Month: October 2020

It was a personal wish of the band to visit Offenburg during the tour. That had two reasons. First, Offenburg’s city abbreviation is “OG”, which in our ghetto clique is synonymous with “original gangster”, so a visit to Offenburg contributes to street credibility. In addition, Benni had spent a few wonderful days during his journeying time with the carpenter Sylvia, who had settled in Offenburg. She gave us the use of her courtyard so we could mix up the neighborhood a little bit. During the pandemic, the official regional cultural sites did not want to get involved in a live concert. But the courtyard concert was well received. People made themselves comfortable on balconies and benches and refused to call the police.

Until now, the band management (Mr. Burek himself) had already shown an enormous performance. In view of the pandemic it was almost impossible to get firm commitments for official concerts. Nevertheless, he persistently called people, organized semi-legal stages and kept the band happy with beer and cheese rolls. On day six of our trip, the time had finally come: the first official concert, with a hygiene concept and list of participants was on the agenda. Renate and Jochen Braun in Rottweil, operators of the “àkapella” cultural café and themselves music nerds, gathered the city’s most exquisite audience for us. So 20 people of the Blues-Folk-Elite of Rottweil sat there with a safety distance of 1,5m and a ticket price of 18€. Never before such a high price was paid for us, so we wanted to offer something decent. Benny withdrew to the back rooms of the café and wrote our setlist. A two hour dramaturgical masterpiece, which marathon live performer Bruce Springsteen would have been proud of. We played our fingers to the bone until Tim’s bladder didn’t allow another encore.
And during the whole concert this highly concentrated audience sat there, looking at us  critically, only to give enthusiastic applause shortly after the last note was played. We had to drink away such a high level of professionalism. And thank you so much Kerstin for joining us for a couple of songs.

The following day provided the opportunity to do so. For Benny a home game was coming up. Not far from his home town Affalterbach, in Backnang-Mittelschöntal, an organic farm runs a cafe. In a fulminant outdoor event, the summer season was to be concluded there with bread on a stick and a live concert. From a weather point of view, we had been truly blessed this week. Usually we layed in our T-shirts on the meadows after the concerts and counted shooting stars. That evening we had to distribute all our clothing reserves on our bodies so that our organs would not freeze. Besides, it started to rain, which sucks while making stick bread and also during open air concerts. A fruit farmer had the spontaneous idea to convert his sales cart into a stage so that we at least stayed dry. The cart was almost perfect. Only in the height there could have been 3cm more in it. You could clamp the double bass so that it could stand without support. We were worried that the cold would keep our guests away. But the attraction of the Prophet is stronger than the attraction of the couch during rainy weather.

Every time we are in Benny’s homeland, the comparison with the Shire comes to mind. And also this time the exuberant atmosphere left no doubt that the Swabians can celebrate like the Hobbits. The campfire blazed until deep into the night and the instruments were handed around until the fingers drunkenly slipped from the instruments. With a heavy heart we left the Shire the following day, the tour came to an end. With a long trip over the rainy highways of central Germany we reached Leipzig. At a car park Leo welcomed us with a delicious pumpkin soup. The roller-skate dance rehearsal room there was quickly converted into a concert hall. The rain on the tin roof demanded everything from our PA system, in situations like these it always shows how good it is that we have an experienced audio engineer with us. The concert was comfortable and successful. And in the glow of the fire barrel new plans were made and we said our farewells. And so the band members strolled out into the night to go their separate ways again.

Strainful Train has remained true to the tradition of travelling across Germany once a year for a week to scrounge beer for a few tunes from our instruments. This time under particularly difficult conditions, because the pub operators did not want to make any commitments in the face of the pandemic. In addition, we were often accused in advance that it would be irresponsible to spread the virus throughout Germany with our tour. This is true and we do not want to deny the risk. On the other hand, we are also aware of the fact, that this risk is very manageable if the rules of hygiene are being followed and if the concerts are exclusively outdoor. Furthermore we had, like everyone we met, an immeasurable greed for small cultural events, for some normality, for a chance to get together and exchange some joie de vivre with live music. Something that unfortunately came much too short this summer.

We started at the beautiful pottery market in Friedrichsmoor. It’s hard to believe that you would come across such a cultural hot spot after such a trip through the outback of Mecklenburg. Artists offer their creations made of clay here, accompanied by a market band, in this case, by us. In addition, Mecklenburg’s most willing to pay audience romps around there. Our CD stocks were bought out at a stroke, which financed the tour on the very first day. And last but not least we found the name inspiration for our song “The incredible chase of Loretta and the marvellous chick’ sisters of Barneveld” on the premises. So the day was completely worth it. The next day we went with the GPS mode “most beautiful route” to a place you wouldn’t have expected after passing all those dumps. In the small village of Velsdorf we found a farm full of traditional journeymen who danced to soft electro beats into the evening. Benny immediately switched to his incomprehensible journeyman slang, which he had acquired during his time on the road. Ritualistic welcome dances were performed, complicatedly choreographed handshakes were exchanged and then we were allowed to play for the journeymen. The farm was a so-called summer construction site, a meeting place for journeymen and those who wanted to become journeymen. What the pottery market visitors showed the day before in terms of purchasing power was exceeded that evening by dance frenzy. We had to fire out our entire repertoire of dance songs. And when the dust settled and the instruments fell silent, we were able to fall asleep under the most beautiful starry sky in the caravans provided for us.

The next morning, Benny had said goodbye again in a complicated ceremony and Tim had a dance for drunk fellows taught to him, we went on to the next goal. The Dannröder Forst is a beautiful, but unfortunately threatened by economic interests, mixed forest in a drinking water protection area near Gießen. In the middle of the route of a planned freeway extension, a protest camp was set up a year ago, which was now to be visited by us. We had to carry our equipment for half an hour through the undergrowth and defend it against raccoons and crested newts to get there. When we arrived, the police had just started clearing the barricades. Bad timing. If this damn highway had finally been finished, we would have gotten there earlier. The atmosphere was correspondingly tense when we carefully echoed a few sounds into the forest on a stage between the tree houses, directly after a protest plenary session marked by gender-sensitive language. But in fact this seemed to be exactly what some activists needed. More and more of them emerged from the corners of the forest and began to dance the stress of the day out of their limbs. After the last sound had faded away and perseverance slogans had been exchanged, we moved into our blockade beds in the tree tops, you can’t get us out of here, the Danni stays!

With all the will to resist and the unshakable determination to now dedicate our lives to the guerrilla fight against the clearing of the Danni, at some point the thirst for hot coffee and the urge for hygiene became stronger and we left the forest again through the undergrowth. Again the path was hard and arduous and this time it claimed victims. We can’t say exactly when it happened, maybe during the escape from the pack of baboons or during the following jump down the waterfall, at some point it rattled suspiciously from Tim’s double bass bag. We gathered around the bag, said a short thrusting prayer and looked in shyly and anxiously, only to retreat shortly thereafter disturbed. The fingerboard had come loose from the neck. Total loss, Tim was already saying goodbye to the band.

However, Benny put his prophetic hand on his shoulder and said, “Do not be dismayed, for I have been sent down to give hope to those in need.” The rest is again one of the many miracle healing stories we already know from Benny. Together with our friend Can in Tübingen the patient was stabilized in a sweaty operation and was then, oh miracle, ready for the concert that evening. Since we have been to Tübingen before, why not play again in the bar of the circle of wagons. We were already there a year ago and were already excited about the cozy flair and the crass sound. Thank you Can, for your renewed hospitality and all the operation tools.

Stay tuned for part two!