Roisin and the Beards

If you haven’t seen their new you tube video, “Lightheart”,  you’re way behind. So far they’ve had more than 1000 hits! I got the chance to catch up with Roisin and Tommy of Roisin and the Beards. Here’s how it went…

M: Where are you guys from?

T: i’m originally from east london…

R: I´m originally from Dublin but I grew up in a pretty small town called Mullingar which is right bang smack in the middle of Ireland.

M: What led you to writing music rather than just playing covers?

T: i started writing songs at uni when i formed a band with friends on the same course…looking back at them now they are shocking…truly awful lyrics…i got back into writing in 2004 with a friend from back home…it just started by accident, he brought an idea for a song to me, which spurred me on the try writing again…have been writing on and off for a while now…

R: When I was a kid I wrote a lot of poetry and stories. I got a guitar for Christmas when I was 12 and started taking lessons. I wrote my first songs at 15. It´s very funny to read those back through my notebooks from those times and just cringe. I was very lucky at school to have two great English teachers – Mary Casey and Orlagh Lennon, who really encouraged me to write and I would write poems and hand them in at the staffroom for their approval. I was such a nerd! Haha! I started performing at open mics when I was 18 and had a band called Oubliette with two friends. That was when I started to really get serious about making music I guess…During my first year at uni.

M: How did the two of you meet?

R: I posted an ad on the Flowerpower Facebook page looking for musicians and Tommy´s girlfriend Anna encouraged him to contact me. I remember thinking from Tommy´s email that we had a lot of similar music tastes and I was very excited. We met at a tram stop in Plagwitz in the end and had a great session that day. Afterwards Tommy and I went for a beer and compared the lists of bands on our mp3 players. It was pretty scary how similar they were!

M: How has the “band” process developed thus far?

T: like Spinal Tap…so many drummers and line-up changes…

R: haha…yes. Tommy and I are the core of the band I guess and I think we´ve accepted that it takes sometime to get the right mix. We´ve met some great folks along the way and have a great band playing on the album which I´m very excited about.  Tommy´s girlfriend Anna has been a great help too behind the scenes both as our band photographer and also doing a lot of promotional work. She also helps us with German press texts and that kind of thing. It´s really great to have a team working on that stuff as there is really alot to do when you are trying to get a band off the ground.

M: Is the band culture different here from where you come from?

T: here it seems less competitive, in London and the surrounding areas it is always people trying to get one up on another band…there wasn’t ever much team spirit…here people seem interested in bands and a really support them as well…

R: Dublin is also a pretty tough scene. I always found people were really interested in my music there and I got a lot of encouragement from more established musicians and all that but somehow I just couldn´t get past that middle level. It may just have been timing but that was my major motivation for moving back to Leipzig to be honest. I had a feeling I could get something done here.

M: How do you see the future of the band?

R: Well we are beavering away at the album at the moment which will be out in Spring next year. We are very fortunate to have two well known and experienced local musicians working with us on the album – Tino Standhaft and Koma Kschentz. We hope to do a few shows outside of Leipzig, perhaps in Berlin and Dresden and also a little tour of Ireland. After that, who knows! I just wanna keep making music. My major goal for a long time has been this album. I just want to make these songs the best that they can be and make an album that I can stand behind and be proud of. I would love to play in Vicar Street in Dublin – one of the best venues in the country and an appearance on Jools Holland would be top of my list too. It´s not about fame. Writing is just something that I has always been innate to me and songwriting was just a step from that I guess.

M: How did you come to live in Leipzig?

T: that is a very long story…the short version is i came to teach here, and once i got a job teaching, which didn’t take long, i haven’t seen any reason to leave this city….

R: I studied German as part of my B.A. and in 3rd year we had the opportunity to study for 1 academic year at a German University. My classmates were all fighting over who would get to go to the big cities like Berlin and Munich and I just didn´t want to get involved in that. My lecturer suggested that I would like Leipzig and so I checked it out online…I saw the Leipzig tourist site which uses the slogan. Leipzig – the city of music…I had an incredible life changing year as a student and after I moved back to Dublin I drove my friends mad going on about how awesome Leipzig is…Any opportunity I had I was back in Leipzig visiting friends and then in April 2009 I was visiting my good friend Matt and I decided it was finally time to give it a go over here. At that time I had wandered into Flowerpower one night and met Tino Standhaft. We bonded over our mutual love of Neil Young and I got a great response to my songs that night. I moved back in June 2010 and I think it was the best decision I ever made in my life. I have a great group of friends here who really rally around the band and a great job that I love. I feel very lucky.

M: What are your influences?

T: my influences are very varied, as a child i listened to a lot of 50’s, 60’s and 70’s music. my dad has always had a great vinyl collection, stones, beatles, cat stevens,,, i really got into Billy Joel and Queen growing up, in the mid to late 80’s i got into a lot more guitar based music which then moved into metal, then punk and ska…now i have a real thing for folk music and story based songs. I love the decemberists, bright eyes, alela diane and mumford and sons, but i still listen to every and anything….

R: I would consider myself very eclectic too. My first memories of music are my Dad singing me to sleep with Moonshadow (Cat Stevens) and my mum bouncing around on her fitness trampoline to ´Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie a man after midnight`….My Grandad gave my parents his piano when they bought their first house. So that was my first instrument really. I just used to mess around on it and mum taught me ´Chopsticks´  (Chopin) and things like that. My dad has a really extensive music collection and I guess I grew up on Dylan,Neil Young,Joni Mitchell,Rory Gallagher among many many others. We would have Rory Gallagher nights where Dad and I would play awesome solos on our tennis racket. When I was 19 I saw a live performance from Irish band The Frames on TV and I was completely blown away. No band ever got to me like that before hand no band have since. The day after seeing that show I went out and bought two of their albums – Fitzcarraldo and Dance The Devil. They have been a huge influence on me there’s something about them that i always return to, they always have a song to suit my mood and that song can either lift me out of that mood or emphathise. the music itself always makes me a little drunk, something about the heady mix of Glen Hansard’s vocals, surging guitars, pounding drums and Colm Mac an Iomaire’s haunting violin gets me everytime.

Apart from their musical influence they continue to inspire me to keep pluggin away. They have been around for over 20 years and are now well established at home but it took them a long time to make it outside Ireland. Now in 2011 Glen Hansard has just finished a solo tour of America with Pearl Jam. I guess what they teach me is that if you want something enough and you give it your all…eventually the hard work will pay off. It might sound really cheesy but it is all about believing in yourself.

Roisin and the Beards are playing at Flower Power this evening with special guest, Lee Ellen Reed.

Lee Ellen Reed is a singer, songwriter from Massachusetts, USA. After finishing her BA degree in Anthropology and German studies over two years ago, she came to Dresden on an English teaching fellowship and decided to stay. Over the years she has been part of some bands, played some shows, and many open mics. Her style of guitar playing is non-standard – it involves a lot of finger picking, and a semi-nonconventional song structure. The “guitarring” is paired with a gentle voice (akin to Mirah, Regina Spektor, Norah Jones etc.). This year she hopes to update her myspace page with some decent recordings (among other things).

TERESE FREDENWALL Live in concert! 28 October at The English Room

The English Room are delighted to announce that the talented singer and songwriter Terese Fredenwall is going to stop in Leipzig for a concert during her Europe tour. Please come along to listen to Swedish Indie Rock/Pop in the elegant surroundings of The English Room.

When: 28 October · 20:00 - 23:00

Where: The English Room, 54 Käthe Kollwitz Strasse, 04109 Leipzig

Entrance fee: 5,-€

Terese Fredenwall is a songwriter/artist from Stockholm, Sweden. In addition to writing music for other artists (Jenny Berggren from Ace of Base and Danny Saucedo, Swedish Idol finalist and member of Sweden’s most popular boy-band, E.M.D) she has released three solo albums on her own label, Colors From My Heart, Närmare Mig (Closer To Me) and Not About The Songs . With material from her album Närmare Mig, she was nominated as one of three for the Ted Gärdestad Scholarship 2010, one of the most prestigious songwriting scholarships in Sweden.

With cutting lyrics and nerve-filled music, Terese performs on everything from street corners and pubs to concert halls and churches. As a part of the network Wings of Protection, Terese travels regularly throughout Europe to meet and play for young people living in a reality of violence, drug abuse and prostitution. Based on these themes Terese also offers lectures and concerts.

A Weekend of Sun and Music

I have a rash on my feet from wearing Wellington boots. I smell. I have sunburn on my shoulders and face and my jeans are covered in mud – clear indications of a weekend spent at a festival. It was the Highfield festival, which attracted 25,000 people from the 19^th to the 21^st of August 2011. Having run now for 13 years, the festival has become one of the biggest in Eastern Germany. The name comes from its original location at the Hohenfelden (translated: Highfield) reservoir in Thuringia. In 2010 it moved to the ‘Störmthaler See’, a lake at Großpösna near Leipzig.

Back in Hohenfelden, a key characteristic of the festival had been that it was set by a lake. With the ‘Störmthaler See’, the organizers had found a fitting replacement. However, in contrast to Hohenfelden, you could not see the lake this time. Wherever you looked, your view was blocked by food and drink stands and advertisements. The field where the stages were was surrounded by water, and this feature should be made use of next year.

Something else that needs to change in 2012 is the positioning of the two stages and the DJ music tent. The stages were too close and faced the same direction. When two bands played at the same time a considerable amount of the audience could only make out an undistinguishable mix. For those in the back, the music from the tent added to the cacophony.

But enough of the criticism: the Highfield 2011 was very successful in that it stayed dry, at least for most of the time. Apart from one or two artists on Sunday morning, no one had to play in the rain. This year, the festival presented 58 acts. Many were familiar to the Highfield: Jimmy Eat World appeared at the festival for the third time and were as sweet and likeable a music group as possible. The Donots had played in 2004, and hip hop artist Dendemann – an act that solely consists of stolen music paired with pointless, superfluous lyrics, which people seem to like nonetheless – gave a reprise from his 2009 gig. Having also performed at the Highfield before, the two Irish-American folk punk bands, Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphys, brought with them a large, young fan base that were not too embarrassed to dance. And both headliners, Foo Fighters and Seeed, are old hands at energizing the Highfield festival crowd.

The legendary Foo Fighters were the last gig of the entire festival. From their set not one hit song was missing: among others they played ‘Pretender’, ‘My Hero’ and ‘Everlong’. After sixteen years, the band has perfected its performance without appearing coldly professional – they obviously still burn for their music. The singer Dave Grohl was a charming narrator between the songs. ‘These Days’ he announced as one of his favourite tunes. He explained that he had planned to say something meaningful before the song started, but all he could think about was why the Jägermeister bar in front of the stage was raised 30 metres into the air by a crane. He wondered why you would do something like that, when you can drink it on the ground. Their gig met all expectations, including flares in the audience and a man running on stage, who was tackled only shortly before he reached Grohl, who simply said: ‘See you later, man.’

One of the few bands that were new to the festival was 30 Seconds to Mars, fronted by the good-looking American actor Jared Leto. The band was the last gig on Saturday and followed (partly overlapped with) Skunk Anansie on the other stage. Their show was big, but the music was mediocre and Leto’s arrogance was not as entertaining as it was meant to be. Even though fans of 30 Seconds to Mars loved the concert, if you had not been a fan of the band before you certainly were not one afterwards.

The band also could not compete with Skunk Anansie, one of the most successful UK music groups of the 1990s. But since the group had disbanded in 2001 and only reformed two years ago, the organizers apparently thought it safer to appoint the younger 30 Seconds to Mars as headliner of the day. However, the latter lost against an unbelievably energetic performance by Skunk Anansie. The band was wonderfully loud, the singer Skin wore a black glitter suit and was able to appear intimidating and fragile at the same time. They played ‘Because of You’, ‘Charlie Big Potato’ and started with ‘Yes, it’s Fucking Political’.

Skunk Anansie kept the undivided attention of their audience. Skin asked: ‘If I come down there and jump with you, will you promise to take care of me?’ She had an impressive control over the crowd. She went down and made thousands of people kneel down with her for the quiet intro of the song ‘Little Baby Swastika’. As soon as the heavy guitar riffs came in, everyone started jumping and Skin was in the middle of it all.

When you first arrive at a festival and it’s raining, when you are having difficulties falling asleep, when you have to queue to use a dirty, stinking portable toilet, you might ask yourself whether a festival is worth it. As you drive off, however, you reconsider: the rain, the smell, the cold were not that bad and they are not what you will remember. Instead, I will think of the wonderful performances by Skunk Anansie, Foo Fighters and Jimmy Eat World and recall lying on the grass listening to The Kooks, Interpol and Panic at the Disco. I will remember the Jägermeister-bar on the crane, the jumping and dancing in a crowd and singing along to the music on stage.

As soon as I left, I started to think about what bands should play next year …