rock'n'rill

2011 in the rearview & the road ahead

I’m not really in a retrospective mode right now. I’m very much looking ahead and looking forward to going in the studio with the guys in less than four weeks. We have a bunch of great songs that we’re planning to record. Then we’ll get some friends in to overdub some cool stuff and then hopefully we’ll have ourselves a new record.
Also still hoping for the live DVD to be all done for our February string of gigs.
And looking forward to other cool stuff on the horizon like going on an acoustic music cruise in October, recording some songs with Annika Fehling in March, maybe trying to book some UK gigs for August. There’s always more things that I plan to do than I actually get around to doing but, hey, I’m glad I still have ideas and I’m as excited about the music life as ever, if not more so.

Still, a little evaluation of 2011 can’t hurt. After all, I’ve seen “Wild, Blue & True” on a few lists of people’s favorite albums of 2011 and that makes me feel pretty good. I also got the accounting statement from Blue Rose about sales numbers in the first half of the year and – considering the album was officially released in March – those numbers are wonderful. Maybe I am getting somewhere finally.

Some of 2011’s highlights were:
 

• the Visby Songwriter Festival

  My friend Annika Fehling invited me to perform at her festival in Visby on the beautiful island of Gotland/Sweden. I brought the entire family and had a grand time playing a few shows, staying with Annika, her husband Arne and their daughter Mira and in Stockholm at Eva Hillered’s house, exploring beautiful Gotland & Stockholm with my wife and our little daughter (at Pippi Longstocking Park) and giving a fruitful songwriting workshop with lots of the festival’s other performers in attendance

•   the band summer

Summer is often a slow time cause there’s no club gigs. But this year was a great summer for The Troublemakers and me. We played a whole bunch of really cool gigs. Very special was the Königsallee gig that we shot for our upcoming live DVD.

•   Berlin with Annika Fehling

Spent a few days in Berlin this September sharing shows with Annika. We’ve done quite a few duo gigs and tours by now so it’s always fun to get together and play on each other’s songs. We wrote a very nice new one.

• Finding booking help

I’ve finally found some friendly, competent, motivated booking help. Yay! We’re almost all booked for the spring.

• The Songwriting Workshop for Gitarre&Bass
  
  Started writing a regular 1 ½ to 2-page songwriting workshop/column for German musician’s magazine Gitarre & Bass a few months ago. I think five or six instalments of the series must’ve run so far. It’s interesting and a lot of fun and it gives me some nice exposure. Been getting good & interesting feedback on this as well. I hope to continue doing this for a long while – and maybe turn this into a book on songwriting at some point. 

There were many more great gigs along the way (together with Markus Leidig and Robert Oberbeck) and some not so amazing ones - but that’s what makes the good ones stand out. I expect 2012 will bring more gigs and more of everything.

I hope we’ll play more band gigs and will have occasional guests sitting in (piano player Jan Reinelt, maybe a fiddle player) and joining the band. And, like I said, I have a ton of new songs that I really like and am gertting ready to start recording. Should be a good year! I hope to see you all along the way!

Happy 2012,
Markus

7 January 2012 ·