Review Musikmesse 2013

Yes guys, I survived 4 days at the Musikmesse 2013! 🙂 It was pretty noisy from the first day on, increased and reached it’s peak on Saturday. We had something like 100 dB around the Markbass booth – constantly! You can imagine that talking was challenging. I was really happy that we had a great Espresso machine at the booth because I had a gig on Thursday 2 hours from Frankfurt and one or the other shot of caffeine made it more easy for me 😉 But hey, that’s the game!
Beside the fact that is was even more noisy than the years before, it was very much fun, like always. It was great to meet so many friends again, to make many new friends and meet many great musicians from all over the world.
Thanks to all of you who visited me at the Markbass booth and for all the interesting talks we had and thanks to Markbass Germany for their support. I hope to see you there again next time!
Leaving Musikmesse 2013

True Collins – winter break is over!

True Collins Every year True Collins takes a view weeks off for a winter break after the annual Show in Soltau at the end of a year. So after a six weeks break we played the first show on February 9th at the Theater in Elmshorn. At this show Donovan Aston, who left the band last summer, was playing as a sub for our new keyboarder, Ray Bildesheim. It was a great gig and we had big fun playing together again.
Already the next Friday, February 15th, it was time for the next show in Northern Germany. For the third time we played at the Dannemann-Forum in Westerstede which has been sold out since December last year. We were excited to play there because the venue is pretty special and the audience there has been fantastic in the past. This time it exceeded our expectations. It was such a big fun to play for that incredible audience! I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the last time we played there…

Warwick factory tour

I got an invitation from the artist relations manager for a factory tour at the Warwick headquarter in Markneukirchen, Germany. Of course I accepted the invitation and went there for a trip around the Framus Vintage Museum and a expanded walk around the manufacturing facility. There I got a good insight view about the large wood store and the whole production process were you can see cutting-edge automated solutions side by side with handcrafting, that still is part of building instruments at Warwick. Especially the unique way the paintwork is done – water-based UV lacquer is used here – caught my attention. Beside this I was surprised about the quite and clean work environment.
At the end of the tour I took the opportunity to check out various gorgeous basses from their large range instruments and after that we went for dinner and a nice talk about this and that at the Hotel Alpenhof.
Thanks to Thorsten and Daniel for the great experience!

On tour with The John Idan Group

Recently I was asked to be the bassist for the current Germany tour of
The John Idan Group.
John Idan has been the lead vocalist and bassist of The Yardbirds with whom he played a huge number of shows in different parts of the world. John decided to tour as a trio, with himself on lead vocals and guitar, the great Tony Natale on drums and me. This tour was to promote his second album The Folly, but we played some of John’s favorite blues, blues rock and soul tunes as well. Due to the fact that I had already been booked for other shows unfortunately I could not take the complete tour and another bass player ist taking over now.
This journey into blues and beyond was a great experience for me and I really enjoyed the time with these funny guys and great musicians,both on and off stage.
If you love blues, blues rock and folk and if you get the chance to see The John Idan Group, don’t miss it! They will be on the road till the end of November.

At Wolf Codera’s Session Possible

Last Tuesday I was invited to play at Wolf Codera’s Session Possible in Colone for the first time. I very much enjoyed to play with such a lot of great musicians and funny guys who I haven’t played with before and who I haven’t even known personally before.

Thanks for an amazing night and a great experience to:
Wolf Codera (Sax., host)
Boris Angst (Drums)
Noel Stevens (Keyboards)
Klaus Spangenberg (Guitar, Voc.)
Roland Peil (Percussions)
Melissa Heiduk (Voc.)
Thanh Mai (Voc.)
Ron Jackson (Voc.)
Kieron (Voc.)
Jamal Dilmen (Voc.)

Hope to meet you out there again!

Groovin’ with the Dreamers Club Band again

Last Saturday I had a lot of fun groovin’ with the Dreamers Club Band again.
The place was packed and the band was cooking. Thanks to Inan Limafor inviting me as bassist.
Hope to see you again, guys!

René Moreno Band

Since September I’m the new bass player of the René Moreno Band. The music is quite different from what I used to do most of the time and maybe you can describe it as something like “Reggae-Latin-Dirty-Highgloss-Funk-Pop” 🙂
It’s definitely a lot of fun to play and for me it’s a step in the afro-cuban music world. If you have the chance to see the band live, check it out and let’s party!
See you!
Joerg

What makes a professional musician professional?

Over the years I’ve played with a lot professional musicians and sometimes I was suprised by their, in my eyes, unprofessionalism. On the other hand I played with hobby musicians who took it serious and had a very professional work attitude.
So I thought about what makes a professional musician and particularly a professional bassist, professional. It’s not about skills, the amount of money you get paid for a gig or how expensive your equipment is, for sure.
To me beeing a professional musician / bassist is related to these 10 points:

1. Be there on time
Being at the location early takes away stress from you and from the musicians you play with. It’s not a relaxed situation when you should be doing soundcheck since 15 minutes and one musician hasn’t shown up yet. Beside this being on time shows respect to the other musicians who also had to travel to the location and made it on time. Furthermore you don’t want to set up your gear and do the soundcheck when the audience expects you to have started playing already, don’t you?

2. Be prepared
Sometimes I have been in a situation were so called professional musicians relied on their skills, their ears, their experience and their ability to make it through the show somehow without being prepared. For me, that’s not the way to go. To me being prepared is essential because it shows that I take the gig, the musicians I play with and the one who booked me serious. And I might want to get booked again. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to know every little detail, but you should really know the song. By that I mean you should do more than just listen to it once on the radio on your way to the gig.

3. Play, but don’t overplay
As a musician, especially as a bass player, you mostly get booked to play someone else’s songs, to lay down the groove and to make the main artist (in most cases the singer) look good. My goal is to play what the song and the band needs, not to show how flashy I can be with on my instrument. Altough I like to play something extra here and there and I also like to step in the spot light for a little solo, I prefer to be asked to play a little more instead of being blamed for destroying the song or even the whole show by overplaying it.

4. Keep your gear in proper condition
Make sure the equipment you are using is working the way it should and everything is in proper condition. Think of your instrument, amp, effect pedals and so on as a craftsman thinks of his tools. This includes carrying a pair of extra strings, extra cable, batteries, tools to change settings on your instrument just in case it’s necessary.

5. Treat every gig the same
Sometimes musicians I played with treat different gigs differently. Sometimes they don’t dress as good as they would have if the gig would have been better paid. Sometimes musicians think a certain gig isn’t worth to prepare for because the the other musicians or the audience won’t hear the difference between being prepared or not. I disagree. I do treat every single gig with the same importance. No matter if 50 or 5000 people are in the audience or what ever. A gig is a gig.

6. No alcohol
I do very rarely drink alcohol at all so for me that’s absolutely clear, but sad but true, a lot of musicians seem to drink pretty much alcohol before and / or during a show. To me that’s a no go! In my opinion I’m booked to play the best and be the best Joerg that I can. And I sure won’t play better when I would step on stage being boozed.

7. Don’t take problems to the gig
Like I said before, you are booked to give 100 %. So concentrate on the gig, not on the problems you might have with your car, family or whatever. You can think about how to solve them after the show. This goes for feeling sick as well. Of course it’s not comfortable to play a show while having a headache, but don’t talk about it all the time and don’t let the audience know it. It may be hard, but you can take a aspirin, keep up and hopefully you can stay in bed tomorrow.

8. Be nice
Being professional includes being respectful and friendly to the other musicians, the organizer, the sound and light crew, the recording engineers, the security and all staff at the venue. Help to create a nice, comfortable atmosphere for everybody involved. Just like in life in general.

9. Respect other artists and musicians
When you play a gig with musicians who, in your opinion, are musically not on the same level as you, treat them with respect and try to lift them up instead of pushing them down. Someday it might comet back to you. This is true for the band that opens up for you and for artists you cross path with you at a festival or somewhere as well. You may not like the person or what her or she is doing, but everybody who steps on stage giving the best he can deserves your respect.

10. Love what you do…
or do something else that you do love!