2004

Chill Music, May 2004

Markus Rill has long been a household name for lovers of handmade singer-songwriter music with a country flavor. The German troubadour from Würzburg with a strong Texas vein and ties to Austin and Nashville returns to Blue Rose records with his masterpiece. After three albums recorded in Germany using his band The Gunslingers and German studio pickers; Rill went to Nashville for "Hobo Dream" and recorded his first American session with well-known Nashville musician friends. Thus, a long-cherished personal dream has come true.

After many years of honing his craft in Austin, Texas, after releases that have continuously grown more professional and after having earned a huge amount of experience as a live performer solo and with the Gunslingers, Rill has reached a state where he is no longer emulating his American idols. Within the industry he is known as an artist who stands shoulder to shoulder with such giants of songwriting as James McMurtry, Steve Earle, Dave Alvin, Tom Russell und Robert Earl Keen. His stories of life on and next to the road will pass every test of Americana with flying colors.

Speaking of the road - most songs on the album deal with the pathways of life and movement: coming from somewhere, hopefully finding a place to go to, driving into another nameless town, finding a new love somewhere and losing it, being homesick and feeling wanderlust - the full spectrum of the "hobo dream". A very adequate title for a collection of tracks with self-explanatory titles like "Heartbreak Town", "Far Away From Home, "Where Do We Go From Here?", "Love Has Dragged Me Down This Road
Before", and "Roll On".

Without belittling the strengths of Rill's previous recordings, one has to come to the conclusion that these recordings from late summer 2003 in Nashville represent an enormous step forward in his career. Having a full-blooded musician like Duane Jarvis by his side is crucial. Not only has Jarvis delivered excellent guitar work; he has also acted as producer and put together a stellar cast of musicians that will look good in anybody's CD booklet: Next to Jarvis playing electric guitar as well as mandolin and slide guitar, we hear bassist Rick Plant (Allison Moorer, Buddy & Julie Miller, Amy Rigby), Drummer Billy Block (Coal Porters, Lucinda Williams, Rick Vito) and on a bunch of tracks even Steve Conn (Sonny Landreth, Bonnie Raitt, Dixie Chicks) on accordion and organ. Dave Coleman tops it off with creamy harmony vocals on top of Rill's sandpaper voice and legendary sound engineer George Bradfute (Jason Ringenberg, Webb Wilder, Paul Burch) is responsible for the record's excellent sound, giving a hand with extra guitars and keyboards and playing the wonderfully energetic guitar solo on "Not Yet Shipwrecked", the record's most appealing and hardest-rocking song - Markus Rill goes John Mellencamp.

This band played on 10 of Hobo Dream's 13 self-penned songs. The other songs were recorded in Würzburg using folk/country singer's Karen Poston's touring band consisting of such luminaries as pedal steel ace Bobby Snell and guitarist Jim Stringer (Roger Wallace, Susanna Van Tassel, Wayne Hancock). Poston herself provides background & harmony vocals. It's self-evident that these songs are the most countryfied of the bunch. The album's rounded out with a fine solo/acoustic-bonus track full of irony and humor. The "Cyberspace Love Song" ends the album John Prine/Todd Snider-style.