2006

www.haarbueschel.blogspot.de
Written by Martin Abend, pedal steel guitarist.

Posted Friday. January 20.

After Markus watched the Townes van Zandt movie „Be Here To Love Me“, we met Berlin songwriter KC McKanzie and her bass player and drove out to Potsdam to Radio Brandenburg together. Christine Heise had invited Markus to be a guest on her show „HappySad“.

I think if I were a late night radio DJ, I could hardly imagine a nicer environment than the Radio1 studio. It’s big half-round, glass-enclosed studio in the midst of a big office where all the editor’s & sound people’s desks are located. It being so late, there were only two people left which made it all the cosier.

At about 10 pm, Markus and KC were invited into the glass studio. Markus talked about his influences and his stay in Austin, Tx. Where he’d seen an excellent concert by Townes van Zandt in 1995. Half a year later he opened a show for Townes in Wuerzburg, Germany and Townes was not in good shape. Four weeks later Townes passed away.

A live performance is an integral part of being a guest on Christine’s show. Markus had originally planned to perform “Broken Puppet” but he had injured his right index finger closing the trunk of his car outside and was bleeding profusely – which made finger picking impossible. So he played his last album’s title track, “Hobo Dream”.

All this time I sat outside of the actual studio chatting with KC’s bassist Joe Budinsky when my friend German songwriter Danny Dziuk who was to be a guest on the next show walked in.
We all sat around chatting for a little while in the small studio kitchen until Danny went on the air.

Whilst driving home through the atmospherically appropriate snow storm, Markus played some of Fred Eaglesmith’s songs on the car stereo. So far I’d only heard Eaglesmith’s name but never his music. One song hit me in particular, I suppose it’s called “Crashin’ & Burnin’”. A good man with a cool name, this Eaglesmith.

I’m stoked about tonight’s gig.

Posted Sunday. January 22.

Aw man, that was a nice gig. And that even though the PA arrived at the club way too late, one speaker kept buzzing, one of the cables was broken, the DI was broken and there was something wrong with my steel guitar. But everything worked out fine in the end.
All of my friends and a whole bunch of other people showed up and we sounded surprisingly good considering we’d only  had a single two-hour rehearsal in the afternoon. And even though I slipped up a few times, I guess it was the best concert I’ve played on pedal steel so far. Luckily I wasn’t nervous and I felt free to venture into scales & territories that I hadn’t thoroughly explore so far – and I pulled it off.

On the other hand, I am always aware of how limited my vocabulary on the steel guitar really is. I find it terribly hard to incorporate newly acquired phrases into a live performance and often find myself resorting to some of the stock licks I internalized when I started playing this instrument.

Then again, I’m always amazed that Markus really keeps getting better and better. Makes you want to smash a guitar that a guy with his talent can’t live off his music alone in this here country. Before he left on Saturday, he played me a brand-new song called "What Might've Been" that just floored me and that I consider to be one of his very best. More power to him!