Richard Hölscher and his team have once again put together a unique program this year, something this festival has a patent on.
They want to offer a program that is as varied as possible, in which there is always room for relatively unknown talent.
Many styles were represented again this year, such as Chicago blues, acoustic blues, folk blues, blues rock, soul blues, funk blues, Americana, bluegrass, blufunk, rock.
Line-up: Cristina Vane, GA-20, Janne Timmer, Jovin Webb, Luke Winslow-King, Keziah Jones, Ivan Singh, The Delta Generators, Justina Lee Brown, The Rev. Payton’s Big Damn Band, Shemekia Copeland, The Cold Stares, Vanessa Collier, Mojo Hand & Luca, The Sazerac Swingers.
Saturday kicks off with Nashville-based Cristina Vane. The Italian-born multi-instrumentalist and her three-piece band open the festival with an excellent performance that goes down very well with the audience.
Frontwoman Cristina has a beautiful, pure voice and plays the guitar and banjo. The set consists of country blues, folk blues, gospel and bluegrass.
It’s all covered in songs that vary from quiet ballads (Getting High Hotel) to wonderfully uptempo country blues (How You Doing, Bad Attitude, Shake It Bebe).
Highlight: Little Girl From Nowhere, which is about her life in which she has lived in many different places, doesn’t really feel at home anywhere and that she actually feels most at home on stage. Great start to this weekend!
The second band to take the stage is Boston’s GA-20, and it’s a great steaming, blues-rocking set.
Vocalist/guitarist Cody Nilsen, guitarist Matthew Stubbs and drummer Josh Kiggans play without bass guitar and make it a great blues-rock set.
They open with a solid rocking Cut You Loose and the mood is immediately good with this heavy blues trio.
Beautiful rock, shuffle and rock and roll numbers pass by and the band ends the set with an uptempo blues song, Stranger Blues by Elmore James.
What a beautiful performance and this music makes you forget the bad weather. The audience is very enthusiastic!
This is followed by a solo performance by Janne Timmer, who accompanies herself on the piano. She was at this festival with Harlem Lake two years ago and the band made a big impression.
Harlem Lake was on the list for this year, but now that Janne is no longer there, she has been scheduled for a 30-minute performance. Before the show, she says that she is very nervous and has never performed solo for such a large audience.
She makes her announcements in German and that goes down well. She says that she is now starting a new chapter with personal songs that come from the heart and the audience responds to every comment with a big applause and the performance is very well received.
Daana Jovin Webb enters the stage. This artist from Louisiana is in Germany for the first time and has a powerful, raw, impressive voice and also plays the mouth harp. In the ballads his soulful voice is fully expressed. Beautifully sung.
His music contains blues, soul blues, rock and roll, even gospel influences and has New Orleans style. (Dr.John). He is a very charismatic singer who seeks and has a great contact with the audience.
Two guitarists in the band who alternate and the band consists of drums, bass and keys. The set is closed with an impressively good performance of Whipping Post by The Allman Brothers Band.
The next band is Luke Winslow-King and here the roof comes off completely. What a voice and what wonderful music with groove and drive; sometimes a steam locomotive that thunders on, like in Watch Me Change.
With this six-piece formation, everything is really right. All styles can be heard in the performance from uptempo blues, delta blues, jazz, gospel, swing, funky blues, shuffle, reggae and in If I Were You I even hear Frank Zappa influences through those surprising breaks.
The pounding shuffle blues Don’t Worry is the perfect ending to a fantastic, masterfully varied performance and is definitely one of the highlights of the first day. Go see them if they’re ever in the area!!
Then it’s Nigerian Keziah Jones’ turn. He brought his own sound engineer and it shows: the sound is way too loud. Keziah has placed all six monitors, which are normally next to each other on stage, in a semi-circle around him. A band leader tells me he does this because he has hearing problems. But what a shame about the sound.
His performance is characterized by many styles mixed together but there is little connection, it is too chaotic. Many of the same rhythms keep coming back and also much too long vocal parts with the same shouts and screams.
He calls his music style Blufunk, a mix of raw blues and rhythmic funk. Prince is his influence but Keziah misses the mark. His stage presence is theatrical and sometimes almost arrogant in his mannerisms.
In the quiet numbers it is a lot better and his singing comes into its own better, not those (too) high singing/screaming.. A disappointing performance as confirmed by many.
The closing act of day one is Argentinean Latina blues guitarist and singer Ivan Singh, who moved to Chicago for the blues. He has a self-built four-string guitar box that he calls ‘Lata de Batata’.
With the Blues Brothers film tune, the band, who arrive in Schoppingen straight from the Chicago Blues Festival (where they played the day before!), opens with a wonderfully swinging concert and it becomes a party for a wildly enthusiastic audience that stays until the end despite the bad weather.
It has swing, funk, Latin, blues, rock.
Singh is very agile and has great contact with the audience and the joy of playing is evident, he is a real stage animal!
What makes it special and fun is that he always includes short riffs of well-known songs such as Layla, Satisfaction and Thunderstruck in the songs.
The perfect ‘warm’ ending to this cold day with sometimes heavy rain showers. Fortunately it remained dry after 6 p.m.
The Greenstage is a small stage on the other side of the main stage where a band plays during the break in the main stage.
Today the Dutch band Mojo Hand & Luca is playing there and they put on a great performance. It is wonderfully steaming blues rock with a full and warm sound. Boogie, shuffle, blues rock are all played top notch.
Great to see a 15 year old Luca Holkenborg playing the blues and that while he has only been playing guitar for five years, as he said.
And how! He and guitarist Frank Reemers alternate in the solos, the rhythm section is tight with Jules van Bussel on bass, Johan van Lanen drums and Joep de Greef on keys.
Heard from many people that they belong on the main stage next year! A big compliment!
Delta Generators from Boston, who are in Germany for the first time, open Sunday and do so with gusto!
They start with the wonderfully solid blues rocker The Evil with a great slide and singer/harmonica player Brian Templeton has a beautiful voice, warm and full.
Then follows a quiet ballad, Canebrake, with a nice groove through the deep bass. Brian uses the mouth harp here. The instrumental boogie Shame, Shame, Shame a la Canned Heat, a shuffle with voice distorter and a nice slow blues follow.
Singer Templeton uses a loop station and that gives beautiful, sometimes bombastic, sometimes psychedelic sounds that fit the song and guitarist Charlie O’Neal impresses with wonderfully melancholic guitar playing.
The very emotional slow blues I Lost My Brother brought tears to my eyes because I had to think of my recently deceased brother… So insanely sensitively sung and that heavenly, captivating guitar solo… Goosebumps. Absolute top performance.
Nigerian-born and Swiss-based Justina Lee Brown followed with a mix of African rhythms combined with Western music. She opens in Afrikaans with Aramine, has a powerful, sometimes harsh, pure voice and sings very easily.
Occasionally she overshouts herself in the long notes and the words too often get a kind of reverberation at the end like you,ou,ou,ou.ou / see,ee,ee,ee,ee.. The performance is otherwise fine with a swinging band behind it.
She has a good stage presence with African dances and contact with the audience. The song Lost Child is about not feeling at home anywhere and is about herself; Lost in Africa, Lost in Switzerland, but not on stage!
Just like Cristina Vane who knows the same feeling. The show is full of nice rhythms through the drums and percussion. Then follows a surprise: to the great enthusiasm of the audience, she calls Janne Timmer on stage and they enter into a beautifully sung duel that comes from the toes.
The song I’m Not Alone concludes a beautiful performance.
The next artist is the Reverend Peytons Big Damn Band from Indiana. Their music is mainly based on country blues. Guitar, washboard, drums and vocals are the basis.
The band consists of guitarist/vocalist Peyton, his wife Breezy who plays her washboard very fiercely and hard and the rhythmically tight drummer Jacob Powell.
They play without a bass player and Peyton plays the bass with his thumb on his guitar, and fingerpicks with the other fingers.
It is cheerful uptempo country blues, delta blues and folk. Peyton has a beautiful voice and the band is often three-part. Great performance with their own style between the other bands.
Then Vanessa Collier comes along. She is standing in for J & the Causeways, who are unable to perform for medical reasons shortly before the festival, and the band is coming over for this one performance. Vanessa does the lead vocals and plays the saxophone wonderfully.
She has a wonderful, spontaneous, cheerful appearance and captivates everyone with that, but of course also with her musicality. Vanessa has a beautiful, warm, very pleasant voice and plays the saxophone fantastically.
A major role is reserved for guitarist Arthur Neilson who plays a great solo and the funky groovy rhythm section consisting of Colombian Justice Guevara and drummer Anthony Byran Cage who both provide backing vocals.
Texascountry Blues in Blood Hound, Just One More has a jazzy nightclub atmosphere with Latin and salsa influences. Wonderful. A funky, swinging highlight is the fantastically long soul-dance song Tongue Tied inspired by James Brown.
The only cover is I Can’t Stand The Rain with some reggae influences and a sharp guitar solo and a wonderful guitar/saxophone duel.
Just like two years ago, this is also a fantastic performance!
The penultimate act is Shemekia Copeland, a dynamic blues, soul, Americana singer with a powerful voice who immediately opens rocking.
It starts with rock and then comes the boogie Ain’t No More followed by Would You Take My Blood in which the guitars dominate with catchy solos.
The band has no less than three lead guitarists, one of whom is Arthur Neilson who previously played with Vanessa Collier, each with a different sound; one slide, the other clear, fierce and then another with a deeper lower sound. Nicely varied.
There are more slow blues, country blues in Tell The Devil To Go To Hell and the show ends with gospel with excellent choir singing in Church.
Shemekia said that she has received eight Grammy nominations but has never won one, although she has won many other awards. “Someday I will win one!”
The closing band of the festival is the power trio with very heavy rock The Cold Stares known for their heavy live shows. And that is no different here!
Chris Tapp guitar/vocals, Brian Mullins drums and Bryce Klueh bass and keys make it a smashing set.
A gritty voice, pumping bass and banging drums ensure a steaming performance. One rock song follows the other in rapid succession and it never gets quiet.
A fitting festival ending that warms you up after a cold wet day and the audience stays until the last note and then you’ve done well, especially with this weather!
The Greenstage: Today the German jazz band The Sazerac Swingers is playing here with their cheerful danceable New Orleans sound, so there was a lot of dancing in front of the stage. What a great band.
Conclusion: Despite the weather not being great, it was a wonderful festival. As always, top-notch organization, everything runs in a great atmosphere.
We saw excellent, many relatively unknown bands, the festival is nice and small-scale and sold out again this year! See you next year!
