Samantha Fish
This years Blues Music Awards by the Blues Foundation in Memphis was proof of the high quality of Music in the genre that we’ve been fortunate to see on Bonn stages in recent years.
Award winners Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Joe Bonamassa and Samantha Fish have all played at the Harmonie or the sadly now defunct Museumsplatz in the last eighteen months.
Spring was definitely not in the air – in fact it was pelting down outside. Inside Haus Müllestumpe though John Harrison was celebrating the Summer and the return of swifts and ducks to Bonn. Just don’t look over his shoulder to the rivulets running down the window panes…
The General Anzeiger’s popular Sommergarten Festival will be running from 3 June until 26 August this year.
There’s Blues with Shri, Jazz with Seatown Seven, and Irish Folk from Paddy goes to Holyhead before Sunny Skies finish the Season with style.
Unfortunately there is no return to the special flair of music from the Kunsthalle rooftop though – as last year, the shows will run from Rheinhotel Dreesen’s Kastaniengarten (Rheinstrasse 45-49) 11:30 to 14:30
Last years concert up the road at Cologne’s Kulturkirche with it’s eyecatching backdrop is imminent for release as a dvd. But although visitors to the Harmonie show had to ‘make do’ without the stained-glass windows they did have the eye-catching ladies themselves – Madison Violet – providing an ideal way to mellow out at the end of a rare hot weekend.
This Saturday saw the first Sunny Skies of the summer, musically speaking that is.
It’s been a long road since the bands formation in 1972, but anyone expecting a musical journey through time would be disappointed. The band in 2012 are a very different animal from the one that covered Beatles and Byrds numbers. The Harmonie though was filled with people aged it seemed from almost nine to ninety – so they are clearly doing something right still after all these years.
Without a new disc to offer since his visit to the Harmonie last year, I was expecting a re-run of the excellent ‘Tower Sessions’ set on Thursday at The Harmonie.
Instead we got a new band, a new look, and even a good portion of new songs from one of Englands most inventive Bluesmen, Aynsley Lister.
Phil Beer & Steve Knightley
Steve Knightley and Phil Beer are widely acknowledged as the finest acoustic roots duo in England. They make up the band A Show of Hands, which in case you doubt their credentials, has sold out the Royal Albert Hall no less. So how did they come to be playing in Troisdorf? Obviously the Bonn area is making a name in Folk circles. Who better than to give us a report than our own Folk Club MC John Harrison…
You would have to have been a Fool to miss the April meeting of Bonn Folk Club. Then again, it was so crowded that you were probably there!
Special guests for the evening were Light Falls Forward all the way from London, but there was also plenty of homegrown musical talent to enjoy at Haus Müllestümpe as the Club celebrated it’s quarter Century (25th meeting) in style.
