Getting the Band Together
Shivah Stars
May 31, 2012
Authors Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Amy Tan, and Stephen King perform as part of the Rock Bottom Remainders at Webster Hall June 1, 2007 in New York City. (Evan Agostini/Getty Images)
Every week, we select the most interesting Jewish obituary. This week, it’s that of Kathi Kamen Goldmark who died last week at 63, 20 years after founding the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band made up of a rotating cast of authors like Stephen King, Amy Tan, Scott Turow, and Dave Barry. Brooklyn born, she traveled with Steely Dan in the ‘70s (she was dating the drummer) before settling in San Francisco where she was a country rock singer by night. She eventually started a business escorting writers around the bay area before combining her passions by starting the Remainders.
Although she was a schmoozer extraordinaire—and you only have to read her blog or listen to her music to realize that she was incredibly funny—she was also an author in her own right and owned a record label that released music by Maya Angelou, Norman Mailer, and Leonard Maltin.
According to the New York Times, she died surrounded by her author friends and at the end spent one of her last words with a final joke.
“Rosebud.”
