The theme was ‘Dreams’ but Folk Club Bonn #169 looked in danger of of being a Nightmare for the organizers. Announcements that Bonn’s main artery the Nordbrücke was now completely closed off left many wondering about chaos on the roads, and gathering grey thunderhead clouds too suggested it might be a night to stay at home in the dry. Indeed, by the time things got underway a look at the rear balcony at Dotty’s revealed the slightly bizarre sight of people on the tennis courts with sunglasses on being pelted by a fierce rain shower.
Thank goodness then for John Harrison’s reassuring “Ladies & Gentlemen, Mesdames et Messieurs…” to kick things off again in the dry safety of Dotty’s restaurant. The audience tonight was certainly somewhat thinner than usual, but nonetheless enthusiastic as John and Christoph Thiebes visited the Blues via Willie Dixon’s ‘Little Red Rooster’ before the rooster was replaced by a pigeon courtesy of Dave Webber’s story of a famous racing pigeon ‘The King of Rome’. Unlike many of John’s ‘true stories’ this one is actually proveable as the said pigeon is still to be found, albeit stuffed, in a Derby museum. A final return to the blues, this time without feathers, came in the form of Son House’s ‘Walking Blues’. There are numerous versions of this classic, and John’s choice contains the mysterious line “She’s got Elgin Movements” which had mystified me for years, but wonder no more: It refers to the precision time-pieces made by the US firm Elgin. I’m guessing that Son House didn’t get free watches the rest of his life for the advertising.
Holger Riedel had a nice plan to get the audience involved in taking on various parts of Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the heart’ but it was really too early in the evening for a sing-along. A valiant effort all the same though Holger!
Now here’s a thing. How many Brits believe that the legendary comedians Morecambe & Wise made a Willie Nelson song their own? There are a lot of people out there who seemingly think Nelson wrote the duo’s theme song ‘Bring Me Sunshine’. In fact it was written by Arthur Kent and Sylvia Dee. Eric & Ernie probably got it from The Mills Brothers 1968 version. Tonight’s singer is a sprightly looking Rainer Goetzendorf, best known as trumpet playing member of Bonn’s legendary Hot Pepper Jazzband but tonight switching to acoustic guitar. Research leads me to suspect that Rainer is the ‘other side’ of 81 now, but he has the enthusiasm of an 18 year old on his face as he plays. There is also a thoughtful song ‘In den Bäumen weht still nur der Wind’ (Only the wind blows silently in the trees) to remind us that, despite what a certain President might claim, Climate change and pollution are very real issues.
Katherin Kangro impressed me greatly with her light, Folk voice at previous Folk Clubs so it was a pleasure to hear her again this evening with Michel as vocal accompaniment. Two traditional songs ‘Nancy Whisky’ and ‘Follow me up to Carlow’ bookended Silly Wizard’s ‘Rambling Rover’. Difficult to compare this evening’s ‘Nancy Whisky’ to the only other version I’ve heard by Shane MacGowan (difficult to compare anyone to Mr MacGowan!). My brief excursion down the rabbit hole reveals that ‘Follow me up to Carlow’ is an Irish folk song celebrating the battle of Glenmalure, a 1580 engagement of the Second Desmond Rebellion. So now you know! I enjoy hearing Kathy’s voice and her choice of songs too so hopefully more visits from the duo to come.
I can’t imagine Hans Ihnen biting the head off of a bat, but he handled the quieter side of Ossy Osbourne well with ‘Dreamer’ and he was certainly first to fully embrace the evenings theme of ‘Dreams’. In fact, with‘Last Night I had the strangest dream’ and John Denver’s ‘Dreams’ he immediately stocked up on the quota of on topic songs in one floor-spot. Five stars for that Hans.
Kai Hofstetter did pretty well on the dream front too with ‘Bei uns im Wald’ where his dream version of the woods sees mice chasing cats and it’s singer professes to have never seen a ghost “Though I’ve lived here 400 years!”. Whilst I’m trying to get my brain around that line, Kai is off on his third number ‘Nit alee heut Nacht’ which Kai explains as being on theme because “I dreamt I met Keith Richards…” By which time I’m thoroughly confused and glad to see that next up is our Guest Artist for the evening who, as a quietly spoken, calm Irishman, is most definitely welcome at this point in my evening. In this review however I am able to take a walk round the corner, have a cup of tea and return sanely to continue with part two of Folk Club #169 leaving both of Shay’s sets to be covered in full later.
Folk Club has always been fortunate to have regular poetic contributions. Can I even call them resident poets? Certainly the appearances by Gert Müller have always raised a smile or two. Gert has a marvelously low-key way of delivering his humorous odes with an earnest wave of his index finger and a subtle smile on his face. He certainly has an inspired talent for humourous verse. Indeed, many a writer will tell you of being asked where their inspiration comes from, and Gert was kind enough this evening to reveal the source of his inspiration: Odes come from the Odenwald – a low mountain range in south-western Germany. So there you are!
John Harrison joined Svenja Jesumann for a quick rendition of ‘Mercedes Benz’ before John Hay covered the spot planned for Lothar Prünte who was having technical issues with his tablet by playing for us Charles Aznavour’s ‘Le Boheme’ . It was wonderfully calming, so many thanks John Hay (and if you are in need of a de-stress you can catch John at Cafe & Bistro Melody in Graurheindorf on 14 June.
So main guest time and a first for me after all my years of concert-going – the evening’s main act had a merchandise table consisting entirely of paintings. Generic guitar portraits, interspersed with Springsteen, Jagger and Lennon. Shay McVeigh is not your average musician for sure. A musician born in Belfast he certainly fitted the bill for live music in Irish pubs and if you’ve visited one in the last decade and found yourself trying to listen over the clinking of glasses and loud conversation at places like The Quiet Man or The Fiddlers to a guitar wielding irishman playing thoughtful songs quietly in the corner it will have been Shay.
At Bonn Folk Club the audience is of course always respectfully quiet, but without the aid of a microphone listening to Shay can be a frustrating pleasure at times. If he picked the standard songs everyone else is playing in pubs like ‘Hallelujah’ or ‘Danny Boy’ it wouldn’t matter. Everyone would know the words. Shay though prefers storylines in his set-list rather than the familiarity of famous songs by famous singers. There are two exceptions to that this evening. One being John Prine’s ‘Sam Stone’ and the other Van Morrison’s ‘Wonderful Remark’. The latter as a result of my jokingly suggesting that with the Western World in it’s current woeful state I hoped he had something on his set-list this evening to reflect that situation. He did – and Van Morrison had this to say about ‘Wonderful Remark’: “It was about the business I’m in and the world in general. A lot of the times you can’t count on anybody.” Maybe I should have asked for something brighter like ‘Irish Rover’ instead…
Otherwise though Shay’s set was filled with top-notch songs from people I have never heard of. Two from Canadian Fred Eaglesmith including ‘Alchohol & Pills’ and their combined thefts of some of the Worlds greatest musical talents including Hank Williams, Elvis, Janis and Jimi. As Eaglesmith puts it: “Fame doesn’t take away the pain. It just pays the bills. And you wind up on alchohol and pills”. What impresses me about Shay is that he finds these gold-dust songs and makes them almost into poems. Gone in this case is the, to my ears anyway, irritating Country steel slide overkill of Eaglesmith’s original. Shay uses the power and simplicity of the lyrics to do all the heavylifting. So now, thanks to Shay McVeigh, I have some new names to check out on YouTube etc. Kris Dever (‘Poor man’s son’), David Olney (‘Millionaire’), The Dead Tongues (‘Dust’). And you know what? I like it that way.
But keeping it simple, with unfamiliar songs and without amplification does of course have it’s limitations, especially when looking out the large back windows at Dotty’s the dark has begun to fall along with heavy raindrops. As Shay brings ‘Sam Stone’ to his resting place “on a local hero’s hill” a chain-reaction seems to have started in the audience with people heading for the car-park. For the first time we might not even get to finish the evening with ‘Jock Stuart’? A possibility increased by the absence of Detlef and his carefully typed out lyric sheets. John Hay comes to the rescue discovering that typing ‘Folk Club Jock‘ into a cellphone searchbox amazingly brings up what we need. So everyone is waving their cellphones to the music like it’s the last big ballad at wembley stadium. Only there are no lights shining out of them – just happy faces reflected in screens singing about being “easy and free”, “drinking with me” and everyone proclaims to be “a man you don’t meet every day”. Folk Club Bonn – an event you don’t meet every day for sure – has finished perhaps more hurriedly than usual. Certainly more hurriedly than Shay McVeigh deserved.
In Airport parlance, there has been some turbulence on the journey, but we are all safely on the ground. Your Captain John Harrison wishes you a safe journey on to your destination despite the rain. Thank you for joining us at Folk Club Bonn. We hope you will fly with us again soon. It’s time to make some Elgin Movements to the car before the storm arrives…
