hanukkah miracle,” Gardner joked.
They decided to call the band The LeeVees, a tip-of-the-hat to Rabbi Levy, Gardner’s rabbi growing up. But the name is often mispronounced, so they wanted to make it abundantly clear how to say it. Said Gardner, “Let’s put a bunch of e’s in there. It’s almost like the Bee Gees, except Jewish” – and perhaps fewer white suits.
As they were recording some of the songs, the producer was about to write down the name of the album when he ran into a little spelling problem.
“As he’s typing into the computer, he turns and goes, ‘How do you spell Hanukkah?’ We’re like, oh my gosh, we’ve got to go write that right now.” The resulting song, “How Do You Spell Channukkahh?” is just one of the many tracks with a sense of humor.
The goal for the whole album was to, said Schneider, “not write songs that sucked.” In other words, they wanted it to rock. In “Latke Clan,” which is the first song on the album, they embraced the holiday sound with horns and bells, so they wanted to “go for broke on production and get as big and bombastic as we please.” Other songs, such as “Gelt Melts,” channel the Ramones, while REM or U2 inspired “Applesauce vs. Sour Cream.” While their songs are funny, they didn’t lean too hard into the route that Adam Sandler took with “The Chanukah Song,” in which the music was a vehicle for the comedy. They wanted their songs to have humor, but with a nice message, too.
“It’s so tricky to be a joke band and still not be a joke band. That’s the finest line. That’s what we try to do. We write great songs about Hanukkah that don’t feel like Hanukkah songs,” Schneider said. “We’re trying to write music and have songs that sound great, but obviously have humor to them and hopefully a message also through that humor.”
Added Gardner, “That’s generally our goal: if we succeed, it’s funny, it’s a good song musically, but then also has some sort of message in there that’s a little bit deeper about life – as much as we can do that within the constraints of us doing our best version of a Ramones song while talking about chocolate melting in your hand.”
Since their album came out in 2005, “this record just keeps on going,” said Schneider. It’s an album they return to every year, as they typically spend a week around the holidays touring around the country and playing songs from Hanukkah Rocks. In 2023, they played at NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert.
Gardner and Schneider are happy the album has found an audience. When they were first writing it, they hoped that it would be a “universally enjoyable” holiday record that non-Jewish people would enjoy, too.
“I love it when people who are not Jewish and don’t celebrate Hanukkah at all will be like, ‘I love it and put it on every holiday season!’ It’s in the mix with all the Christmas songs, which is also a goal,” Gardner said.
“It’s not the reason you make music, but it sure feels good when people recognize it and say what it does for them,” Schneider added. “It’s a real gift. The record’s a gift.”