rock'n'rill

High hopes fulfilled

Photo by Chris Weiß

Sometimes it happens that you have high hopes that get fulfilled. This was true of our gig at the Würzburg Stadtfest on Friday.

We had been looking forward to playing on a nice big stage with good sound, and to playing a 120-minute set with no breaks, pauses or intermissions.

Usually we play small clubs and bars, 45 to 60 minute sets, two to three a night. When we do play a bigger stage, it’s often a festival gig with a very short sound check and/or limited stage time. To be sure, those gigs can be very enjoyable, too, but it is indeed a special joy to hear yourself well while you perform and play under the wonderful circumstances we had on Friday. Fine weather and a good-sized audience were an added bonus!

Since our last gig just five days before at the street music festival was the polar opposite (small space, no stage, no sound check, short sets), we especially enjoyed the opportunity to stretch.

Needless to say that there was one small glitch, there always is. Our bass player Chris had been playing in Wales the night before and had flown in on Friday and landed at Frankfurt airport at 2 pm. Our stage time was 5 pm. That should be ample time to get from Frankfurt to Würzburg but not on a Friday with two accidents on the Autobahn between those two cities. We had set up Chris’s amp & bass and even done a perfunctory sound check but he was still 40 km away at 4.40 pm.

Thus, Felix and I started with three songs as a duo. Chris ran on stage at 5.10 or so during our third song and we were good to go full tilt at the end of that song. Possibly this added excitement made us play extra well. It was just a terrific joy to hear the full band sound for the first time right there when we played the first song. After two or three songs we knew & felt that we were on a roll. We played some of our, ahem, classics, a bunch of new songs, and a few covers. Having keyboarder Jan Reinelt play with us and round out our sound on organ, piano and melodica still feels very fresh and good.

Seeing a whole lot of familiar faces in the audience enhanced our enjoyment, seeing a whole lot of brand-new people also enjoying our music felt great. For some reason, our arrangement of Springsteen’s Hungry Heart stands out in my memory as a real high point of the set. Maybe everyone who saw & heard us will name a different song. Lisa-Marie Fischer joined us on Your Own Private Rainbow and sang beautifully!

Just an all-around real good gig!

Here’s The Kid From Tupelo in Friday’s version. (There’s more videos at www.youtube.com/herrwoe)