rock'n'rill
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Four days on the road
Hi guys,
The Troublemakers had a great run this last weekend playing gigs in Uettingen, Berlin & Lauchhammer. On Sunday I played a solo gig at the opening of the Rock & HiFi Museum in Marksuhl/Thüringen.
A short recap.
Since regular Troublemakers drummer Aggi couldn’t make the trip, my longtime friend Leonardo von Papp took his place for these gigs. We had two afternoons of rehearsing and a warmup gig planned before our trip East.
In early March our planned warmup gig at Holzwurm in Marktheidenfeld fell through. The city has a ruling that there be no festivities the day before Good Friday.
So with the help of our friends in Lick And A Promise we arranged a private party in Uettingen on short notice. About a 120 people showed up, we played a rocking 90-minute set and things went well. Leonardo was very well-prepared. Unfortunately, we got the news that our keyboard player Jan was in bed with a fever and would not be able to play the next two shows with us.
On Friday we set off to Berlin for our gig at Bassy’s. Berlin is the only place in Germany that allows live music on Good Friday and Bassy’s is one of Berlin’s coolest venues - so we were happy to snatch that gig. It really is a very cool venue but Berlin being Berlin we were supposed to start very late - 10 pm.
After soundcheck the manager told us to start a little later, maybe 11 pm, then the sound guy Javier said “better start even later” and in the end we had to put our foot down to go on at 11.30.
We had a good crowd, a whole bunch of people were there to see us. Some had brought CDs to sign, one good man had even come all the way from Greece to catch our show (I’m not kidding). Via twitter Ruud had requested that we play Sarah Stein and even though it was not the most natural song to play at that venue, it went over well.
We had a good time and ended our show with the 1 pm curfew.
One of the BossHoss guys came in and caught the tail end of our show.
My only problem on an otherwise very enjoyable night: My pretty expensive and pretty new Fishman Aura Spectrum DI thingy started acting up. No signal.
Leonardo von Papp, our sub drummer
We stayed overnight at the Bassy Club’s artist apartment, Leonardo - since he lives in Berlin - stayed with his family.
Since Lauchhammer is less than two hours away from Berlin, we had a little time to explore Berlin on Saturday morning. Felix & Chris explored, I stayed in and read some in the enjoyable new Tom Wolfe novel Back To Blood. Then I went out and realized I was very close to my favorite English bookstore in Berlin so I went there and spent some money.
And onwards to Lauchhammer near Dresden. I’d been to Real Music twice before in 2005/2006. One time I opened solo for Chris Knight, the other time I brought my then-band, The Gunslingers.
Since then, Real Music have moved to a different venue that they have decorated and built beautifully. With us on the bill was Elizabeth Lee from Austin, Tx. and her Italian band, Cozmic Mojo. Sitting in on drums in her band was booker Christian Böhm, a pleasant surprise. He’s a good guy, I’ve met him a few times.
We went on first and went over very well. We changed up the set a little, bringing Natascha to Lauchhammer in exchange for Sarah Stein and exchanged a few more songs but again, Leonardo played like a champ and we did our best to keep up.
Elizabeth Lee was very complimentary about our set and invited Chris & me to join them on Dead Flowers (which went very well) and I Just Want To Make Love To You (which we weaseled our way through).
A very fun night. Lots of folks had brought CDs for me to sign, everybody was very complimentary. Felt very good.
The boys left early on Sunday to spend Easter Sunday with their families. I drove three hours to Marksuhl in Thüringen (where my Dad now lives) to play at the opening of the local Rock & HiFi museum.
The place is beautiful with lots of cool memorabilia, mostly great Stones stuff but also Traveling Wilburys stuff, an original autograph of all four Beatles and plenty of other really nice things.
I played two solo sets for maybe 40 invited guests. I enjoyed playing a few songs I hadn’t done the last three nights and having a very quiet, attentive audience. Surprisingly, I sold more CDs to those 40 people than I did the entire three previous nights combined in which we had played for maybe 450 to 500 people in total. Weird how that goes.
At any rate, that was a very successful and fun trip. I would love to be able to bring the band up north for some shows in Hamburg, Bremen, maybe Hannover. Would also love to play some dates out west in the Cologne/Dortmund/Ruhrgebiet area. Contact me if you want to book us, ok?
April will bring a whole bunch of solo & duo gigs. Should be fun!
See ya,
Markus
My Rocket Ship countdown (1): Free To Fly
Guess what, it’s 14 weeks to the release of my new album “My Rocket Ship” on February 8 (if I counted right) and there’s 14 songs on the record. So we might as well start a little countdown and introduce you to a song a week in short little blog instalments including song snippets.
Free To Fly
The album opener centers around a guitar lick I had been toying with for years. For an hour or so it was even the starting point of “Girl Of Many Secrets” until that song went another way.
Eventually I found this bluegrassy melody that’s very obviously asking for harmony vocals (provided by Troublemakers drummer Aggi Berger and my friend Robert Oberbeck, possibly the finest singer I know in Germany). The lyric “I’ll be free to fly” came to me before I knew what it meant. Turns out it means that point in time when we’re freed of all earthly shackles.
Nobody knows the miles I have wandered
nobody knows just where I come from
nobody knows the years I have squandered
never did I find a place that I could call my home
How many years are yet to come?
How many a humbling trial?
How many more miles have I got to run
before I’ll be free to fly?
The band is chugging along wonderfully, George Bähr overdubbed fiery fiddle and sweet mando.
Recording countdown
Hi guys,
been a little quiet here in the blog lately, I know.
Gearing up and preparing to go into the studio starting next week Thursday. So I’ve been weeding out songs, thinking about arrangements, polishing up a few lyrics. It’s all nitty-gritty work that’s important and it’ll pay off but it’s nothing exciting to blog about. (Yes, in case you haven’t noticed, the other stuff I blog about is supposed to be exciting.)
An example? Sure. I changed a line from “things will soon be better” to “things are bound to soon be better”. See? It works for me but I doubt it’s super-exciting for you at this point. Hopefully, it will be once you hear the song (A Braver Smile).
There’s 14 songs we’re planning to record. Ten or eleven with drums and a few quieter acoustic tunes. The band knows eight of those ten or eleven songs. There’s a few I like to confront them with in the studio. Why? Because I think there’s some magic in creating a song and playing it for the first time and I hope we can capture that moment in the studio.
The first time we played “In My Bones” in our rehearsal room all the way through … I don’t mean to sound smug but we all felt it had come together beautifully and we all wish it had been recorded right then and there. Now when we go in to record this song, we’ll be chasing something that’s already happened, trying to recreate something rather than trying to create something. It can work (and I sure hope it does) but sometimes that feeling of chasing after something can create a difficult mindset in the studio.
A similar thing happened when we were recording “The Kid From Tupelo” for “Wild Blue & True”. We did several takes trying to get it just right, the way we heard it in our heads. It got a little frustrating. Then Tom – the producer/engineer – played us a rehearsal take which had a much more relaxed feel. A slightly different drum arrangement than the one in our minds but still, it had that intangible vibe that you’re always shooting for. Needless to say we went with that rehearsal take for the album (and have also adopted the much more natural drum/rhythm arrangement since).
But then there’s other songs that want to be prepared a little. Maybe because they’re a little more intricate or maybe because I imagine a specific arrangement that I want to be able to try out and tweak before we actually record the song. “Your Own Private Rainbow” from “Wild Blue & True” is an example of such a song.
In general I’d say maybe it’s the slower songs on which I lean toward a spontaneous approach and maybe it’s the one or two songs on each record that you imagine might be a little more radio-friendly that I think will profit from a more thought-out approach.
But then, of course, there’s also other songs that I just want to play to the band as soon they’re written because I feel they’ll be a great asset to our live show and I’m excited about them RIGHT NOW. You’ve heard some of them in our shows over the last six or eight months, The Facts About My Life is a good example. In other words, my excitement about a new song often gets in the way of my considerations of what might be best for a particular song when it comes to making an album. It’s often difficult to constrain myself.
Back when I made those three albums in Nashville, before I flew there, I asked the participating musicians whether they wanted to hear solo demos of my songs before going in to record them and the usual reply was they like to hear them fresh in the studio and be able to approach them with an open ear and an open mind in the studio. I love that attitude and I learned greatly from it. Of course, you can only allow yourself that kind of attitude when you know you have the chops to handle absolutely anything. And when you trust your instincts. And when you don’t get nervous in the studio situation.
I’m working on it.
Markus
PS: By the way, this Thursday, Jan 19, I’m at Wunschlos glücklich in Würzburg, next Wednesday, Jan 25, at Stadtcafé Hünfeld.
Do You Remember Bobby Fischer?
I recently saw an immensely moving portrait of chess genius Bobby Fischer, his ascend to the world championship in the 1972 match with Boris Spassky and the decline of his mental health in the years after. It was so moving, I immediately wanted to write a song about this fascinating man and his journey.
I sat down and out came those four lines that are now the first verse of the song below.
Somehow, though, it seemed those four lines wanted to belong to a different kind of song than the one I had envisioned. Maybe I have written enough biography-type songs in the last few years (Sarah Stein, Natascha, Kid From Tupelo, Girl Of Many Secrets and a brand new one about Townes van Zandt).
So I followed the direction these words pointed me to. I wrote a few more verses than ended up in the song. Some characters, it turned out, didn’t belong into the song once it revealed what it wanted to be about.
It’s often a fine line between being too obscure in your song and being too obvious. I think the first time you listen to this song, it seems like little more than a list of names of famous people and kind of a trite middle part/bridge.
However, if I listen to it a few times in a row (and, yes, I’m embarrassed to admit I do that with my own songs), it seems to be just right. Very simple, surely, but just right.
I do have one hangup, though. I’m not sure I can keep the van Gogh verse. I think he really only became famous posthumously. Which means he doesn’t entirely fit the bill. Must research.
I hope you enjoy the song.
Do you remember Bobby Fischer?
He was the champion of the world
Do you remember Bobby Fischer?
a brilliant mind once upon a time
Do you remember Vincent van Gogh?
Sunflowers on the easel
Do you remember Vincent van Gogh?
one of a kind once upon a time
Do you still recall Bill Haley?
the first king of rock’n’roll
Do you still recall Bill Haley?
a comet so bright once upon a time
Fame and wealth they don’t mean nothing
I guess they only fade away
Me, I keep doing what I’m doing
and take it day by day, day after day
Do you remember Ernest Hemingway?
He was a man amongst men
Do you remember Ernest Hemingway?
so strong and alive once upon a time
Fame and wealth they don’t mean nothing
can’t take ‘em with you when you go
can’t all of us be lucky
I know, I know
Do you remember Bobby Fischer?
A brilliant mind once upon a time
The usual disclaimer: It’s just a home demo with the guitar & me. No fancy arrangement tricks, just the bare bones skeleton of a song.
Looking forward to hearing your feedback and thoughts on this.
Thanks for listening,
Markus
Storm approaching - an unearthed gem
Hi guys,
I’ve been sick in bed the last couple days so I spent some time going through old demos I still had on my laptop. When I came across a song called “Storm Approaching”, the title didn’t ring a bell. Listening to it was a very pleasant surprise.
Seems to me it’s a real good solid song with some nice lines. It could’ve been a contender :-) So here it is:
Everybody’s afraid of the storm approaching
I’m trying to hitch a ride
but there’s no one out on this lonely road tonight
They’re all sleeping safe & sound
nestled in their babies’ arms
me, I’m ready for the coming of the storm
Let it come and blow all my sins & sorrows away
or let it blow them right up in my face
Everybody’s afraid of the storm approaching
staying out of the way of harm
I’m ready for the coming of the storm
It’s cold here by the highwayside
I can see the neon lure
but I pray that it won’t break my will no more
I recall the friends I failed
and the girl that I done wrong
and I hope that memory, too, shall fade before too long
Let the wind come and blow all my sins and sorrows away
or let it blow them right up in my face
Everybody’s afraid of the storm approaching
and the changes it might bring
I’m hoping it’s gonna wipe my slate clean
You may call it false bravado
call it anything you want
Everybody’s afraid of the storm approaching
staying out of the way of harm
I’m ready for the reckoning to come
This was recorded in October 2007 so this song was in the running for the Things That Count album. Why did it not make it onto that album?
I think after Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunami I didn’t feel so good about recording a song that attributed cleansing power to a storm. There’s also a line in there about a “girl I done wrong” and I’m pretty sure I felt I had written more than enough about that particular topic at the time.
Hearing the song now, none of these issues strike me as taking away from the song.
This was one of the last demos I recorded at my good friend Ben Wagner’s before I got my own little home demo setup.
How do you like it?
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Markus
Feedback on “Makin’ Trouble”
Here’s some feedback I got on the “Makin’ Trouble” EP which, by the way, you may still listen to and download by hitting the “buy” button on this here widget
or order by sending an email (if you want the physical CD) to markusrill@yahoo.com
Yesterday, Gary Ewer, a renowned expert and author on songwriting, posted this on Twitter (totally unprompted):
Gotta say that @markusrill’s new EP “Makin’ Trouble” is fine, fine work. Every song is great. (here’s the link to Gary’s tweet)
Musikansich, a fine (German) website posted this review giving the EP 16 out of 20 possible points. For an EP that must be about as good as it gets.
And here’s what some music lovers wrote me after receiving the EP:
It’s as great as I expected and it’s the only kind of trouble I like – Andy
Danke für das tolle Päckchen ! Die EP gefällt mir außerordentlich gut, ich mag zwar diese “Superlative” nicht so gerne, wie das beste, der beste usw usf, aber besonders schön finde ich ”Forgiven” und “Young Again” … Macht Lust auf mehr! – Thomas C.
The One That Got Away ist wunderschön – Volker
Der erste Eindruck ist überaus positiv. Stimmlich fast in Mellencamps Gefilden (gerade beim ersten und letzten Song), song- und soundtechnisch eh auf höchstem Niveau – Thomas L.
Du hast bei der EP alles richtig gemacht … es rockt & die Vocals klingen glaubwürdig. Toll. Auch Sound einfach super. Beide Daumen ganz nach oben!!! - Gerd
In case you don’t speak German - they’re all positive (what did you expect?).
See ya,
Markus
Songwriting 101
Hi guys,
I’ve recently been approached by a German music mag about possibly writing a bi-monthly column on songwriting, maybe as a workshop kind of thing. Not sure yet whether this is actually going to happen but I thought about what kind of advice I could give, what kinds of things I could talk about.
And I remembered one song I wrote in about ’98 – it appeared on my ’99 album The Devil & The Open Road – that I learned a lot from. Not that I’d want to talk about my own songs all the time and it’s not like this particular song is mindblowingly amazing but I did learn a few crucial things while writing it. So maybe it would be interesting to share them.
The song started with an opening line that just fell out of my mouth (straight from the subconscious, one may assume):
Sally holds a grudge against the world
but the she ain’t to blame for all the anger and the hurt
Oh, gee, why does she hold a grudge, what’s with the hurt & anger? It’s not like I knew. But I got an idea and the next two lines explained a little something.
She’s got a baby boy and she’s still in her teens
Charlie senior split and has never since been seen
I liked the information, I thought it gave us a sense of Sally and her grudge and the reasons for it BUT it was very heavy-handed. The information is dished out in a much too literal way and the part about Charlie struck me as very uncomfortable English.
I think I went on with the song but I know that these lines bothered me for a long long time. There’s a lot of information in those lines and it took me ages to come up with a better way of providing this information.
Here’s what I came up with to replace these awkward lines:
Things ain’t been the same since Charlie split
and she dropped out of school to take care of the kid
And I must say, I still think that’s ten times better. It’s much more conversational and it has a cumulative effect: her boyfriend split (big deal), she dropped out of school (hm, not good), AND she’s got a baby? (Wow)
See what I mean? It tells you the exact same things that the original lines told you but in a much more interesting way. I love that the kid is almost an afterthought. Obviously, it’s the main thing but it sort of just gets mentioned on the side. And Sally’s age is just there between the lines (“dropped out of school”) but doesn’t get hammered home.
Raymond Chandler does that a lot (not that I’m comparing myself to him). He will often convey crucial information just as an afterthought. Like he’ll describe a conversation between two adversaries over many pages and just end with something like “I left him with his mouth open and a bullet from my .38 in his cranium” (I made that up but … you see what I mean, I hope). He won’t use the words “dead”, “murder”, “killing” or anything.
Chandler’s fabulous that way and I think it’s a wonderful way of writing. So, what I learned might seem obvious - “if you can, convey information in an artful, poetic, conversational manner – it’s much more interesting than just iterating facts” – but you would be surprised how difficult it is to convey the worth of that little nugget of wisdom. I have quite a few German friends who often ask me to check their lyrics for “mistakes”. It’s not as simple as that. The original two lines weren’t wrong, strictly speaking. But they simply weren’t good lines. How do you get a good line? Well, it sure takes a lot of thinking.
Mary Gauthier once said in an interview that she sometimes spends weeks agonizing over the right word or turn of phrase. And her songs show that it’s worth it.
This would be enough for a magazine column, I suppose but I learned another trick during the writing of this song. And, yes, I’ll share.
Here’s verse 1 & 2 of the song plus the choruses:
Sally holds a grudge against the world
But she ain’t to blame for all the anger and the hurt
Things ain’t been the same since Charlie split
And she dropped out of school to take care of the kid
Life ain’t always fair and now she knows
She’s been crying but she hopes it doesn’t show
Sally’s stuck in Rainville,
yeah, she’s stuck in Rainville
And this ain’t what she needs, you can tell her what you will
But Sally’s stuck in Rainville
This town, it don’t do nothing but make her sad
Home of all the highschool sweethearts that she ever had
They all seem to look down on her now
And they all remind her of her Charlie-boy somehow
Life is cold and hard and that ain’t right
She’s got no-one to hold onto in the night
She’s gotta get out of Rainville
Gotta get out of Rainville
For this ain’t what she wants, by now she’s had her fill
She’s gotta get out of Rainville
So, yeah, the song is called “Rainville”. I thought it was an original idea at the time. I was young.
But, anyway, there I was and I had no clue what would happen next. Looks like Sally’s gonna leave ol’ Rainville for greener pastures, la-dee-da. Very predictable at this point, isn’t it? How to make this interesting and less predictable without changing the entire thrust of the song?
Here’s where I had the second not-so-bad idea during the writing of this song (I so wish there’d been more): I switched the focus from Sally to ol’ Charlie.
The third verse and last chorus:
Charlie, he’s been drifting along
He’s had lotsa time to think about his doggone life and think about his son
And he remembers what it feels like to not have a Daddy’s hand to hold on to
And he figures that maybe Sally’s missing him too
So now he’s going back but Sally’s gone
She packed up all her things and she moved on
She’s gotten out of Rainville
Gotten out of Rainville
Where the wind is blowing cold and Charlie feels a chill
For now he’s stuck in Rainville
I admit that’s a mouthful to squeeze into those lines in the 3rd verse but the general idea to look at Charlie at this point is not a bad one. You thought the song was gonna run on this very foreseeable track – Sally’s a tough Mama now, Charlie’s an a*hole – and then you learn something new.
This is something I’ve done in a number of songs, change the point of view in the third verse or reveal a little something in the final verse that’ll shed a different light on everything that come before (cf: Trouble With The Law, The Price You Pay For Sin).
I once read a book on songwriting with this piece of advice that seems so obvious but doesn’t always get the attention it deserves.
“Every line (or at least every verse) needs to move the song forward.
Ergo: There needs to be a reason for every line/every verse. If it only repeats what’s been said before, it’s not necessary to the song.”
Even though this is my paraphrase (possibly my interpretation), this is one of the most useful things I’ve ever learned from one of those songwriting books (I never bought one but I sure spent a lot of time at Book People in Austin reading them).
If you keep this advice in mind, it’s funny how often you encounter songs in which the second verse is only a paraphrase of the first with not one new idea or concept.
Side note: The only one I know who’ll get away with that is Dylan. And that’s because he not only has two or three verses but often six, seven or eight. I mean, look at “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”, the verses are not that different from each other. I asked my friend Doug Hoekstra how Dylan gets away with it and he had a great answer. “It’s like he looks at the subject matter from every possible angle, twisting and turning his topic this way and that way and describing it and by the end you get a full picture.” I think Doug’s right about that. But, please folks, remember this is Bob Dylan we’re talking about. It can’t be done by mere mortals.
As for my song “Rainville” – I learned a lot from writing it, I’ve learned some more in the meantime. From today’s perspective the “Rainville” metaphor isn’t as original or powerful as I thought back then, the second verse is plenty “meh” but the song’s main problem is its melodic weakness in the chorus. It has this nice little guitar intro, a pleasant enough verse, pre-chorus and then the chorus lets the listener down, melodically. Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all.
Maybe you’ll enjoy it anyway. Here’s a version I recorded in my kitchen this morning. I stumbled over a line in the last chorus, please bear with me.
Rainville by markusrill
I hope this post gave you something to chew on. Obviously, for a magazine column, I’d not ramble on as long and I’d not be using my own songs as examples all the time. But, hey, this is my blog, what else am I gonna use over here?
Would love to hear from you!
Markus
What goes on the road … part 1
Heya guys,
woohee, Annika Fehling and I covered a lot of ground in the last two weeks. We played 10 dates in 11 days, wrote some new songs, sold lots of CDs, survived a fire alarm in our hotel, and came home safe, sound & weary. Along the way, I also lost & found my voice.
Day 1
Wednesday, May 26: Mojo Songwriter Night at Café Mojo, Osnabrück
Annika came into Munich on the plane around 10 am on Wednesday morning. I knew that would mean a pretty grueling drive up to Osnabrück. Turned out Annika had left her notebook (the analog kind) with lots of important information and song ideas on the plane. The Lufthansa folks went to get it but it took a good long while and we got started around noon.
I needed to stop in Würzburg along the way because I had to drop off posters at the venue we’d be playing at a week later. I’d been hoping to get there shortly after noon. Thanks to our late start and pretty heavy traffic along the way, we left Würzburg after 4 pm, still 400 kilometers from Osnabrück. By now it started to look pretty iffy we were going to be there on time.
We rolled in right around showtime and unfortunately, out of four performers, I was chosen to go on first. Man, I’d been sitting in the car all day driving like a madman, I had not had time to think about which songs to do or anything else. I played three songs but didn’t sound particularly engaging or convincing even to myself, I guess.
Annika did fine, as did TS Brooks from Berlin and my good friend Camille Bloom from Seattle who I shared some gigs with last year. It was great to see Camille again and meet her partner Gaelen.
The second three-song set was a little more fun, Camille joined me spontaneously on „Straighter Road“, Annika did on „Your Own Private Rainbow“. But, really, three songs really isn’t enough time to create an arc in your set or get to know the audience. And with three other artists waiting in the wings I guess I also felt a little rushed to get through my set and didn’t take a whole lot of time to talk between songs. Oh well.
The best part of the gig was meeting and hanging with host Heinz Rebellius, David from the Mojo (and his wonderful soup), Camille & Gaelen after the gig. We also had a great breakfast the next morning with Camille & Gaelen before Annika and I took some time to brush up some of the duets and songs we played on our last tour in November. We were in no great rush on Friday cause we only had an hour to go to Restrup.
left to right: Gaelen, me, Camille, Annika
Day 2
Thursday, May 27: Lift, Restrup
It felt good rolling into Restrup and seeing our posters.
The venue is a beautiful old building. We met Heinz again who was going to open in his duo with very talented songwriter Tina von Garrel as „TvG & the Heinz“. I had suggested to them beforehand to end the evening with a couple of jam numbers – we ran through „The Weight“ and CCR’s „Long As I Can See The Light“ backstage before the gig.
Unfortunately, soundcheck was delayed because there was some problem with the venue p.a. A local soundman came to the rescue with his own board. Everything sounded goood but he was kind of particular about how he wanted things done. Anyway, soundcheck was ok, TvG & the Henry sounded mighty fine in their opening set and then it was my turn to go on.
Halfway into the first verse it turned out my guitar was no longer in the mix – no signal. These things happen. Clench your teeth, get through the song and then figure it out – that’s the way to go. Not with Mr Soundman, however. He appeared on stage in the middle of verse 2 gesturing with cables and whatnot. I tried to tell him politely that I was planning to finish the song first.
We figured it out and on I went with a new DI. Not a major problem but in the back of my head I got the notion that the audience had picked up on my irritation with Mr Sound and didn’t appreciate me giving one of their own a hard time. I have no idea if this was all just in my mind. I found the audience a little reserved at first but they and I both warmed to each other along the way.
In my mind I guess I mostly played for Bob Tijuana, quarter-legendary frontman of the semi-legendary band „Cliff Barnes & The Fear Of Winning“. I saw them twice in my teens, the first time I ever listened to anything countrified. Bob and I have been in touch over myspace and Twitter for two years or so but we had never met face to face. It’s quite a different feeling playing when you know there’s someone out there who understands your lyrics. Bob was complimentary about my set which felt very good.
I joined Annika in her set to play harmonica and the part of David Olney in their beautiful co-written duet „I Know Better“.
And then we played a few songs together, asked Heinz & Tina to join us on stage, and after that, I think, we did a couple more encores. All felt right with the world at the end of the set.
I sold a good number of CDs after the show and received some very nice personal & heartfelt feedback. Also, and this is not to be underestimated when you’re traveling on a budget, we made good money that night.
Day 3
Friday, May 28, Hometown Soul Café, Göttingen
a breakfast concert for resonator guitar & ukulele
We had a great breakfast in the morning, were serenaded by our hosts with ukulele & resonator guitar and then decided to make use of the beautiful location to take some pictures & shoot some video (which I will post soon as I get around to editing it). We also worked some more on possible duets.
picture in scenic Restrup in front of Annika’s favorite blue door
I learned the male parts in Annika’s songs „I Know Better“ and „Ice Cream Heart“, Annika sang with me on Where Do We Go From Here?“.
We also did our co-writes „Your Own Private Rainbow“ and „Not Too Late To Dream“ (written on the last day of our last tour) and some covers: „Angel From Montgomery“ (John Prine), „If I Needed You“ (Townes van Zandt), „Long As I Can See The Light“ (CCR).
On our way to Göttingen we had to once again stop at the Mojo in Osnabrück to pick up stuff Annika had left behind (her camera among other things). I was hoping this would not become a regular occurrence.
It was a long five-hour-plus drive to Göttingen – with the stop in Osnabrück we were underway for 7 hours or so.
We played two sets at the Hometown Soul Café to a medium-sized appreciative crowd. I’ll say it was a little bit of an odd gig. We did ok but we never really took off (if that makes any sense). Part of the reason may be that the layout of the room is such that people come in between the stage and the audience. Another part may be that Annika and I were a little tired from the traveling.
Anyway, we enjoyed playing for our host Jeff & some folks who had seen us there in November. We enjoyed catching up with songwriter Naomi Sommers who we had an in-the-round with last time around. This time, Naomi was very pregnant and had also just recently gigged there with Camille Bloom (small world). And, lastly, I immensely enjoyed catching up with my friend Sandy, the keyboard and accordion player of my very first band way back when who is now working at a bookstore in Göttingen.
Day 4
Saturday, May 29, house concert in Aachen
And another loooong day driving cross-country. Actually, we didn’t have super-bad drives on this trip but if it’s four or five hours every day, it can seem awfully long. Anyway, I was very much looking forward to the house concert and to meeting Uwe. He emailed me about a house concert quite a while ago after having seen me at another house concert – but it took us awhile to find a suitable date. Actually, three or four weeks before the gig he called me up saying he had a very hard time getting reservations since two major festivals were going on at the same evening not too far away: Pink Pop and Naked Song with David Olney, Caroline Herring and others both only half an hour away over the border in the Netherlands.
Uwe’s house is so close to the border that our cell phones switched to a Dutch provider as we were approaching.
At any rate, Uwe’s concerns were unnecessary. We had a crowd of about 25, I think. Not huge but not embarrassingly small at a house concert.
I think maybe this was the first night we really gelled. We had a really good time, the audience enjoyed it and so did we. It was particularly nice to see some audience members sing along to some of my songs!
Since Annika has a great, brand-new record out she mostly stuck to the strongest songs on Fireflies. It was not that easy for me to choose which songs to do. The new album is recorded but not yet released – so I usually did a mix of brand-new stuff, some from The Things That Count and some rediscovered older ones as well. I’ve worked up a new version of Eye For An Eye from the 2nd album „The Devil & The Open Road“ that I threw in every now and then. I also played the new version of „Nowhere Begins“ quite a bit.
It was also great to be staying at a place with a wireless internet connection. May sound trivial but it’s life’s little pleasures that count when you’re on the road.
Day 5
Sunday, May 30, scheduled photo shoot
This promised to be another very long day since I had scheduled a photo shoot on our only off-day. A great professional photographer had approached me about a shoot a few weeks before and this seemed like a good day cause we’d sort of be in the vicinity on our way up to Hamburg.
Along the way I called the photographer to let him know around what time we’d get in and he called right back cancelling our date due to a family emergency that had occurred earlier that day. He had to rush to the hospital to be with his Dad and had not brought my phone number. Well, ok. To tell the truth, my hair had been cut way too short the day before I left so I was not too sad about the cancellation. I don’t want to be on the cover of my next CD with a 12-year-old-boy’s haircut.
So we found ourselves a hotel in Hamburg and made our way. Another loong ride. Fortunately, about two hours from Hamburg we started talking about a song of Annika’s that I had suggested some lyric changes to on our last tour in November. We went back & forth, pretty much finishing the song by the time we rolled into Hamburg around 8 pm.
We had contemplated seeing a concert that night at Music Star in Norderstedt but by now we were pretty tired and figured a stroll into a nearby restaurant would be enough excitement for the night. We got more than we bargained for.
Back at the hotel we were getting ready for bed (same room, bunk beds, it’s a low-budget kinda tour) when some alarm went off very loudly.
Annika came out of the bathroom super-excited and ran out of the room, leaving guitars and everything behind. I had been in a couple of fire alarms in these budget motels before so I made sure that at least I had some shoes and the combination to the room before I followed suit.
three fire trucks in front of our hotel in Hamburg
Big fire trucks, police, hotel guests standing on the street, a major hullabaloo but no smoke or fire visible or detectable. Turns out this was as good a time as any to write a song.
Earlier when we made our way to our room, Annika had been chanting in a Tom Waits-like voice „way down at the end of the hall“ – now we used this as a starting off point for a song.
„Way down at the end of the hall/ that’s where I’m gonna be/ with a big box of matches and a can of gasoline/ you better not be messin’ with me“.
Coming up in part two:
What happened in the fire? How did we rock Hamburg & Berlin? How did I play some gigs without a voice? The triumphant finale. All will be revealed soon.
Why Germany?
As most of you may know, I recorded my last three albums in Nashville and it did me a world of good. I learned so much from making music with players of the highest caliber imaginable, I derived so much pleasure and confidence from it, received quite a bit of media exposure and, most importantly, I think all three are very very strong records that I’m totally happy with. Why then did I decide to record my upcoming album in Germany?
There’s a few reasons for that. Mainly, I wanted to challenge myself. And shouldn’t any artistic endeavor be a challenge? I wanted to find out whether I can make as good a record as the Nashville albums with players who are my close friends. I want to know whether I’ve learned enough from working with these stellar Nashville musicians that I can pull it off without their help. Because, let’s face it, as much as I trust my songs, these wonderful musicians could make almost anyone sound good.
Also, I didn’t know exactly what the challenge would have been had I gone back to Nashville. I knew with certainty that I could make another good record there (sorry, if that sounds cocky but I have a lot of faith in these new songs). And I really would’ve loved to work again with Joe McMahan – and I’m sure we’ll do that somewhere down the line. But what would we have done? I’ve made a rock record with Duane Jarvis (Hobo Dream), a mellow acoustic one with George Bradfute (The Price Of Sin) and an atmospheric one with Richard McLaurin and Joe (The Things That Count). I feel like there would’ve been a danger of repeating myself in going back to guitar town for this new one.
I’ve been touring quite a bit these past few years - mostly in Europe, of course – and I’ve met wonderful musicians along the way. And I’ve come to realize that if someone understands this kind of music – call it folk, country, rock, Americana – it doesn’t matter one bit where he’s from. My good friend Andi Obieglo is just a heck of a piano player even if he lives in frickin’ Waldbüttelbrunn. Heck, even cowpunk legend Jason Ringenberg called him a “world-class piano player, no doubt about it” when we shared a gig with him. And Jason has certainly heard and jammed with his share of world-class players. And the same goes, I believe, for pretty much everyone who plays on this record. Another case in point is drummer Christoph Beck.
Both of us participated in a huge jam session at the Blue Rose Records Christmas party a couple years ago. There were two drummers there that night, one was Winston Watson who has toured the whole world over with Bob Dylan (!!!), the other was Christoph. And, you know, it turned out that – at least to my ears - Christoph was the more tasteful drummer, the more subtle drummer, the one I enjoyed playing with more. I mean, can you believe it, we played “Like A Rolling Stone” with fricking Bob Dylan’s drummer and a guy from Switzerland sounded better to my ears. (And, to be fair, WW is no slouch!)
I could sing the highest praises for everyone who plays on the record. What a rock-solid player and great cool guy bassist Chris Reiss is, what an amazingly talented and tasteful guitarist Felix Leitner is, what a great all-around musician and astounding singer Robert Oberbeck is. I could also tell you that Jan van Bijnen and Martin Huch are a tandem of incredible prowess on all kinds of stringed instruments and that Didi Beck wrote the book on slap bass, quite literally.
So in the last few years, this idea formed in my mind that if I could get all my good friends that I’ve met along the way and that I trust as deeply as I trust any world-class Nashville picker, if I could get them all together for a week or so and we could work on my new songs in a team effort, this could really be a good record. And that feeling of camaraderie and more or less living together for a week would translate onto tape and make the record something special.
And, fortuitously, I also found a studio and a sound engineer/co-producer who has a profound understanding of and great sensibility for this kind of music in Tom Ripphahn and his analoghaus studio.
In other words, I really think this new album is going to come out very good.
And I’m very happy that I got to share the experience of creating an album with some of the finest fellas I know (as are the Nashville guys) and some of my closest friends.
So stay tuned,
Markus
PS: If there’s one non-artistic reason that helped in my decision-making process to record in Germany, it’s not the financial aspect. (Believe it or not but my budget for this record is in the same ballpark as the budget for the last three albums.) But I don’t think I could’ve left my girlfriend home alone with our five-month old daughter for three weeks at a time. I think most parents among my readers will understand.
The new album
Hiya guys,
about 80 percent of the new album are done and what we got right now sounds fantastic!
We tracked 18 songs - that’s a heck of a lot. Now we’re going to have to figure out how to whittle them down or whether maybe to make this a double album kinda deal.
If you’re late to the party, please read my earlier blog posts about our recording process.
Y’all caught up? Good, cause then you know that I owe you a few more days’ worth of studio stories.
Andi Obieglo came up again from Würzburg on Friday to record three acoustic tracks with us. We started with The Boy Who Never Was My Friend (see earlier blog post for a rough demo http://rocknrill.tumblr.com/post/268879172/the-boy-who-never-was-my-friend). We first recorded a simple piano & voc/guitar version and then added some grittier stuff (rumbling toms, feedback guitar, harmonium) in keeping with the song’s theme. It came out very cool.
Next up was Forgiven, a song I’d envisioned as a gospel tune. Truth be told it didn’t sound all that gospely with me strumming guitar and Chris playing upright bass so after a few takes of that, we abandoned that idea and did a take with only Andi on piano and me singing and woohee, it worked. Now the song sounds like it would need the Fairfield Four or Lyle Lovett’s gospel vocalists to give it that extra edge. Unfortunately, I don’t think Sweet Pea Atkinson is going to fly over to Karben just to sing backing vocals on my record. So we’ll have to figure out what to do. Anybody know a real good gospel group in Germany? (And I don’t mean the typical German, well-meaning “Oh happy day”-singing variety.)
The last song recorded for the album was Falling Into Place, a song written shortly after my daughter Marni Rae’s birth in September (see demo here http://rocknrill.tumblr.com/post/183119994/everything-is-falling-into-place). It’s just me on acoustic and Chris on upright and that may be all it needs.
We said our goodbyes to wonderful drummer and newfound friend Christoph Beck on Friday afternoon as well - he caught a plane back to Zurich/Switzerland.
I had to scoot off as well because I had booked a gig that night on a tiny houseboat in Frankfurt - maybe not my smartest move ever. Then again, the gig was fun thanks to a weird fella in the audience yelling the names of guitar chords I was playing at random intervals throughout the concert. “G!”, “a-minor”, “E!” and so on.
While I was gigging, Andi overdubbed piano parts (and some accordion) back at the studio with Tom. Boy, did they sound fabulous when I heard them the next day!
On Saturday it was only Tom & me at Analoghaus, listening back to our basic tracks with Tom overdubbing a guitar part here, a harmonium there to flesh out the songs.
On Sunday morning I redid the vocal and acoustic guitar to Girl Of Many Secrets (see these videos http://rocknrill.tumblr.com/post/209500850/girl-of-many-secrets) before my buddy Robert Oberbeck joined us to record harmony vocals on about a half dozen songs. Robert’s a great friend, strong songwriter and an amazing singer. Man, he sang some terrific stuff.
I left Karben on Sunday night with a CD of ten rough mixes to listen to in the car … and I’m telling you, this record is going to a) be very good and b) contain some stuff unlike other stuff I’ve done before: Some rockers, some potential hits (not bloody likely, I know), some soul, some gospel.
Over the next few days, Tom will add a few more overdubs that we’ve talked about and send more rough mixes. Then I’ll probably look for some outside help with a couple songs before we meet again to start mixing in earnest.
I can’t put into words how thankful I am to my friends and fellow musicians who all gave astounding performances: Christoph Beck, Christoph Reiss, Felix Leitner, Andi Obieglo, Tom Ripphahn and Robert Oberbeck, every single one of ‘em really shines on this album.
Stay tuned, folks!
Markus
rock'n'rill
Rock'n'roll-folk-country-Americana songwriter Markus Rill blogs about his latest exploits, upcoming shows, backstage shenanigans and more.
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