rock'n'rill

A whirlwind of a weekend

photo by Kilian Martin, Ringparkfest Würzburg, Aug 7, 2011

Whew, that was a whirlwind of a weekend. I played five sets in three different lineups on two different festivals in four different locations. Sounds confusing? It was. And the funny thing is, while summer gigs are usually a little harder to book than club dates for me, on this one weekend I could’ve played another two or three gigs if I had a franchise or a couple clones. Here’s the rundown.

Friday, August 5, at Kommz Aschaffenburg

I checked into my Aschaffenburg hotel around 4 in the afternoon and made my way to the Kommz festival grounds. This is a very nice, relaxed, politically left-leaning, non-profit festival in my hometown. Because it had gotten a little too crowded and overrun in recent years, this year they decided to not promote the festival at all. An unusual business decision. It paid off in that there still were a huge number of people camping and hanging out but you could still roam freely on the festival grounds, beautiful Nilkheimer Park. I sure hope the crowd was big enough for them to break even.

I was scheduled to play two solo sets on Friday: a 5 o’clock set at Römerbad and an 8 o’clock one on the Kids’ Stage.
The Römerbad turned out to be a little stage practically in the midst of the camping grounds, more or less off the actual festival grounds. Although the weather forecast had predicted a high probability of rain, it was very hot in the afternoon. The political activist/songwriter that went before me went overtime and the “stage manager person” was, um, pretty relaxed. He was also kind of vague as to how the mixer worked and all … I decided to run sound myself.
Anyway, I got started late, stood in the scorching hot sun and did the best I could. I like to challenge myself and had planned to try out some new songs and maybe throw in a few older ones in my solo sets but under these circumstances – unbearably hot sun, difficult sound, not really my kind of crowd – I mostly stuck to material I had under control. It went ok. There were some people who had obviously found the stage to come listen to my set.

I was a little wary of my 8 o’clock set on the kids’ stage as well. I had to set up my own little P.A., unusual at a festival to say the least. And I was supposed to start at 8 and play either until the band on the main stage started or – if their volume allowed for me to continue playing – as long as I wanted.
I had a good-sized audience including a few folks who had traveled quite a ways to see me. I truly enjoyed playing for people who actually listened and it turned out that the bleed from the main stage wasn’t too bad. So I got into it, people got into it and even had some requests. I played for about an hour until it got too dark. Yup, no lights on the kids’ stage.

And back to my small hotel room with a few pages of Steve Earle’s debut novel “I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive” before an early lights out.

Saturday, August 6, at Kommz Aschaffenburg

Up early for hotel breakfast and an early full-band gig with the Troublemakers on the huge main stage at Kommz. Really, 10.30 a.m. is no time to play a gig considering that you have to set up at 9.30 which means that my band had to leave Würzburg at 8.30. And Aggi & Chris had played the night before.
So we set up and checked sound and started playing and people started coming to the stage to sit and listen. And we sounded good and people got into it and halfway into the set we realized that this was a real good gig. We were playing well, the set had the right balance and the audience was with us, too, and things got even better along the way. All of a sudden this turned into a real good gig. Yes, our new song “For The Stars” was taking shape as well. Wonderful.

We got great feedback on our 90-minute set and were in good spirits. We had time to rest and grab a bite to eat for maybe 45 minutes or so until we had to get ready and set up for our 2 p.m. gig at Römerbad (where I had played the first solo set on Friday).
Unbearably loud techno music was played by a DJ near this stage as we set up. Really difficult to set up when loud music is playing and if it’s not music you enjoy listening to, it’s no fun. Impossible to soundcheck. Yes, same stage manager as the day before – ergo we had to run our own sound. About ten minutes before we were scheduled to start playing, I politely asked them to turn down the music since the thought hadn’t occurred to them yet. The guy said “just this one song” and I replied that a) we were eight minutes away from having to go on and really needed to run sound and b) it seemed to me that the same “song” had been playing for 45 minutes. It’s conceivable that I was, ahem, pretty clear on this point.

At any rate, we played without a set list, throwing in some songs we hadn’t played earlier and a bunch of covers as well. I think we did Nadine, Big River, Folsom Prison Blues.
Scorching hot sun again, phew.

We’re very comfortable with each other in our band now. It feels great to have a lot of faith in your material. As a band, on some level you can feel whether your material is strong or whether it needs more work. And we really have a lot of songs that we have a lot of faith in.

So the set went ok, quite a few people had come over to listen in again. Some even said they had liked this set better than the morning one.

At any rate, we feel well-prepared for the DVD shoot at our next gig, August 21 at Königsallee in Güntersleben near Würzburg (you know the drill – be there or be square).

Sunday, August 7, at Ringparkfest Würzburg

Rolling into Würzburg on Saturday evening, the rain was coming down hard. I’m fairly certain that Markus Vollmer’s set (that I would have liked to see) must have been canceled. But Sunday was a beautiful day.

I was scheduled to go on at 8.30, just Felix on guitar & me. Aggi & Chris were in musical mode again (they were in the house band for Jesus Christ Superstar this summer). Felix & I hooked up at four in the afternoon. We sat in the garden with acoustic guitars, I threw some new songs at him and they sounded great. So we decided that Felix would bring his acoustic to the gig as well.First, though, we watched the Bayern game together. Well, that ruined our mood quickly.

As we got to Ringpark, a salsa band was still playing and people were fired up, dancing right in front of the stage. Among the audience a way-above-average quota of beautiful hip-shaking women. At a salsa gig. Who knew?

Anyway, Felix and I played some older songs, some new ones and some brand new ones, among them a tune I wrote about meeting Townes in 1996. Since it was the 10^th anniversary of my mother’s passing, we also played “Dying Bed”. I’d gotten a little teary rehearsing this in the afternoon but did ok on stage. It was nice to play some mellower stuff and to dig into some material we haven’t yet worked up with the band. WE also threw in a couple of Johnny Cash songs in honor of Cash’s longtime bass player Marshall Grant who had passed away on Friday.
We realized that people were really into our set cause they stuck around when it started raining and they even had a number of requests. Felt very nice.

People even requested an encore after the curfew. Since it’s a gig organized by the city of Würzburg you can’t very well go past the city’s curfew. So I unplugged my guitar and climbed off stage and people gathered around me while I played an acoustic encore. It did feel slightly surreal, standing in the beautifully lighted park surrounded by music lovers and playing for them real up close. A very nice moment, to be sure.

And an appropriate ending to a very nice (and very busy) weekend.

9 August 2011 ·