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
