2006

Boulevard Würzburg (GER), April 2006

This cowboy's lonesome
Songwriter Markus Rill: Caring, abandoned, restless

He is cool. With his flannel shirt unbuttoned and a John Travolta-Grease-era hairdo, he is sitting at a wooden table that is overflowing with pens and papers and all kinds of stuff. "Sorry, it's not very tidy here. I've just come back from a three-week trip to the States", Markus Rill says. Obviously, music is the most important part of the 36-year-old's life.

His small one-room apartment - "there's some things I'm cutting back on so I can make music" - looks like a record store. The shelves are stacked with mountains of CDs, Bob Dylan records next to his own albums.

Markus Rill - a trained journalist - is a musician. A successful one. He plays guitar and sings and performs on atages everywhere - even in the USA. "We're playing a mixture of rock'n'roll, country, folk, and, blues - true and honest music with a long tradition", he says. "We" - that is he and his band, Markus Rill & The Gunslingers.

True and honest - that's how the Frankfurt-born songwriter residing in Wuerzburg would like to come across. That is why he hasn't changed his name even though it may not be the coolest imaginable rock star name. Even though Markus Rill acts nonchalant, he is anything but. His music gives him away because it is full of emotions. "I suppose I tend to write lonely songs. That's what life is like", he says.

He has been through a lot. After his parents separated, he took care of his mother until she died of cancer. These experiences have left their mark on his songs. That is also true of the songs on his new album "The Price Of Sin" which was released on April 21. "I was planning to marry an American woman and emigrate", he says as his gaze wanders restlessly around the room. But she left him and his dream fell apart. He was looking forward to moving to the US. "I have a lot of friends and acquaintances there. The musicians in this genre generally play on a higher level than the majority of German pickers, that's for sure." And American audiences immediately grasp his lyrics. "That's why it would be special to be accepted there as a stranger", he says - not for one second considering giving up on his dream.

He just came back from Austin, Tx. which is where he spent a year of his life studying American literature. And he mentions in passing that his song "Dying Bed" was one of twelve finalists out of 15,000 entries in the International Songwriting Competition. Tom Waits was one of the jurors that granted Rill an "honorable mention".

He talks about these things seemingly unimpressed. And then adds that three of his songs can be heard in American motion pictures. Very cool - just like he is when he's not making music.

Written by Ute Fiedler