Blues is not normally considered a genre for poetic license. Thursdays guest at the Harmonie though managed a whole evening without once mentioning waking up early in the morning or riding the rails. In the course of the evening he probably even spoke more words than he sang lyrics. Poet of the Blues? It’s a media created title that Larry Garner has been playing under for some years now and with good reason, as Thursday proved.
Category Archives: Reviews
Take This Hammer – To Bonn Folk Club
“The theme for April is Work Songs, meaning ones that one sings while working (lifting anchors and sails, driving railroad spikes, pulling barges, shoveling coal, weaving, spinning…)”
They were the guidelines for April at the BONN FOLK CLUB. Not songs about the misery of the working class. Worksongs, and not just any old Worksongs either: Not songs about working, but ‘Songs sung whilst working’. It was a theme evening after all. So ‘Ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s Farm no more’ was out and I was wondering how many songs there actually are in existence made to build railroads and dig ditches to? I suspected that this month’s Folk Club might just turn out to be twenty variations on ‘Take This Hammer’…
Filippa Gojo Quartett – Nahaufnahme (Ajazz A5017)
There was some excellent music wafting through the Bonn underground stations last Summer courtesy of the SWB Sponsored ‘JazzTube’ Competition but my money was on Austrian born Filippa Gojo. Just a look at the megaphone next to her music-stand was enough to suggest she would be different, and so she proved. ‘Nauaufnahme is her debut disc and just like her Museumsmeile appearance is a hypnotic mix of emotion and sound.
Sarah McQuaid – DADGAD in Bad Honnef
I was greatly looking forward to hearing a blond haired Spanish American Irish lady who currently resides in Cornwall in South West England. I’d heard Sarah McQuaid being interviewed and snippets of some of her songs on Mike Harding’s BBC Radio 2 show of folk, roots and acoustic music last November. Having studied Elizabethan history at A-level and having lived in Derby for five years and being a great fan of the Derbyshire countryside in the English Peak District I was amazed that at least three of her own songs on her latest CD were either set in this beautiful county or in this fascinating time period, or both. Playing the guitar myself I was also intrigued to learn that she plays exclusively in DADGAD tuning, which is becoming increasingly popular, especially for folk guitarists, as it allows one to play melodies with simultaneous rich chordal accompaniments much easier than with conventional guitar tuning. The downside is that one must re-learn the guitar almost as a new instrument as nearly all the chord shapes are different.
Down at the Crossroads with Rockpalast
Four days, eight bands, and no expectations. What expectations can you have for names like ‘Navel’, ‘The Chuck Norris Experiment’, ‘Flowerpornoes‘ and certainly not least ‘And you will know us by the trail of Dead’? You have no choice but to go into the sweaty cauldron that is Harmonie on Rockpalast Crossroads nights with both eyes and both ears open. Let’s head down to the bar now, grab a cool lager and a spot near the stage before the cameras start rolling.
Remembering Johnny Cash with Texas Heat
Johnny Cash lives in Leverkusen. Maybe I should qualify that statement ‘Johnny Cash lives in Leverkusen’. Bernd ‘Marty’ Wolf is the Leverkusener keeping the Man in Black’s memory very much alive by presenting his music in the Tribute Show ‘Just Cash’. The turnout at Harmonie showed that Cash’s music is as popular as ever here in Bonn , Where a lot of people were ready to walk the line back to Folsom Prison and share Johnny’s hurt once again. Wolf, who got to know Johnny as a translator during his German tours, proved to be the perfect guide for their journey, joined by the excellent Band Texas Heat.
Chappo is one of the Family
There’s not a lot left of the Bluesy experimental Rock that gladdened the hearts of music fans in the early 70’s to be found in todays music scene. There are though a lot of those fans still around, and they themselves are now in their early 70’s – along with their hero tonight at the Harmonie. Roger Chapman came to fame as singer/co-writer with UK Prog-Rock band ‘Family’ and is in fact now 72 but don’t let that fool you, he still outruns my camera’s autofocus mode as he bounds enthusiastically around the stage, more often than not with a waterbottle menacingly in hand.
King King are King
Things that seem too good to be true usually are. S0 when one of Britain’s top rated Blues Bands came to town to play in a local school hall it seemed like I should heed those words of wisdom. In last years British Blues Awards King King and their enigmatic founder Scotsman Alan Nimmo, were voted Best Band, and their album ‘Take My Hand’ best disc. How then did they come to be playing in a hall filled with wooden tables up the corridor from classrooms? I headed back to school just the same, and was very glad I did.