This was Folk Club Bonn #167, which if you divide by 11 meets per year, comes out at 15 years plus a bit over for good luck. John Harrison might indeed have considered that itself as a ‘miracle’ when he first shouted “Ladies & Gentlemen!” Indeed,at FC #1 that call might even have been “Lady & Gentleman”, singular, in those early days. 166 shows later it is very definitely plural, as all seats are regularly taken well before 7 pm – which might also count as a ‘miracle’?. At any rate tonight’s ‘Miracle’ theme was definitely, how can I put it? undersupported, although to John Hay’s credit, he did give us ‘Wonderwall’ which is almost the German for ‘Miracle’. On that subject, I wonder how we managed to entice a special guest all the way from Rome in the bluesy form of Pierluigi (PG) Petricca? Having musicians travel so far to join us is, well, a miracle…

It was wonderful to hear Christoph Thiebes lending some tasteful harmonica backing to John Harrison‘s opening salvo of ‘St James Infirmary’, ‘Rambling on my Mind‘ and ‘Machine Gun Kelly’. John immediately setting the bar high with his Guild guitar picking in advance of our guest bluesman from Italy.

Kathrin Kangro admitted to feeling a little nervous making her Folk Club debut with the traditional ‘Here’s Health To The Company’. She quickly relaxed though and delivered an emotive rendering of Stephen Foster’s Civil War-time standard ‘Hard Times Come Again No More’ and sounded like she was relaxed enough to continue long after her third number ‘Danny Boy’. Kathrin’s voice, particularly on the first song, reminded me very much of the gentle sound of late ’60’s – early ’70’s Folk singers interpreting traditional ballads. Certainly a pleasure to hear and hopefully hear again before too long.

Gerald Matuschek brought with him Judith to sing and Johann to play cajon on a short but enjoyable set beginning with ‘Wünsche’ recorder originally by Caroline No. Interestingly, Caroline No isn’t a musician, but a duo named after a Beachboys track on the legendary ‘Pet Sounds’ album. I particularly liked the shared vocals between Judith and Gerald. The second number ‘Rain’ comes from the British singer/songwriter duo Ferris & Sylvester who Gerald came to hear live at the Blue Shell in Cologne not so long ago – proof of the worth of checking out the local music scene for lesser known musicians – even if it means occasionally going to Cologne 🙂 It’s a sing-along sort of song about accepting the worst that happens, because there’s nothing you can do. Except maybe join in on the chorus! A nice brace worth of songs then from the trio.

Danny Haberman suggested that ‘The First Day of Spring’ was a miracle. I call it Nature, so take issue on that. It is though a magical time and one that Daniel’s song captures perfectly. It does, as he sings, “Feel so good to be alive” on a walk through bright tulips or, as the current tourist tote-bags in Bonn celebrate, cherryblossomed trees. I took a walk through Heerstrasse last week and can fully concur. before his second song ‘Feel The Change’ Danny read out the speech by Ghandi that inspired the song.

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”Ghandi concluded that “As a man changes his own Nature, so does the attitude of the World change towards him” – Mahatma Gandhi

‘Storytellers’ was a lively number to finish his set on, and an interesting question in the lyrics: “Are you becoming wiser – or getting old?” The song doesn’t give an answer, but does at least tell us where to look for one – “Truth is within us”. A very thoughtful, spiritual even, fifteen minutes from Dasnny then.

Hans Ihnen must certainly enjoy challenges. Whilst songs by The Eagles are popular for casual guitar strumming, they are not so simple when it comes to getting the vocal up there with Don Henley’s when he takes it up a notch as he does on ‘The Last Resort’. As someone on the internet casually noted – “Henley employs his signature smooth tenor, which often sits comfortably in a middle-to-high range, but he stretches into falsetto/upper register for the emotional climax”. A bit like running a marathon and finding the last kilometre is the steepest. A brave effort Hans, and a wise decision to recover by following up with the much more approachable pitch of Louis Armstrong’s ‘Wonderful World’ and a comparitively simple home run to finish with a nicely delivered version of Christoph Busse’s ‘Wenn Millionäre Shlafengehen’.

John Harrison followed up on the Daffodil theme from March with a poem dedicated to the ‘Dan D Lion’ (is he taking this alphabetically I wonder? (in which case you missed out Dahlias John!)

A denim capped John Hay was next up, and with a cover of Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’, a song that is more famous than its writer I suspect having been covered countless times – I especially like a version by Aynsley Lister. John picked up points for selecting ‘Wonderwall’ as it was the closest anyone got to the ‘Miracles’ theme of the evening – only to lose them again by forgetting the words at one point. Fortunately there were enough Oasis fans in the audience to help him out. ‘I Will Survive’ seemed strange coming from a man in a flat cap rather than Gloria Gaynor, but was good proof that when a relationship goes wrong there are two people whose lives are affected. Still, I can’t imagine a man singing this in the late ’70’s. The times they have been a’changing…

No time to ponder John’s closing number though because next up was Mario Dompke who always brings some thoughtful lyrics to the table and particularly so this evening. ‘Ich müß mit dir Sprechen’ for example takes up the theme of understanding Autism and indeed the problems/misunderstanding that communicating with autistic people bring. Mario’s next offering was an original idea indeed – A text that is over a hundred years old set recently to music by Mario himself. ‘Euer Bruder Otto’ is the unaltered text of a letter sent by Mario’s Grandfather to his own brothers from the Front during World War One. It’s a simple telling of the banalities of life in the trenches – smoking endless cigarettes and waiting for orders. but amongst the banalities there is an undertone of fear that needs to be shrugged off as he mentions reports of reigiments being totally decimated but shrugs it off “Da ist natürlich viel fantasy dabei” (‘But a lot of it of course is overstatement”). He states that he is putting his faith in God – and time shows he was rewarded in that Mario revealed his Grandfather survived the War. To finish Mario promised a positive song. ‘Zusammen in zu kleinen Boot’ puts the protaganist with others in a boat at sea. The boat is far too small, but he is sure that they will survive because, as he puts it, we are all in this together and not facing it alone. A nice analogy of the current World situation (and maybe, given John Hay’s earlier tribute to Gloria Gaynor, today’s theme should have been ‘Survival’!)

I always feel like smiling when Rick Fines does a spot. Partly because he has a cheerful air about him on and off stage. nNot what you might expect from a man steeped in classic Delta Blues music perhaps. Yes, you spotted it, my second reason for smiling when Rick steps up to play – the Blues. He is immediately in fine form with Brownie McGhee’s ‘The Way I Feel’, his vocal floating perfectly over some fine guitar picking. Rick’s second song was, he admits, something of a challenge. Not musically, but because he wrote it so many years ago that he almost forgot it until a friend asked Rick to duet on it with the friend’s wife. Now it’s back in his head. It was inspired by imagining a duet between Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald – but, as Rick smilingly points out “Well, they can’t be here tonight – so I’ll have to do both parts!” And he does. Right down to the trumpet solo (sans trumpet of course). Brilliant stuff indeed. Rick recently went back to Canada for awhile. Please stick around in Bonn Rick – especially around Dotty’s on the first Friday of a month with your guitar! Rick Fines will also be doing a concert at the Rüngsdorfer Kulturbad on 9 May which I recommend checking out. DETAILS HERE

Overall it was something of a Blues evening, what with John’s early ‘St James Infirmary’ and later on Rick’s ‘The Way I Feel’. Fittingly then, we had a Bluesman as this evening’s special guest – Pierluigi Petricca from Rome. Fifty eight year old Pierluigi, better known as ‘PG’ built his reputation for street-style Blues in Italian Bluesband ‘Papaleg’ thanks heavily to his fiery resonator guitar style. He didn’t have the resonator with him at Dotty’s but his playing still packed a punch via a powerful bottleneck slide style reminiscent of rough street Blues legends like Charley Patton and Bukka White.

Opener ‘Pasqualine’ was sung in PG’s local Abruzzese dialect and had a catchy ragtime melody that proved to just be a warm-up for the faster and more furious music to come. Second number ‘La Matine Preste’ was the real starting point as PG immediately dug in with the heavy bottleneck slide that proved the measure musically for the rest of the evening. A brief respite on ‘Let Me Out’ that was written during Covid and whose title says it all about how a man brought up on live performance took to enforced isolation. And finally, what better way to close the first of PG’s sets this evening than with the Charley Patton classic ‘Pony Blues’ that chugged along like a Delta train? I love to hear the visceral nature of such music – the tapping of metal slide against metal fret before it screeches up or down the fretboard in a pain that only Blues music can describe.

Pierluigi’s second set also began with a, for him anyway, toned down number from the singer’s Abruzzo roots – ‘Terra’ that had me thinking a little vocal-wise sound-wise of Lucio Dalli. As with the first set though, the opener proved to be a warm-up for what followed, which was a nod again to the raw Blues through a biting rendition of Blind Willie McTell’s ‘I Keep On Drinking’. Next up was a brief respite from the heavy slide sound with the gentle ballad ‘Accise alla banchina’ about, I believe, a man waiting at a station for his love who doesn’t come. In Germany I would blame Deutsche Bahn, but this is Italy so more likely it’s love related. Anyway, it’s a nice change of tempo, and a brief respite before we get back to classic raw Blues business as PG asks for harp accompaniment on Robert Johnson’s famous ‘Dust My Broom’. John doesn’t have a harp in the required key with him so Christoph gets the gig. Such is fame and the Blues.

Last official song of the night by Pierluigi is ‘Sugarcane’ which, if YouTube videos are anything to go by, is his most popular number. It’s certainly popular this evening. So much so that an encore is loudly called for and obliged via a thumpingly delightful version of RL Burnside’s ‘Jumper On The Line’. Burnside first recorded this on a plantation in the mid-’60’s which I think is a fitting way to end a concert by a man who is not just very capable of playing authentic Blues songs but also of conveying the emotion of those men who worked in the fields and played guitar in the local taverns. For Blues-lovers like myself, a magical evening.