Mario's report from Folk Club No. 161 on 3 October 2025

 

 Golden Autumn - Indian Summer - Forest Zither

 

Yes, the theme of the Folk Club in October was ‘Golden Autumn’, and since a golden autumn is characterised by the green variety of leaves of summer changing into thousands of shades of green, yellow and red, the theme is naturally reminiscent of Indian Summer, which in turn refers to a dry period of late autumn in the north of the USA. And Indian summer has always been an occasion for composing and singing beautiful songs, often about home (near), far and longing. And that brings us to the second theme of the evening - the forest zither. An instrument that is both very close to home (its region of origin and frequent use is Thuringia and the entire Vogtland region) and at the same time a travelling instrument (it first became known throughout Germany thanks to Mr Böhm, who popularised the instrument with a new mechanism for tuning the strings as the Hamburg forest zither. There it was then also used as an accompanying instrument for amusingly warbled songs by entire hiking groups. 

This second theme was somewhat neglected due to the current autumn, which is often not golden but rather wet, as three of the planned floor spots with forest zither were cancelled due to illness - but the evening's featured artist, who had not only travelled from Thuringia but also brought two forest zithers with him as companions, made up for this. 

But more on that later, because as usual, our master of ceremonies John Harrison opened the evening with the loud welcoming formula ‘Laaaaadiiieeeees and Gentlemen ......’, and then began the evening's moderation with his own contributions. John is a bluesman through and through, but this evening he opened with a folk protest song by Leon Rosselson, ‘The World Turned Upside Down’. This song actually refers to the ban imposed by Cromwell on playing traditional Christmas carols in 17th century England. In Leon Rosselson's version, however, it is provided with new lyrics denouncing the fact that the land belonged to the landowners and could not be used by everyone. Afterwards, John returned to the blues and brought Christoph Thiebe's harmonising help on stage. With his own lyrics about a pandemic we have all experienced, he quickly rewrote the blues Corinna, Corinna into ‘Corona, Corona’. He ended on a very classic blues note with ‘St James Infirmary’, proving once again that he is not only an excellent musician, but also a poet. 

Now Fomiander (Sonja Daniels, Karin Thomas, Mario Dompke) took to the stage, paying homage to the second theme of the evening. With a version of the North German song ‘Dat du mien Leevsten büst’, specially adapted for the forest zither, they allowed the audience to sing along, but warned that the singing would probably be interrupted again and again. This is exactly what happened, as Fomiander's version ends each verse of the song with a fast dance passage, regularly changing from ¾ time to 6/8 time. This was followed by a slow and thoughtful song from his own pen. ‘From East to West’ describes the thoughts about life, which begins anew every day in the East and ends in the West in the evening. The forest zither presentation ended with the song ‘Sailing To The Far Side Of The World’, which once again challenged the fast interplay of flute and forest zither.

While I spoke above of John as a bluesman through and through, now the blues himself took to the stage with Rick Fines. Rick wrote all the songs himself, describing situations from his life that - as is usual with the blues - describe difficult or annoying periods in his life. But I don't want to go so much into the content of the songs ‘Never Let Go’, ‘Live Forever’ and ‘Six Doors Down’ here, but rather focus more on Rick's playing. Rick conjured up the blues on a single cone dobro guitar. With a technique that mimicked the clawhammer style of the banjo (which is quite difficult to play due to the six strings instead of four and the 5th string being tuned up on the banjo) or the use of the bottleneck, with fingerpicking that utilised the entire dynamic range of the guitar to perfection, he left many a mouth in the audience open in happy amazement during his performance. 

Since, as reported above, three floor spots were cancelled due to illness, it was now Tim Liebert's alias Doc Fritz's turn. He actually wanted to demonstrate the range of use of the forest zither with a few groovy blues pieces, but in awe of Rick Fines' performance, he changed his mind and opened his set with a globetrotter song, which describes the moments when a feeling of ‘home’ arises in places so far away from home. He also penned the following song ‘Ole's Boat’, which ironically describes how Ole is already building himself a coffin so that he won't have to rely on off-the-peg fashion one day. As this coffin turned out to be big enough, he invited his wife to try it on, albeit with some provisions and a few bottles of schnapps, so that the fitting turned into a party - the moral: life can be so beautiful, even when you're thinking about the end. Following his passion, Tim then presented the instrumental dance ‘Im böhmischen Wind’, which was followed without a break by his interpretation of the folk song ‘Wenn alle Brünnlein fließen’. Naturally, this was an invitation to the audience to sing along. Among other things, Tim Liebert stands for the preservation of regional cultural assets, and this now also includes our beautiful folk songs - it is a pity that so many people see ideologies in these songs and are therefore very reluctant to sing them again. Fortunately, this reluctance is slowly and gradually disappearing, also encouraged by a new and young folk scene that is compiling its repertoire from such songs and dances. I'm going to take a big leap forward at this point and report on the second set that Tim played at the end of the evening. He picked up exactly where he left off in the first half and played the ‘Winkelmann Schottisch’ in combination with the Vogtland song ‘Winnerling’. I could rave on for hours about the perfection and elegance with which Tim Liebert played the forest zither, showing me and all the other listeners that old songs in new guises can also lead to new cultural experiences. But I don't want to overload the report with my emotions, so I'll just mention matter-of-factly that the next song was ‘S'Wertshaus’, followed by the dance ‘wüster Ritt’. And then came another song of their own, ‘Durch's Delta der Gleise’, which tells of a train journey and culminates in the instrumental ‘In voller Fahrt’. Tim gave two encores with the Advent Schleifer ‘Jetzt, heut und hier’ (Schleifer is a dance) and one of the most beautiful songs to end a successful evening - namely ‘Ade, nun zur guten Nacht’ - and the audience would have liked to hear more. If earlier performances by our much-loved and sadly deceased Steve Perry, Leginstorp, Muckenpensel and Fomiander had already brought the forest zither into the cultural landscape of the Folk Club, Tim Liebert has now immortalised it there forever. 

But let me jump back, because another folk legend was already waiting for his turn at the beginning of the second half. However, this only came after our master of ceremonies John Harrison had performed another beautiful autumn poem (‘Autumn Colours’) and Wolfgang Schriefer had turned the ‘Capri Fischer Lied’, which is more of a heartbreak song, into a tangible protest song with his own lyrics about the precarious situation of overfishing the seas. 

But then the time had come, and Tom Kannmacher, a songwriter and folk poet from the very beginning, explained another instrument that is not commonplace in the folk scene: the bass lute - a round-bellied lute in guitar tuning with six additional bass strings, which are plucked in the same way as the harp, only in their own tuning as bass accompaniment. Tom is not only an outstanding musician, but also an explorer of German song. Today, however, he is once again writing lyrics to an old melody. The ‘Lied von einem Bettelmann’ (‘Song of a beggar man’) became the accusing song of the ‘Ahrflut’ and describes the situation in which many of those affected still find themselves. Houses have not yet been rebuilt, roads and other infrastructure have not yet been repaired and the guilt has not yet been dealt with - so learning for the future to avoid such disasters will not be easy. After this song, Tom returned to his genre of very old songs and sang ‘Winter Quarters’, which describes how mercenaries behaved in winter quarters and thus brought further suffering to the population during the breaks in the war. Tom concluded with the song ‘Nur für Fremde’ (Only for Strangers), demonstrating how relevant the content of old songs still is today. 

Well, didn't the highlights stop that evening? After a long absence from the Folk Club, meoneo (Claudia Huismann and Werner Krotz-Vogel) took to the stage. They delighted the audience with their jazzy and swinging rhythm and sound. With their own pieces ‘Become One’, ‘Blue Moon’ and ‘Stay’, they presented several songs from their new CD. And for those who don't know it yet - Werner played a great guitar accompaniment as usual, emphasising the character of the songs with sophisticated chords and runs. To my ears, Claudia has developed considerably since her earlier days. The vocal dynamics with which she knows how to bring different colours to her singing are fantastic. Her voice modulation in the song ‘Blue Moon’, for example, enabled her to ‘play’ a funny dialogue between a moon lover and the moon itself. 

Gerd Schinkel then took to the stage to perform a wonderful interpretation with his own German lyrics of the song ‘Summer's End’ by John Prine. Gerd has made it his mission to provide songs from foreign-language countries with German lyrics in order to make the music and content accessible to those who do not understand the foreign language. 

After Gerd came Tim - but I wrote about that above. Perhaps it remains to say that the appetite awakened by Tim's performance can be satisfied by his various projects with other musicians, many of which are immortalised on CD. 

Well, and that our patron Jock Stewart was paid homage to together at the end, as always. 

And as always: after the Folk Club is before the Folk Club. On 7 November 2025 with Juhana Iivonen from Finland - so out of the bedroom, into the Folk Club

  

Your Mario