Hiya folks,
woohoo, the year is off to a great and busy start.
Let me recap first.
Just got back from a turbulent and exciting tour of England. The Gunslingers rhythm section of Felix Himmler and Clemens Noelle and I ventured into England to play some shows with L.A. songstress Anny Celsi. We had some really wonderful gigs in Liverpool, London, and Chelmsford, good gigs in Manchester and Swindon, a fun time at the BBC in Swindon, and bad bad travel karma.
Aside from a plane crash, our traveling was pretty much ruled by Murphy's Law. Road blocks galore, a car broken into, a minor accident, the London subway not working on our only day off ... let me just say that driving on the wrong side of the road was the least of our problems.
But all in all we had a great time with Anny and the wonderful helping hands we met on the road (Mark in Liverpool, Ian in Chelmsford, Andy at The Beehive, Oliver in Manchester ... thank you all so much).
Got more travel plans. This Saturday, Feb 10, I'm looking forward to playing the Licca Lounge in Landsberg/Lech accompanied by the wonderful Robert Hasleder. Marybeth D’Amico will open and probably sit in on some songs.
And on Friday, Feb 16, I'm flying over to the US to record some new stuff in Nashville, play lots of shows at the Folk Alliance Conference in Memphis, TN. as well as some Nashville shows (the Bluebird!) and some things in conjunction with SXSW in Austin, TX. Should be a fun trip with lots of great music. I'll try to keep you posted and regale you with some stories from the road if I can make my new laptop wireless gizmo work.
More news: My song "The Price You Pay For Sin" won 1st prize in the Narrative Song Competition. Woohoo!
"Me & Bonnie Parker" made it into the finals of what is arguably the mother of all song contests, the International Songwriting Competition. 14,000 songs were entered, Tom Waits, Jerry Lee Lewis, Rosanne Cash, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Robert Smith of The Cure and Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls are on the most impressive judge's panel. I'm very happy I made it into the finals two years in a row ... and I'm competing with my good friends Duane Jarvis and Sunny Sweeney in the Americana category. Y'all can even vote for me in the people's choice award but I won't be angry at you if you vote for DJ, Sunny or the great Greg Trooper, finalist in the Folk category.
Greg and I were also finalists in the South Florida Folk Songwriter Competition. Neither of us won.
Oh, and a record that I'm on has just been released. It's called "Sideburner" by Dennis Schütze and it features some of those abandoned tracks we recorded for the ill-fated "Los Solitary Men" CD that never was. I produced and played on "Jolene" sung by Sunny Sweeney, play guitar on Sunny's duet with Dennis on "Jackson" and duet with Dennis on "Understand Your Man/Don't Think Twice".
Do check out some new new articles and some photos from England coming soon.
Hope to see y'all along the way,
Markus
