rock'n'rill

In Berlin with Annika Fehling

I spent September 22 through 24 in Berlin, gigging with my friend Annika Fehling (you know her, she’s the co-writer/duet partner on Your Own Private Rainbow).
I rolled into Berlin on Thursday afternoon, me and the Pope on the same schedule. Well, almost.
I hooked up with radio DJ Uwe Golz at Deutschlandradio Kultur around 4 pm. We did a short & sweet interview, I played a couple songs and was out before 5 pm. The interview & stuff is scheduled to air on Oct. 12. Should be interesting, Uwe is a very knowledgable guy.
In the meantime, Annika had arrived at the Schönefeld airport so I drove out to pick her up. Together we made our way to art.gerecht where we were playing that night. A lovely venue and we were able to play unamplified, all-acoustic. Unplugged, as it were.
We played an alright show. It was nice to reconnect with Annika. We would’ve wished for a slightly bigger crowd. It’s not that easy to be on fire after traveling a full day. Annika had left her home at 6 in the morning, I believe. I had spent the day on the Autobahn.

We took some time to rehearse and run through some songs on Friday. Our show at Zimmer 16 that night was going to be broadcast live on rockradio.de. Turned out this was Bruce Springsteen’s birthday so I had to get Annika to do a Springsteen song with me. I suggested If I Should Fall Behind which is not only a song I love but also one that would work well as a duet, I think. Annika opted for something better known so we tried Hungry Heart and soon found our own slowed-down groove. This came out pretty good so we decided to open with it.

The gig at Zimmer 16 was great. The place filled up nicely, sound was great, we were relaxed and rehearsed. And maybe the fact that we were live on the air gave us some extra something. A good gig.
And I was delighted to see that so many of my twitter friends had been listening in. Guys from the US as well. Pretty cool, this web radio thingy.
As an extra treat, our mutual friend Mckinley Black came out so we had to invite her up on stage. We did “Angel From Montgomery”, the John Prine song, together and then I trusted the girls to sing with me on Can’t Get Over You. Neither of them had ever heard the song, mind you. They sounded beautiful. Luckily, a Berlin music lover had his cell phone handy and filmed this.

After the gig, Annika, Mckinley & me had a pleasant time sitting around & talking & giving her a ride home.

On Saturday, Annika and I played another all-acoustic show at Café Tasso. This gig had been arranged by my buddy Trailhead, a cool Berlin songwriter. I had never been to Tasso and didn’t know what to expect. It turned out to be a real nice & cozy café. We had a great time and a lot of fun.
I was very happy to see my good friend Leonardo with his wife Anya and their new baby at the show. Her first concert :-)

Getting back after the show, we realized that we hadn’t written a song together on this trip. I played Annika something I had found two days before … I think she also had something but neither of these things struck a chord. Then Annika played around a little with the tuning & capo position I use for My Rocket Ship. She found a melody, I sang a few words and we were off to the races.
We finished this song the next morning and have been texting or emailing minor lyric changes since then. I really like this new one. We’re calling it “For A While”.

Every time we play together, people ask if we have a CD for sale that both of us are on. So far, there’s only our recording of Your Own Private Rainbow. Maybe we should think about doing a simple acoustic recording the songs we have written together plus maybe some of the duets & covers we do for an acoustic EP, mini-CD, call it what you will. What do y’all think?

Thanks for tuning in. See you Thursday at Rohrmeisterei Schwerte or Friday at the Gießen Irish Pub.

Markus

3 October 2011 ·