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TRAD II TOUR 2004

Hubert von Goisern: Live in Neumarkt - 9th July 2004

11th July 2004 | Photos: © Alps Coliseum
Hubert and Arnulf

More photos at www.alpscoliseum.it

Goisern songs in the saltworks

OÖ-Seitenblicke September 2004 | Photos: © Salinen AG
Hubert von Goisern

The Hubert von Goisern concert in the old Ebensee saltworks was well attended. The artist gave his best with his famous songs about dumplings, shepherdesses and chamois - before about 2000 people and in front of an impressive backdrop. Because a 12 metre high and 30 metre in diameter mountain of salt was heaped up behind the stage, weighing 4000 tonnes and playing all the colours. This colourfulness was also well suited to the evening which was flamboyant in every respect, with its varied audience, among them Saline marketing director Paul Rettenbacher, as well as his colleague from Gmundner Milch, Michael Waidacher and many more.

Hubert von Goisern: Live in Ebensee - 10th July 2004

15th July 2004 | Photos: © Elli Christl

Hubert's home game

Salzkammergut Rundschau July 2004 | Photo: HÖR
Hubert von Goisern in the Salzlagerhalle

Ebensee. Hubert von Goisern completed his "home concert" in the Salzkammergut for the album Trad II before an impressive backdrop of a mountain of salt dazzling in every colour and 2000 enthusiastic fans in the Salzlagerhalle.

Preparations at the Ebensee Saltworks

9th July 2004 | Photo: © Paul Rettenbacher
Salzlagerhalle 2

Salzlagerhalle 2, Saline Ebensee

Hubert von Goisern: Live in Munich - 7th July 2004

10th July 2004 | Photos: © Elli Christl

Hubert von Goisern in Düsseldorf

Soundbase Online 28th April 2004 | Text: SB

It is said that yodelling expels evil spirits - phew! ... if that's right, Hubert von Goisern is guaranteed to begin performing his work in Düsseldorf with the archaic 'n Kohler seiner. That would also fit his thesis, that he performs a type of "exorcism" when he breathes new life into the old folk tunes of his homeland - with the tradition of which he does not have a stress-free relationship - with immense joy in experimentation and "dusts off and plays these songs [he is] fond of".

Insulted on the quiet as a traitor by traditionalists and protectors, the Goiserer insists on exchanging the folk-typical instruments like zither and dulcimer with slide guitar, bagpipes and percussion - to name just a few of the plucked, string, brass and rhythm instruments. In this way he attaches a fine-mesh net which transforms a bright conglomerate made of alpine folk paired with blues and jazz harmonies, country and pop elements.

With Max Lässer (strings), Bernd Bechtloff (drums), Arnulf Lindner (basses) and Monika Drasch (violin, vocals), the exceptional artist Goisern has gathered together a combo who, with successful instrumentation and excellent musical translation, create a unusual kind of groove-ordered chaos that can't be pigeonholed. Despite the variety, the compositions do not seem overloaded, but unobtrusive - unusual and familiar at the same time.

Max Lässer is enthroned casually between his twelve guitars, which crowd around him like subjects and when it is appropriate are true to service, to intersperse a slide solo and thus spread a breath of Caribbean or country.

In the chamois song, Hubert waltzes happily into the mountain with his accordion like a scallywag on the swing. He presents his Trad - here the name is only partly programme - as a homage with a wink to musical roots of his homeland, rooted with dry comments between the songs.

When my senses are not totally clouded, Bernd Bechtloff - who mercilessly converts everything that comes to hand into a rhythm instrument - hits the beat to the pub country dance Da Insrige with a hand (or a bush?) of durum wheat noodles, fitting for the clever line "Nudel in da Brüah" ("noodles in the soup"). Incidentally, you shouldn't take the lyrics all too seriously, but nevertheless even HvG himself asks with such profundities, which mushrooms the poets and philosophers of the time must have smoked in order to come up with such rubbish. The arbitrary lines nevertheless offer the listener a boundless area for their very own strange fantasies and interpretations.

Then time is ripe for my absolute favourite Abend Spat, with which, according to Hubert, you never know how it will turn out live. From whimsical, almost meditative-sounding percussion impressions and wistful yodels, you believe yourself to be lured into a (please) never-ending time loop. The atmosphere intensifies and when you are ready/high to let yourself in on the highly creative arrangements and experimental sounds, you soon feel like Alice in Wonderland in her space spiral - totally without mushrooms.

Nevertheless: as measured by their performance the Düsseldorfers stay quite tame and hard to lure from their reserve - if at all, then with the mocking yodel, which is imitated so abysmally by the audience that it is also abandoned by all the good spirits.

Fortunately, the joy of playing on stage remains unaffected. Conclusion short and sweet: Hubert von Goisern's interpretations pep up the musty songs from past centuries like bright dabs of paint do an alpine whitewashed wall!

Hubert von Goisern: Live in Karlsruhe - 6th July 2004

7th July 2004 | Photos: © Winfried Reinhardt | www.reinhardt-fotografie.de

Chamber music, far from any Musikantenstadl nonsense, one biographer called Hubert von Goisern's music. Along with his extremely capable musicians, who time after time save the traditional element of folk music from tipping into snack bar bliss with their own groove, he inspired the fans in the sold-out festival tent.

Hubert von Goisern: Live in Jena - 12th March 2004

29th June 2004 | Photos: © Chris Wohlfeld

BarFuss 2004 Festival am See

Exclusiv 24th June 2004 | Text: Silvia Abderhalden

[...] The Festival am See was the fourth open air on this tour for Hubert von Goisern and his band, the first three open airs were rainy or very cold. To the delight of the band, the weather show its most beautiful and summer warm side in Bregenz.

Markus Linhart, mayor of Bregenz, greeted Hubert von Goisern, his band and the guests with friendly, humorous words. BarFuss 2004, the rows were full, the audience from Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the principality of Liechtenstein were thrilled.

Violin, harmonica, guitar, accordion and percussion create an unrestrained mix of styles and everything fits together and blends into this "special kind" of folk music. Hubert von Goisern secured the full attention of his listeners with an atmospheric, moving programme. It clicked right after the first song, the audience were delighted, there was plentiful applause.

Hubert von Goisern is on tour with a programme of only folk songs. Traditional melodies, yodel melodies, instrumental pieces. Africa, South America, Asia and the Dachstein massif seem to lie right next to one another. Hubert von Goisern - a wonderful once in a lifetime summer concert.

Hubert von Goisern: Live in Innsbruck - 12th June 2004

20th June 2004 | Photos: © Elli Christl

A rock in the surf, a pearl in the muck

Leipziger Volkszeitung 14th June 2004 | Text: Friedrich Pohl

Sometimes you can also overdo it with green. The violin in iridescent green, the jumper in still acceptable army forest green and a soft, but dark moss green shimmers from the corners of the accordion too. Perhaps a bit too much of a good thing, even though Hubert von Goisern, for years a known Green sympathiser, may have accepted the recent projection of the European elections with a certain goodwill. But Europe here, England versus France there, on evenings like these too, the world-travelled bard doesn't stop giving a concert at the well-attended Parkbühne.

With him he brings only traditional songs (taken from his recent Trad albums), which despite all sympathy for the Austrian, offer few or no starting points for pop discourses in this part of the world. But they don't need to either, after von Goisern has long been above all doubts, wandering placidly through the world in order to find his roots. Since language barriers don't really need to be broken down, much more is explained, that drug use and folk melodies have always gone around together, because "these lyrics don't come from schnapps alone". Von Goisern tips mushrooms and tries to explain the next refrain - in vain, but charming.

The whole thing is somehow reminiscent of a matured Johnny Cash. Goisern also couldn't care less about the conventional genre-populism and feels out the depths of his native sounds with stoic peace and almost provocative slowness. His band is exquisite and patient enough, they gladly do without all similar paraphernalia and sensuously follow the master with quiet admiration. Rustical things as intoxication, melancholy as meditation.

You can, but do not have to automatically understand, love, internalise this music; but pay a whole lot of respect to probably the truest of all modern protagonists. A rock in the surf, a pearl in the muck. Oh, if only there were more like him.

Hubert von Goisern: Live in Graz - 10th June 2004

13th June 2004 | Photos: © Peter Palme

Yodel rocker delights the audience

Freie Presse 6th June 2004 | Text: nes

Plauen. Whoever meets someone in the next few days who is absentmindedly yodelling can be certain: it's one of the good one thousand people who went to the open air concert with dialect rocker Hubert von Goisern on Saturday evening, organised by the Malzhaus. Probably barely any of the dubious folk musicians know how to yodel so coolly and in a manner so compatible with the scene. In view of the surging crowd, you could almost fear that yodelling will be "in".

In around 700 seats, old and young, representatives of traditional drinking songs with chamois tufts and traditional jackets, as well as girls and boys in cargo jeans crowded in front of the open air stage. Hubert von Goisern proved that you can rip even Austrian folk music from its pigeonhole - when you have a portion of charm and cryptic wit, fantastic musicians and an intelligent concept.

He adds the necessary sound to his songs, which have their roots in traditional lyrics and melodies, with electric guitars, violin, flutes, bass and accordion, in order to creep into the people's ear. It naturally delights, "even though nothing is understood", as the musician remarks with a smile.

Because even if you decode the dialect, a load of hillbilly absurdities remain, like in the lyrics where a liver dumpling is fighting with a semolina dumpling. In any case, this kind of humour worked on the people of Plauen, as they enthusiastically cheered the musician and his band.

Hubert von Goisern: Live in Bregenz - 9th June 2004

10th June 2004 | Photos: © Elli Christl

Hiatamadl danced in Leoben

Kleine Zeitung 5th June 2004 | Text: Andreas Schöberl

Fascinating amalgam of folk songs and international rhythm: Hubert von Goisern

"Just imagine, the sun is coming. From there!" says Hubert von Goisern with a smirk to the thickly muffled up fans under their umbrellas at the Leoben Hauptplatz. And points behind himself on the stage to his four member band.

And in fact: when the man from Austria, "but not really from Upper Austria" reaches to the keys of his squeezebox, the bad weather is immediately forgotten. He noticeably draws the audience under his spell with charming little stories. Hubert has stage presence. No question.

The musician who has meanwhile washed with all international sounds and rhythms unites old folk songs with bagpipes, Jews' harp, Max Lässer's bluesy slide guitar and the bewitching sounds from drummer Bernd Bechtloff's rich arsenal of percussion in captivating manners.

Crystal clear

Singer Monika Drasch occasionally lets her vocal chords swing with Hubert von Goisern in a goosebump-inducing, unbelievably fast duet - crystal clear like a deep, lightning-blue mountain lake somewhere in the Salzkammergut. The amalgam of rock, reggae and unround rhythms from folk music melt to a consistent whole with Hubert von Goisern, without ever seeming cramped or false. At the end, the call for Hiatamadl is loud. Sure enough it is heard - although only after a pause for effect.

It continues behind the Hausberg

Südkurier 4th May 2004 | Text: Harald Ruppert | Photo: Schall

Hubert von Goisern in the GZH in Friedrichshafen - Hut music for the global village

Hubert von GoisernHow do you recognise a cosmopolitan? By the fact that wherever he goes, the homeland sticks to his heels. In order to settle in other places, you must also know where you came from. Nobody knows better than Hubert Achleitner: He comes from Goisern in the Dachstein region, and in the past years, he has travelled half the world. Tibet, India, Tanzania, as well as Egypt lay in his way and he has fused the musical cultures of these countries with his "alpine rock".

In the meantime, Hubert von Goisern has completely returned to his alpine nest again, you notice that in his concert in Friedrichshafen. "Did you know beforehand that I'm just playing folk songs?" he asked the sold-out hall. Folk songs, yes, but what folk songs! From Hubert von Goisern's hut music speaks the knowledge that that horizon does not end at the Hausberg. A great deal of irony is within the pithy packaging of the old Austrian folk tunes: Goisern plays the professional still more professionally what is handed down already is anyway. His band sets cracking chords with guitar, bass and drums and reaches two different things: they break open the doggedness, with which the guild of serious folk musicians repel any "dilution" of tradition and on the other hand, they avoid offering stifling folksy longing a goal.

A musician must create free space in order to express himself in the old songs. Hubert von Goisern has managed that: he waltzes at ease across the stage with his accordion strapped on and celebrates the backwoods exotic nature of his Styrian dialect with devilish joy.

A folklore which must mark itself off from fresh influences from outside, circles in a prison of paranoia and must die sooner or later. Hubert von Goisern unlocks the cage door when the ringing yodel sounds out and is replaced by a lap steel, without it resulting in a breach. No matter whether harmonica blues or pogo punk now combine with rural pieces, Goisern is always an inspired craftsman who worked on the seams between the styles with the finest sandpaper and as such brings something new out: namely a folklore which reaches beyond the borders of the villages, which is what "the others" make, not suspiciously examined, but taken up curiously and grown to.

This extension of alpine folklore is at the same time an defamiliarisation, which alone is not yet sufficiently explained with the desire of new sounds. It becomes strikingly clear when Goisern takes hold of the flugelhorn and dresses a heart-rending folk song in flitting jazz. At the end, when the ebullient applause has faded, he says dryly: "That was Hitler's favourite piece. I asked myself: Can I play that?" Hubert von Goisern certainly may. Because he gives himself up to the history.

Hubert von Goisern: Live in Friedrichshafen - 2nd May 2004

8th May 2004 | Photos: © Elli Christl

Alpine folklore without folksiness

Weser Kurier April 2004 | Text: André Hesel

Hubert von Goisern in the Glocke

The multi-instrumentalist Hubert von Goisern who yodelled to hard rock in the 90s with his Original Alpinkatzen and last impressed everyone in Bremen eighteen months ago with an alpine world pop music, has "meanwhile" released two notable albums, which he now presents completely for the first time. With a five member band, the Austrian presents his Trad albums with courageous new arrangements of traditional alpine folklore.

And so the circle closes: Von Goisern's way from alpine rocker via world music to the Austrian folk song results in a round, coherent picture at the two and a half hour appearance in the sold-out Glocke. With the possibilities for rock and pop music on one hand and experiences from African to Oriental folk on the other, von Goisern has found an eager, but cautious way to his own roots.

A way of the traditions is renewed, but no trends are sacrificed. The dusted off Styrians, yodels, Schottische or satirical songs between chamber music and rocky plumbed depths have nothing at all of frumpy folksiness. Lightly rockily roughed up and brushed the wrong way with elements of country music (in the meantime however, pop, jazz, ethno and Alpinkatzen songs are also to be discovered), they seem amazingly fresh, ethnic and almost a little wild - even if this "Hubert unplugged" clearly comes across as calmer than before.

The richly-facetted, transparent sound, which the variable instrumentation makes possible, is marvellous. Besides von Goisern's accordion and harmonica, guitar, flute and trumpet, the band is most versatile in arrangement and sound characteristics with Arnulf Lindner (acoustic and double bass), Monika Drasch (violin, flute, bagpipes, accordion), Max Lässer (acoustic, slide and electric guitars, lap steel and mandolin) and Bernd Bechtloff (drums, percussion). Von Goisern, who is an outstanding entertainer with brittle humour, breathes life into the songs in the style of a folk music renovator. Pithy explanations of the not always understandable lyrics form the stories and thus make the whole concert three dimensional.