The Harmonie stage looks strangely bare considering five musicians have set up on it. There’s only a single Fender Telecaster propped up in front of a battered speaker cabinet for Henrik Freischlader himself. Over on the merchandise stall, there is no sign of t-shirts, back-catalogue cd’s or signature Stetson caps. Just two cardboard boxes – one with the new release as cd and the other with its vinyl counterpart. Travelling Light could be the Tour motto.
Henrik Freischlader’s star continues to rise, only recently he could be seen trading licks with Mr Joe Bonamassa onstage. Layla Zoe has also increased her fan-base hugely in Europe in the last months since her excellent second CD on CableCar ‘The Lily’ hit the shops both physically and virtually (internet).
Anything less than an evening of BluesRock magic at the Harmonie would have been a disappointment then, so if you did have a disappointing Wednesday night then you must have been elsewhere – Layla and Henrik both clearly enjoy playing music too much not to give it their best.
Fate is strange. Barely more than a week after Jack Moore talked about how unique his fathers sound was, I found myself listening to the man who comes as close to it as anyone I’ve ever heard – Just give a listen to Henrik Freischlader playing Moore’s ‘The Messiah will come’ for proof. There’s nothing flash about Freischlader’s presentation. In this day and age of hyped music there should be a category labelled WYSIWYG for players like him -What You See Is exactly What You Get.
On Sunday night Freischlader was back at The Harmonie to present his new CD ‘House in the Woods’ to a packed house and prove why I consider him to be the best Bluesrock guitarist Germany has ever produced (put down those protesting hands Michael Schenker fans – I said BLUESrock!) A treat indeed.
