Sandcatchers is a Middle Eastern-Americana mashup that grew out of a weekly residency at Cheryl’s Global Soul restaurant in Brooklyn. The name Sandcatchers – “catching sand” - references something of an impossibility. “I like the idea that this band is always searching, never satisfied. The quartet – experimental guitarist, oud player and composer Yoshie Fruchter (John Zorn’s Tzadik records), Michael Bates, an accomplished jazz bassist with a punk rock background, Myk Freedman, a pioneer of modern lap steel music, and Israeli drummer/percussionist Shai Wetzer – explores the unprecedented combination of the oud, an instrument with centuries of history beginning in pre-Islamic Persia and Turkey, and the lap steel, a more recent invention with roots in the American South. Together with guest cellist Erik Friedlander, these musicians bring their varying backgrounds, specialties, and improvisational voices together to