rock'n'rill

Recording countdown 150

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.

17 January 2012 ·

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

2 February 2011 ·

Three gigs, new friends & the record coming along

Hey folks,

here’s a short recap of an eventful weekend.
I had three gigs in north and middle Hessen lined up for Thursday, Friday & Saturday so I figured I’d bookend this trip with two more recording dates at analoghaus.
Arrived there around noon on Thursday and had only a few hours before I had to trek on to Café Vinyl in Wetzlar.

I managed to lay down vocals for the only two songs that will have overdubbed vocals on the new album: Your Own Private Rainbow (co-write with Annika Fehling, see the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQr154Wrypc) and Future Memory (written with Andi & Caro Obieglo). And off I went to Wetzlar.

Café Vinyl turned out to be a small but very cool place. I shared this gig with British singer-songwriter Paul Armfield from the Isle Of Wight who turned out to be quite big.
Anyway, the place was pretty packed, I went first and had a really good time before I turned the stage over to Paul. He shook my hand saying I was “the whole deal” - that felt nice.
Paul was amazing. Wonderful songs, brilliant guitar picking and great stage presence - truly wonderful. We shared a few songs in the encore. I played a little harmonica and tried a harmony on Lyle Lovett’s “If I Had A Boat” and sang a verse on Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” (you can hear my solo demo at http://www.markusrill.net/sounds/So_Lonesome.mp3). A really good night and it felt like Paul and I were going to become friends.

We met again the next night at the Erbse in Dillenburg. This gig was tiny but sold-out (ca. 30 people), some of the people in the audience were among my very first supporters and have seen me many times along the way.
With Paul listening, I played a bunch of songs I hadn’t done the night before. I also played some of the brand new songs for my longtime fans. Went over very well.

Paul was great again and then we did a longer jam encore including “Boat”, “Lonesome”, “Can’t Help Falling In Love” and “Clap Hands” by Tom Waits. I believe we were filmed during the encore, so maybe something’s going to show up on YouTube soon. I’ll let you know.

That night, both Paul and I stayed at local promoter Henning’s house - we all stayed up talking till three in the morning and had a great time. I sure hope to see Paul and hook up with him again soon. He’s a great guy, runs a bookstore, plays guitar - what’s not to like?

On Saturday I drove out to Frankenberg - my new Walden guitar in tow. I had picked it up from my endorser in Marburg the day before and had also met my good friend Robert Oberbeck (www.robertoberbeck.de) for a nice long talk.
The gig at Klimperkasten in Frankenberg was set up by local duo Wuthe & Faust, two fine young fellows. Part of their Songwriter Night under the moniker “For The Sake Of The Song” is a shared third set. So we quickly ran through some possible covers to do. Maik is a great, versatile guitarist, Jan a wonderful singer, both are great guys (they like soccer, french fries & rock’n’roll).
They sounded real good together, my solo set went fine (with Maik joining me on That’s All Right, Mama) and the encore jam was a lot of fun (we did - among others - For The Sake Of The Song/Townes, I Shall Be Released/Dylan, Long As I Can See The Light/CCR, Don’t Think Twice/Dylan, Working Class Hero/Lennon, Too Much Monkey Business & Nadine/Chuck Berry, Who Do You Love/Bo Diddley, Not Fade Away/Buddy Holly).
I sold quite a bunch of CDs and had good conversations with some music lovers in the audience - another good night.

Got to bed kinda late and had to get up early to arrive in Karben before noon. We did quite a bit of work on a number of songs. Actually, Tom did most of the work, playing great guitar parts and some organ while I merely gave the thumbs up sign most of the time. Comforting Thought sounds killer now, I’m real excited about that one. Rainbow is taking shape thanks to some great jingle-jangle guitars, Future Memory was embellished with some slide guitar.
I think we may only need one more day of overdubs (mostly backing vocals, maybe some piano/organ on Rainbow), then we can start mixing. We’ll continue working the first week of April!

Stay tuned & take care,
Markus

15 March 2010 ·

A tremendous weekend

photo by Patrick Wötzel

Hi guys,

whoa, I had a fabulous weekend with two outstanding gigs - Nürnberg on Friday, Würzburg on Saturday - and an alright one in Mannheim on Sunday.

On Friday I played a solo gig at a very cool venue, the community-run Casablanca movie theater in Nürnberg. For some reason, when I was approached for this gig the Casablanca was described to me as “a former movie theater”. So all along I expected a place that was maybe a little run-down. I must also admit that for some reason I expected a smallish audience.
I was wrong on both counts. The Casablanca is a wonderful movie theater run by a group of volunteers from the neighborhood (I loved seeing my name on the marquee!) and it’s a very cool venue for acoustic live music as well. And we had a decent-sized audience (for a solo show).
Very early on - I think it was in fact after the first song, might’ve been after the second one - a question from the audience regarding the need to change harmonicas sort of broke my stride. Which ended up being a good thing because I had to think on my feet and improvise a little. It’s always good for me to a) engage the audience in dialog and b) be very “in the moment” during a show.

I also got a request to do Sarah Stein which can be a hard song to do solo but I suppose I pulled it off because quite a few people asked me afterwards specifically which CD that song is on. Half the audience bought CDs which is an unheard-of percentage so I must’ve done something right. A wonderful evening.
Thanks to Black & Edda & the Casablanca team!

And the next night was even better!
I played a band gig with The Troublemakers (Felix Leitner - guitar, Chris Reiss - bass, Aggi Berger - drums) in Würzburg which I called my hometown for the last 20 years before I came to Munich half a year ago. I had heard beforehand that we’d sold quite a number of tickets in advance so I assumed that there would be a lot of old friends in the audience.

The place was sold out but maybe only ten people I knew were there. Kinda cool. It later turned out some people had driven several hundred kilometers to see us. A couple had even liked the Nürnberg gig so much they decided to come to again the next night. Very cool.
And the band sounded very very good. I think we’ve gained quite a bit of confidence in ourselves as a band in the recording process - and having wonderful pianist Andi Obieglo join us live gave us an extra push. We really had a great time making music with each other and for a most gracious audience. So: Wow! And: Thank you, people!

Here’s a video of The Troublemakers having a bit of fun with Earl Montgomery’s “Six Days On The Road” on Saturday night:

And here’s a (German) blog post by Patrick Wötzel, a Würzburg journalist who saw his first Markus Rill concert on Saturday night: http://www.woetzel-online.info/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=1175&blogId=1

I certainly hope we can play some more band dates later this year to coincide with the release of the upcoming album. If you know a good place for The Troublemakers to cause some trouble near you, please let us know.

See ya, guys,
Markus

1 March 2010 ·

Why Germany? 1

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.

24 February 2010 ·

Studio day #2 1

Studio day #2

Hiya guys, very shaky internet connection here so I’ll try to keep this brief. Yesterday was a fabulous day of recording. My longtime friend and musical partner Andi Obieglo came up from Würzburg to join us on some songs that I felt needed piano as part of the basic track. We started with Girl Of Many Secrets, a song with some pop appeal I had co-written with Swedish singer-songwriter Eva Hillered. The groove is very straightforward, my acoustic guitar is driving the song, that went easily. Next up was Future Memory. Originally Andi and his wife Caro had written this for themselves and just asked me to look over the lyric but I fell in love with this gospely/soulful track, changed huge chunks of the lyric and added a bridge part. Andi & Caro still play something much closer to their original version but gave me permission to use this as a co-write. I hadn’t played it with Andi since the day I first heard it and my little acoustic guitar demo doesn’t quite have the same feel. Anyway, this was a lot of fun and a challenge. I’ve certainly never recorded a soul song with a laid-back groove like this one before. I should probably admit that someone like Otis Redding would be a better-suited singer for this tune than I am - then again, wouldn’t he always? :-) We took a break, went and got some Chinese food and then got back to work. Andi almost died from Richard Claydermann overdose at the Chinese place. My song Time To Go is a very delicate number about someone dying from cancer - I’ve only ever performed this live once, I think. It came out beautifully on the first take. I think this is a keeper along the lines of Dying Bed or What Might’ve Been. It really came out good. Then we did Fast Forward, a very pretty slow one in 3/4. I’ve been playing this one for awhile, the guys all knew it and Christoph B picked it up easily. We did a couple takes but liked the first one best. So then we had time to try another one. First we ran through Maybe More quickly but since that’s another slow one, we decided to do Young Again, a rocker. I rocked on Felix’s Tele, he played Tom’s double cutaway Les Paul (he says it’s a Paula, doesn’t look like one to me, though), Andi, as always, shone on the piano. Felix also overdubbed some surf-style Tele. Might sound like a hodgepodge, I guess, but it all makes sense, trust me :-) I wonder if it needs a strummy acoustic as well. We’ll see. Our drive back to the apartment was a bit of an adventure. The streets our GPS system recommended were blocked off due to the snow. We took them anyway and made it to the apartment but we certainly understood the wisdom of blocking them :-) There’s four songs on our agenda today. Upright bass player Didi Beck (he of Boppin’ B fame) is going to join us in the afternoon for a bluegrassy number. We’ll see how that’ll pan out. Take care, everyone, thanks for reading, Markus

3 February 2010 ·

From the studio #1

Hi folks, we started work on my 7th studio album of original material today. After cutting the last three albums in Nashville, TN, we’re doing this one at analoghaus in Karben near Frankfurt/Germany with engineer/co-producer Tom Ripphahn. The core band for these recordings is Felix Leitner on guitar, Christoph Reiss on bass and wonderful drummer Christoph Beck from Switzerland. I picked Christoph B up at Frankfurt airport on Sunday night at 10.30 pm, then we made our way to Karben to sleep on couches and mattresses on the studio floor. Both of us woke up with a cold :-/ This morning Felix & Christoph R came up from Würzburg and joined us around noon. After checking sound (and me making a run to pick up the keys to our apartment about 30 minutes away), we started recording around 2 pm. The first song we did was “Skinny Teddy”, a Tom Petty-ish rocker. After getting an alright basic track we fleshed it out with a little acoustic guitar, Tom playing some cool guitar stuff and Felix adding slide. Sounds cool. Next up was Beauty Of The Moment, a song I co-wrote with Klaus Caprani from Copenhagen last May at the Gotland Songwriter Retreat. It’s a pretty self-explanatory mid-tempo song. Christoph found a very cool brushes groove, Felix played atmospheric electric stuff, I played acoustic. I quickly overdubbed harmonica and it sounds pretty cool already. We’ll either add some piano or maybe some Weissenborn slide from Martin Huch. The third song we did today is in 3/4 time and our potential album opener entitled Wild Blue True-Hearted Man. We found a very cool, powerful groove on the toms that gives the song a T-Bone Burnett kind of sound, along with Christoph’s bass part and Felix’s heavily tremoloed guitar. When I play that song solo, it has a harmonica hook but that part didn’t seem to perfectly fit this arrangement. We’ll see what we’ll do about that. We may overdub piano or accordion playing something similar to that harmonica melody. At any rate: a very successful first day of recording. Everyone’s getting along very well. Tom is a cool cat and Christoph B is very easy to get along with - needless to say he’s a kickass, versatile drummer. Tomorrow, piano wizard Andi Obieglo is going to join us. There’s four songs on our agenda for tomorrow that I hope to record live with Andi. Then there’ll be two more days of band tracking before Andi will come up on Friday and Saturday for some acoustic songs and piano overdubs. I’ll try to post another blog tomorrow. Stay tuned, Markus

1 February 2010 ·

My cover of Tom Waits’ “Pony”

Nuthin’ fancy. Home recorded video of me doing this beautiful Tom Waits song. Played around some with video editing software. Thought some of you might enjoy this.