Crippled Deer Sessions

One-shot live sessions filmed through the lense of an analog Yashica-D midformat camera.

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BECCA LEIGH - CHINA BLUE

Becca Leigh is one of those undiscovered artist, that just need to be found. And soon! For now the young woman from Charleston, South Carolina, has only put out one EP and a couple of other songs. Her music seems to be connected to traditional folk, but it still has a contemporary vibe. „I try to listen to as many different kinds of music as I can. The more diverse my music collection is, the bigger my palette is when it comes to creating my own sound“, says Leigh, who calls Solange, St. Vincent and Joni Mitchell some of her female musical idols. „So while I do listen to a lot of traditional singer-songwriter type music, I’m inspired by everything from R&B to electro-pop to punk.“

Recently you returned from a short tour through Germany. How was it? It was great, of course. There were points throughout when I thought I had to be crazy - like what am I doing playing folk songs I wrote to a whole bunch of strangers in Germany? But I had a wonderful time. I went into it with almost no expectations, which I think was the right way to approach my first solo international tour.

Can you please describe the main differences between a typical show in South Carolina and the experiences you made in Germany? Where I live in South Carolina there aren’t very many listening spaces. Normally when I play a show, it’s at a bar or a rock and roll club, and maybe a third of the people there actually care about the live music. It’s especially difficult to play quiet music in a live setting. I had heard that audiences in Germany were great, but nothing prepared me for almost completely silent audiences at every single show. It was so affirming and maybe a little unnerving to have crowds of people attentively listening to my songs.

What was the first thing that you did, when you came back home? What did you miss the most? Well the actual first thing I did was eat an absurd amount of barbecue. I really worked up an appetite sitting on all those trains and planes. But I was really riled up about music when I got back, so I started recording demos for my album, planning for future shows, and writing new material. I can’t think of anything I particularly missed while I was gone. Except you, Mom.

»Fields«, »Garden Bed«, »The River«. Many of your songs refer to nature or use certain metaphors. Are you a »child of nature«? Probably. I do often find solace in nature. Modern life is full of constant distractions, so being close to nature helps me think. I also find that sometimes experiences with natural phenomena leave us with feelings we can’t necessarily explain. I’m drawn to the mysterious, and I have a hard time explaining any of my feelings, so I write songs about them.

What are your plans for the near future? When do we get an Album? I’m planning on starting and hopefully finishing the recording process for my album in the next few months. I’m really excited because I think recording is an absolute blast. So stay tuned for more news about that soon, including a possible pre-order I have in the works.

Follow Becca Leigh on Facebook and visit her homepage.

https://www.facebook.com/beccaleighmusic/ http://www.beccaleighmusic.com/

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VIKINGS IN TIBET - MIDDAY MOON

Vikings in Tibet are not in a rush. This four piece band based in Groningen likes to let things evolve. They started out as an intimate bedroom project, initiated by brothers Marijn and Jeppe Gooskens, and slowly grew into a full band when Joe Wilcox and Nils de Jonge joined them. And just like that the first songs came to be. For a while the first few bars of "Midday Moon" were just a warm-up tune that they would play during rehearsals and soundchecks. After playing it over and over, adding more parts and lyrics, it gradually unfolded into what is now a great example for Vikings in Tibet’s rich and voluminous sound.

Your band name is taken from an Aldous Huxley quote. Your lyrics are very visual and reflect your description as "Cinematic Indie". Please elaborate. Where do you draw inspiration from? We enjoy picturing the kind of scenery that Hermann Hesse's stories take place in. So it's no wonder most of our images and metaphors are about the natural world. We share out the "burden" of writing lyrics, but our various states of mind seem to reflect nicely in those terms. Nature is both powerful and vulnerable, and seems destined to conflict with modern times. A similar clash of elements happens to take place in our music: a dry, rhythmic pulse is surrounded by spacious, atmospheric sounds. Our name encapsulates these collisions of contrasting worlds... which is lucky, as we simply chose it because it's a nice name.

For the Melodica Festival in Groningen you stripped down your songs to acoustic versions and added some violins and a cello. How did that come to be and is there anything you prefer about reduced folkier shows? Ever since we started as a band, we've had a split personality: we love doing both full electric shows and stripped-down folky shows. In a semi-acoustic set, we are able to play songs that wouldn't fit in our 'full band' set - and vice versa. It's nice to be able to do both. As for the strings, we added a lot of colour to the record by using a Mellotron. For the release of "Alchemy Ave.", we decided to bring those Mellotron parts to life by having an actual string quartet join us on stage. The reactions were great, and we soon decided we wanted try it for a stripped-down show as well. That worked magically - maybe even a little better than on the album.

What are your further plans for this year in terms of music? We are currently writing and recording songs for a new album. Also, we'll be releasing a new single in January, which will be featured on the next "Down by the Water" folk sampler. We plan on doing our first international tours in 2018.

Listen to Vikings in Tibet’s debut album “Alchemy Ave” and follow them via facebook and their homepage.

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MEADOWS - YOU NEVER KNOW

Örebro sounds like a dream name for a swedish city. It was there where at the age of 16 Christoffer Wadensten started playing guitar and quickly began touring bars playing covers. A couple of years later he is a well received folk artist under the moniker Meadows with over 40.000 followers on facebook. "Going to a Peter Gabriel Concert in Berlin some years ago changed the way I view music." explains Wadensten "I realized it's important. There's a very raw power in it. For me other disciplines of art, like visual, poetry, dance, drama have to travel much further and often through my head to reach me. Music is like a battering ram that just punches its way in." Meadows intimate music itself sounds nothing like a loud battering ram, but quiet, soft and sometimes dark.  

Last year your song "The Only Boy Awake" got featured on the Netflix show "13 Reasons Why". Please tell us a little about how that came to be and what has changed since then. I'm not completely sure how it happened. But I got an email from Hollywood a week after the release of the EP. I thought it was spam at first, but after doing some background check on the person that sent it I realized it was real. I think they just found me on iTunes. Probably they have people scanning for newly released indie folk music from Scandinavia or something.  The EP was already doing pretty good before the series came out in March this year. My label What We Call did an amazing job with it. But that really pushed it further and opened a lot of new doors. It ended up on top 50 on the iTunes charts in USA, UK, Australia, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland and Taiwan. It got picked for some of Spotify's major playlists and made Spotify's viral 50 charts in UK, Brazil, Taiwan, Malaysia and even #1 in Australia. The record is still streaming about 30,000 times a day and the song they used is closing in on 6 million streams. Also seeing my Facebook page grow from about 3,000 followers to over 40,000 of course means that I have a better platform to start from when I release my next record. This also means that I'm getting invitations to new countries and festivals, which is my main focus. I love to play live. So I'm very happy for that.

Your band name used to be Meadows Ever Bleeding. Why did you decide to change it? Band names are difficult! It was a duo from the start and that name came from my friend. After going on solo I never really felt comfortable with the name. If you play introspective solemn music you really don't help yourself by keeping a super pretentious name I think. Also it's virtually impossible for anyone to remember.

On facebook you simply state your influences as "Water". With a band name like yours and song titles like "Moonlight" and "Red Sand" you seem to draw a lot of inspiration from nature. Do you have specific go-to-spots to get inspired? And what else do you draw inspiration from? I do find inspiration there. I grew up on the east coast and spent a lot of my summers in the archipelagos of the Baltic sea. Also inland Sweden is basically one big forest with some houses scattered around so I always spent a lot of time in the woods. Right now I live in a very flat part of the country with a nature park just around the corner. I walk out to a lake there there almost every evening. There's silence and beauty there that allows you to dive inside without distractions. But most of my songs come from just processing life -  relationships, fears, joys, love, sorrows, politics, secrets etc. I don't consider myself a storyteller, it's mostly about my own experience of moving around in this world.

Follow Meadows on facebook.

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HOWLING AND THE MOON - AFTER THE FIRE

Howling and The Moon are one of those bands hat you just stumble upon by accident. Three guys in their fourties from the small dutch village Nij Bets who like to play some folky music. Needless to say that their band’s facebook page only has 115 followers. “The three of us have different backgrounds in music, from jazz to punk to gospel to krautrock", singer and guitarist Ype Jager explains. “Somewhere in the middle we come together and produce what we procuce.” A recipe that sounds really easy and in the case of Howling and The Moon produces wonderful folk and blue grass tunes full of death, love and misery.

You seem to enjoy collaborating with other musicians, being accompanied by Hetta from Town Of Saints and Blue Eskimo in your session. What do you like about sharing your songs with others in that way? Music is all about sharing. To find ourselves making music with people like Heta, Suze and Melle is a great privilige for us

What were the songs and musicians that inspired you? Where to begin. I've been inspired all my life by so many different kinds of music and sounds, there's no telling. But regarding the songs I write nowadays I'll drop some names: Charlie Parr, Trampled By Turtles, Black Twig Pickers.

What are your further plans for 2017 in terms of music? Finally getting our first CD out. Writing new stuff. Keep on sharing, basically.

Follow Howling and The Moon on Facebook.

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BERNHARD EDER - THE LAST WALTZ

It was supposed to be part of my album “Post Breakup Coffee”, but it didn't work out. So I had this unfinished recording on my hard drive, for another four years until I got that Email about the second edition of the compilation “Down by the Water”, and that was it! When I got the option to do a song for Crippled Dear Sessions during Melodica Cologne I asked the wonderful Roosmarijn to sing backing vocals and we did it in one take, backstage. By the way, it's no waltz. The title is because it was the last song which was written for “Post Breakup Coffee” - the chapter concludes with that very last part.

For your album “Remake” you recorded new interpretations of songs. How did you know which songs to pick?

Some of the ideas just came  out of nothing, others were kind of requests from people, for example “I feel you” (Depeche Mode). And there are versions that I'd had in my head for years, or even already recorded. “Tonight tonight” (Smashing Pumpkins) for example had been released in 2012 on a compilation „Death to the 90s“ and was remixed for “Remake”.

In November you will release a live album based on "Remake" called “Remodel”. How do the songs change in the live set up?

“Remodel” is more a counterpart to „Remake“, with different coverversions that I wanted to release, but only performed live - for example Nick Drake's “Place to be”, which was one of my encores for many, many shows. So, there're only three songs from “Remake” on “Remodel”, and all of them were presented with special guests “Fräulein Hona” (a four-piece-Girlgroup from Vienna), so they got different arrangements.

Make sure to catch Bernhard Eder while he’s still on tour and follow him on facebook.

05.10. Weltempfänger Backpacker Hostel & Café / Köln (D) 06.10. Hauskonzert / Kassel (D) 13.10. Getreidegasse / Salzburg 14.10. Vinyl & Music Festival Linz

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RABEA - WHAT ABOUT

“What About” is the first song I ever wrote. I remember driving home on my bike after a concert with a former band of mine, happy because everything went well and fully motivated to write more music, when I had the idea of that bass line to “What About”. The rest went very fast, as if the song was already in my head, and within a week I had  finished the first demo recording of “What About”.

When and how did you start to play music? Was there some kind of pivotal moment? Music was always part of our family life, because everyone would play one or more instruments and we would sing a lot together. I started playing cello at the age of six, after my parents pushed me to choose the cello instead of the violin – and now I’m very happy they did! Piano, organ, accordion, choir singing followed, always with a classical focus. Unfortunately, I didn´t think about writing my own music during my time at the university. After finishing my studies I played and wrote more and more pop music.

You are playing with the band Leaves & Trees but also solo. Was it difficult to go solo? Leaves & Trees, the band around Linda Rum and my own music are my three main projects. At first, I was very shy to show my songs to other people and I’m still very nervous when I perfom my songs. But it’s always worth it and I’m glad that I have people around me who support me and are also into playing my music with me.

What are your further plans for this year in terms of music. My band and I will soon release a video of a live session we recorded a few months ago and I’m really excited about it. And we are about to plan band tour for January 2018. But before that, I’ll be touring with “Leaves & Trees” in October/November and again with Linda in December sharing the stage with “Ida Wenøe” and “Kid Dakota”.

What’s the best thing about coming home after tour? My bed!

Follow Rabea via facebook.

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SVAVAR KNUTUR - TRUE LOVE WILL FIND YOU IN THE END

There are few songwriters as industrious as Svavar Knutur. The artist from Iceland is almost constantly on the road, touring Europe with his catchy folk songs and even more entertaining stories. Concerts are more to him but just a live performance of music: "It's a communion with people seeking community, stories, perspective and love."

Why did you choose a song by Daniel Johnston for our session? It’s one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard. The lyrics and the melody are just so perfect together and the message is wonderful. I’ve heard many different versions of it, some more complicated than others, but I’ve always preferred the simplest possible approach to that sweet song.

What makes his music and art special for you? I adore Daniel Johnston, not least for his grasp of the human condition and his raw and unprotected emotional expression. He’s struggled with mental illness all his life, but his songwriting reveals a sensitive soul, a brave human being that has so many problems, but keeps striving for beauty and love, and is not afraid of exposing his vulnerabilities. For me, that is one of the biggest role models in my life.

Please describe, what made you start to play music in the first place. Was there some kind of pivotal moment? I was always a musical child and teenager, but I never believed I could make music or be a songwriter. I always looked up to songwriters and musicians, but Icelandic society, when I was a boy, bred shame and self loathing into the soul of young kids from the countryside that had artistic ambitions. When I came to the capital of Reykjavík, I was shunned and ridiculed by the arty kids for being a country boy and it threw me even further off the trajectory. I thought I should just stick to what was accepted for a young man of my background and become a journalist or something like that. However, I had a big trauma in my late teens that slowly made it clear to me that I had to pursue artistic expression if I wanted to reclaim and preserve my sanity. Slowly, I built up a career as a musician and a songwriter and now, twenty years later, I’ve finally blossomed into the insignificant little flower that I am and I love it.

You are performing on a variety of stages, from churches to clubs and bars, but are always coming back to house shows.  What makes a good house show special? Oh, so many things can make a house show special. But the hosts and their approach to the whole thing, how they prime the event and how they receive the guests, is paramount. A well primed audience, ready and open for new experiences is just a paradise for an artist.

What was the most extraordinary stage or room that you played? I really can’t say, there are so many different beautiful places and so many memories and I don’t like to prefer one concert over others. But there was definitely one in the Rosehip Cottage near Glasgow, last December, that was super awesome. Where I sang Icelandic christmas music and some of my own songs. The electricity went out for a couple of minutes while I was playing and the candles just did their beautiful work. I think that did wonders for our connection and community. Also, the food was out of this world.

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HANNAH TOLF - ROCK

"I started singing HipHop and R'n'B first, I just loved the rhythms and melodies", says singer and composer Hannah Tolf. "It wasn't until I went to a jazz concert with the vocalist Miriam Aida that I really started understanding my own way of feeling music. How it makes me travel." Today Hannah is performing and recording with a variety of bands and projects. The artist from Gotheburg in Sweden likes to explore and improvise when it comes to music and voices. Make sure to listen to her eerie Folk record "The Park" from three years ago!

You recorded the album „The Park“ with a three piece band. It seems to reflect a dark Folk and some jazzy notes. What kind of styles inspired this music? I’ve always been inspired by different folk music and spiritual music so for "The Park" I heard inside of me some mexican and arabic tones, the feeling I get from flamenco, blues, soul and the energy from different ritualistic music. Special for "The Park" is also that I used sounds from surroundings I recorded during my journeys. I listen to a lot of alternative music and I just love the sound and compositions by for example Lhasa de Sela and Patrick Watson and most of all I always get a lot of inspiration by the musicians around me, the people I play with.

Another project of yours is Soil Collectors, an experimental outfit. Please tell us a little bit about them. Soil Collectors just love experimenting and through that we develope and we’re challenged to broaden our understanding. We use improvisation as a tool to get deeper into the now and what we’re expressing together and in ourselves. We develope our inner shapes and colors through making videos together with filmmaker Donovan von Martens and experiment with our own bodies with paint, clay and movement. We also have a beautiful project with the dancer Ingeborg Zackariassen where we’re interpret "The Methamorphosis" by Franz Kafka

How do you find the time to combine all the different projects? In all projects we try to scedule our working periodes as much as we can. And when it’s difficult to find time I try to live after the idea that everything has it’s meaning and there is no stress in music and art. I love to do many and different things.

Are the projects connected in any way? They are connected through happiness in music in general and the wish to give space for contemplation and time for our own senses, inner pictures and journeys.

Follow Hannah on Facebook and visit her homepage.

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BLUE ESKIMO - DANCER & THE DANCE

This duo really just started to exist. In may Blue Eskimo played their first show at the Melodica Festival in their hometown Groningen. Both met a short while ago at Open Door Sessions, a regular concert series. "We really liked each other’s music and last summer we figured it would be nice to play songs together", says Suze Commandeur who forms the singer-songwriter duo together with Melle Leijten. "It’s as simple as that!"  

The show you played right after we recorded the session was your very first. How did it go? 

Well, we were quite nervous. We both have some experience with playing solo and in different formations, but this was something new indeed. During the gig we were actually too busy focussing on what we were doing, it was only until after the gig we realized it actually had gone well!

At least one of you comes from a very musical family, how big was their influence?

My (Suze) dad taught me how to play the guitar when I he was fourteen and my mum plays the violin and sings. Also, my dad is the banjo/guitar player of the folk band Howling and The Moon, and they started rehearsing in our living room since I was a teenager. This has definitely influenced my own musical style and taste. I am very happy to come from such a nest as it made me view music as something that bonds people and has quite a therapeutic and relaxing effect on myself as well, and these are the most vital elements of music to me. And well, Melle is just the weird one out in his family so that’s nice.  

What were the songs and musicians that inspired you?  

Gregory Alan Isakov is definitely one of the biggest inspirations, along with Tom Waits and Marika Hackman.

What are your further plans for 2017 in terms of music?  

We both just graduated, so we have a lot of time now to focus on our music, further define our genre and write songs. And of course we hope to keep playing a lot of gigs!

Follow Blue Eskimo on facebook.

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MARLA - AHIGA

Marla fell in love with music as a child. She began to play classical Cello, joined a choir, sang in musicals. “But the pivotal moment, when I knew I wanted to write my own music, was, when Americana, Folk and Rock’n’Roll first crossed my path at the age of 14″, describes the young woman.  “It was Robert Francis who blew my mind with music I had never heard before. From then on I taught myself how to play the guitar and started writing.”

You are signed to Melting Pot Music, a Cologne based label known for HipHop and beat makers. How did that come together? I knew the label for several years before they accepted me for an internship in 2014. Shortly after it was done I went on my first tour where I met David Celia, who ended up producing my first album. When I told the label about it, the boss said he would be disappointed if I didn’t let them release it. Positively surprised that they would take on a different sound, I felt honored to accept their offer because I respect the music they’ve been releasing, despite the difference in genre.

Many songs on your debut album are coping with the end of a relationship. How did the songwriting process help with that? My former partner and I broke up when I lived in Cologne. It was a rather cold winter and I felt deeply down and depressed. I had given up my songs and said I’d find a “proper" job and quit music. But playing guitar and speaking out thoughts helped me get over it, as I was all alone. The songs just came out, one after another as they are now.

The sound of your debut seems to focus on guitar and your voice, also the arrangements are quite dark. What can we expect from the second album? How did your sound evolve? People ask me why my music is sad, even though I’m a rather lively and positive person. That’s because I only felt the urge to write when I was aching. But things have changed, also as you say, through evolving musically. It will be folky, upbeat but also have it’s psychedelic and dark sides to it, which I can’t cross out in my music.

You and David Celia went to Toronto for the production of the upcoming record. What makes the city and Canada special for you? Toronto sure has some magic to it, especially since there’s a great music scene. There’s a constant flow of inspiration and never a shortage of things to do, bands to see or gigs to play. Canada in general has a really peaceful side to it. It’s nature is so varied all over the country. Changing landscapes from the mountains in British Columbia, over through the Central flat dry desert lands, then across over to Ontario, which is full of lakes. People have a lot of space which must lead to their inner peace, kindness and happiness. Canada is so special to me, cause you easily find a way to escape the city and find yourself in nature.

Follow Marla on facebook

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I TOOK YOUR NAME  - LURE

Chris van der Ploeg found his love for music at a pretty early age, when he discovered his dad’s records in the 80s. The Beatles, The Shadows, The Hollies were the bands that left a deep impression. „Hank B. Marvin from The Shadows is still one of my favorite guitarists and one of the main reasons for me to pick up the guitar aged 11“, says the musician from Groningen who started his solo project I Took Your Name six years ago, after his former band Audiotransparent disbanded.

You borrowed the project’s name from a R.E.M. song. What’s your relation to the band? I’ve been a fan since 1991, the „Out of Time“ era. They reached a bigger audience with that record and that audience included 13 year olds who watched music TV shows and followed the charts. I don’t have a particular fondness for the song „I Took Your Name“ (of the 1994 „Monster“ album), it ended up being my alter ego when I got booked for my first solo gig in 2011. @ITookYourName already was and still is my Twitter name, and I decided to use that.

Before you started I Took Your Name you have been playing in various bands. Was it difficult to start all alone? Yes and no. Maybe I would never have done it if my band Audiotransparent hadn’t come to a permanent hiatus. I’ve been in that band since the its first incarnation as S5, back in 1996, always as a guitar player and one of the songwriters. In 2002 we changed our name and released three albums after that. Singing was never on my list, that just happened when it all came to a halt in 2010. We’d just released "Chekhov Guns" in 2009, which was well received and we were full of plans, but all of the sudden it just wasn’t happening anymore and the framework we built up along the years collapsed. Life happened, so to say. We were living in different cities, all had dayjobs, relationships, etc., we overstretched our schedules.

Are you still in contact with your old band mates? We still see each other, there’s no animosity, but I don’t see the band get back together again. I do record with Gijs, one of my band mates who has his own studio. And Andreas, the violin player, is currently writing a string arrangement for “Lure"! At first, I was frustrated by it. I didn’t feel like a musician anymore because I’d always put most of my time and energy into that one band, not ten side projects. Then I decided to do my own stuff, on my owns terms, no big ambitions. Just to figure out what I’m capable of. I gave myself some time to get into it, and as long as I feel I’m growing I will continue.

What are your further plans for 2017 in terms of music, besides recording a new solo record? To write more songs and be more disciplined at finishing them. I also have a hobby project with Geert (Black Oak, Black Atlantic) called Cisterns, where we record improvised ambient guitar drones. Lots of pedals. Reverbs, delays, loopers. Good fun! We’re already working on the second album, although we still have to release the first one.

Follow I Took Your Name on facebook

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I HAVE A TRIBE - AFTER WE MEET

"The same instinct that would move a person to say hello to somebody else or to laugh with somebody else or to play a game with somebody else, is the same instinct that moved me towards music", says Patrick O’Laoghaire. The multiinstrumentalist from Dublin released his latest album under the moniker I Have A Tribe in 2016 on Grönland records (Boy, William Fitzsimmons). "Beneath a yellow moon" collects beautiful intimate and dreamy folk songs with a vibrant voice. "Music is a means of communication and release, and of participation and exploration", explains O’Laoghaire "And it is an expression of curiosity and community."

On the homepage of your label you are quoted saying you started writing songs to "use the colours in your head". Can you describe how that influences the songwriting process? I think that the source of a song or a piece of music can be an elusive thing to describe - it's something you catch a glimpse of or you see its shape or its colour and you try to bring that into a kind of tangible or accessible form, like a melody, or a sentence, or some words .. the thing that begins as a colour, is a feeling, or a sentiment or something maybe that needs saying. So its release in the form of a song is just changing the thing from one form into another, for to communicate the idea. Songs can be blue or orange or grey and mostly these days I'm writing yellow ones.

Your music is often described as chamber music-ish, but songs like "Medicine From Calgary" or "Cuckoo" also echo Folk and Blues. Please share some of your musical influences with us. I like anything that's honest. So I'm open. At the moment I'm listening a lot to Irish musicians like Caoimhin O Raghellaigh and Martin Hayes. It's the first time in a long time I've delved into this style and it's opening a lot of creative avenues for me. Which is nice. I listen to Arvo Part a lot. Paul Simon, Laura Marling, Ray LaMontagne, Cymande and Matthew E White.

Are you a dog’s person? Your facebook page gives that impression. For sure. If you don't know what to do in a situation, ask the dog and he probably knows the answer. I think that dogs can teach us little tricks of how to stay calm. And to be in the present. If you're petting a dog he's not worrying about whether you'll be petting him tomorrow or the next day, he's content you're petting him now and that's enough. If I like you I wag my tail. If I'm hungry I bark. And if I feel like playing I will play. It's a dogs life.

What are your further plans for 2017 in terms of music? 2017 is for new music and new travels and new directions for the songs and the work. It's for drawing out the new ideas and the new colours and it feels exciting and fresh and full of opportunities.

Follow I Have A Tribe on facebook.

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IDA WENØE - MIDSOMMER

“I play songs for the ghosts and the people”, says Ida Wenøe. The Danish singer-songwriter grew up surrounded by birdsongs and uses her voice as the main instrument to create music that seems to reflect images of northern nature as well as old English Folk tunes. Before starting to write and play songs on her own she concentrated on Boho Dancer, a well received trio. “I needed a change, and I wanted to see what I could do on my own, and reconnect with my musical intuition“,explains Wendøe.

How does your solo project differ from Boho Dancer? Boho Dancer I would say is more indie/neo folk, my own is more alternative folk / folk noir, whatever it all means. But in the end it all comes from the same place. In Boho Dancer we spend a lot of time on arrangements, trying to make them stand out a lot. With my own, the songs are in every way the focus, the core. I want them to work even if they were being played on a log, being sung acapella, or played with a big band.

Your voice seems to be one of you major instruments. When did you find your singing voice? My voice has evolved through many different periods and still is. I think I’ve always tried to challenge it, seeking the limits of it, and trying to cross them when I found them. I was never a fan of rules, which means that I’ve found my own style by listening to singers that I found challenged the perception of a “good” classic singing voice.

Please tell us a little bit about your song “Midsommer”. It’s about longing for nature, longing for calmness, longing for the past and longing for the community we find in rituals. Especially one episode I had with my childhood friend Martin. One Midsommer when we were five years old, we dressed up like kids from the past in old clothes, we hid in the tall grass by the lake where the folks from our village would come for this old Danish ritual of lighting a grand bun fire, and then gather in community singing to let in the light for the darker days to come. Here in the tall grass we would wait for the other kids to come and try to find us, and when they did, we had a treasure of candy for them all.

Follow Ida Wenøe on facebook

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LINDA RUM - MARY

This songwriter moved from Germany’s south far up north. Born in Nürnberg, Linda Rum knew two years ago that she had to relocate. So sails were set for Hamburg. Linda, who accompanies her singing with guitar or piano, started with music at the early age of six years. „After watching a kids’ show on TV about a girl playing the piano, I asked my dad if I could also give it a try“, she states. „Luckily he said yes.“ A little later it was classical and church music that inspired her own songwriting. „I use chords I learned in organ lessons and get new ideas for my songs when I’m playing classical works by Bach or Mendelssohn.“ For this year her plans include recording an EP, which she also hopes to release until the end of the year. „And I will be on tour again with the full band in September, which I’m stoked about!“

You have been working with various different musicians. How did you find your band’s final line-up? I met my band during Popkurs in Hamburg two years ago - though gathering a band was not my intention at all. Roughly fifty musicians in attendance are making music in different line-ups for six weeks, and for me that was a really great time! When my band and I met in a room and played together for the first time, the air was filled with some kind of magic and at that point I knew I wanted to share my music with them and spend as much time with them as possible. They have become my best friends, I’m so lucky I found them.

You recently went back to your childhood room to write some songs. How did that feel? My childhood room always makes me feel very calm and secure, which gives me the courage to experiment and write songs. As soon as I’m playing my old piano I forget everything around me and I could play for hours. For me it’s the best place to write new songs.

Currently you are based in Hamburg. What do you like about the city? I like being close to the sea – one can get there very quickly. I have the impression, Hamburg is extremely welcoming and appreciative towards artists, which makes me feel very comfortable here.

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CRIPPLED DEER SESSIONS – ROADTRACKS

We ask every artist about their recent travelling soundtrack. Here’s an ongoing playlist of roadtracks. Of course we included the session’s guests as well.

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IAN FISHER - CHELSEA HOTEL #2 (LEONARD COHEN)

Ian Fisher is so much more than just a small man with a big voice. Born in Missouri the young man travelled Europe over the last years, writing about 1000 songs, performing in a critically acclaimed play in Munich and collaborating with Tim Neuhaus, Honig, Town Of Saints, just to name a few. After living on the road or between Vienna and Berlin Fisher now has an artist-in-residency in Dachau. Finally time to settle down? „I doubt I will ever find a place to settle down“, says Fisher who plans to do a workshop at the local music school. „When I was first invited to Dachau to play a concert several years ago, I had to think of what happened there in the 30’s and 40’s. I was happy to quickly discover though that the way it was then is much different than the way it is now. It’s actually quite a nice small town with some very friendly people.“

Please tell us why you chose „Chelsea Hotel No. 2“. What do you like about Leonard Cohen and his song? I grew up in a small conservative town where the reality created by TV, the internet, and advertising fills a teenage boy’s mind with materialistic perceptions of love, sex, and oneself, while being surrounded by the seemingly opposite day-to-day reality of Catholic American puritanical “family values” and work ethics. That tension between keeping up the facade of a moral life while thinking that what you want is immoral was hard to accept. Art was the first think to break those walls that surrounded me. I was inspired by writers who had the courage to be honest. Who had the power to be individuals. To say “fuck your morals and fuck what you told me to want for myself”. It was liberating. The song “Chelsea Hotel” was not the one thing that did that to me, but it is a good example of one of them. When I first heard words like “giving me head on an unmade bed”, I blushed and wondered to myself, “Can he say that?”. It was a shock unlike the shock I was used to in other forms of media. I had seen artists making extreme works of objectified sexuality and/or fantastical violence as a means of getting attention, but the shock that I felt when hearing words so human and unapologetic in a song like “Chelsea Hotel” was the shock of truth. I was used to people either hiding their true desires or acting them out in such an extreme way that they seemed absurd, as if their extremity was truly only a testament to the fact that those artists were only vainly trying to rebel against a deep-seeded conservatism themselves. They were either a part of that “TV reality” or “puritan reality”. There wasn’t any space to be yourself in between. In the naked honesty of the words of artists like Leonard Cohen I found a bravery to stare into myself and start trying to find me and not the “me” that society had made me think I was.

The song describes a sexual encounter which he had with Janis Joplin. Us knowing this means that it was not kept a secret. He seems to have felt sorry about his „indiscretion“ later. As a songwriter you are in a way supposed to draw inspiration from life – and as an aspect of life, also from sexual encounters. How do you think about including actual persons from your life in songs? And in which way do you include them? There are many ways up the mountain and a songwriter isn’t really “supposed” to do anything. I’ve heard some pretty damned good space-themed David Bowie songs and I don’t think he ever left the atmosphere. That being said, in the field of songwriting that I put Leonard Cohen and I see myself drawn to, inspiration comes almost exclusively from personal experiences or at least the projection of yourself onto others and their experiences that you try at length to empathize with and understand. Ok, maybe Bowie could relate to being lost in space… Anyway, unapologetic honesty with yourself is at the core of a good song. I’m going to get a little philosophical here. If you try to do away with the concept of self for a moment, viewing everyone as a collective self, and you fight to find truth, while knowing that truth is just a perception and will never be attained, then what you find and your fight itself, if waged for truth’s sake and not for your own, might help you and this entire idea of the collective self find internal and collective unity. In other words, if you’re truly honest, then someone else might be able to relate and you might both feel less alone for a moment. To answer your question, actual people appear in almost all of my songs, though I very rarely use their real names. When I close my eyes and sing them, I see their faces. Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes it’s beautiful. Sometimes someone’s face turns into someone else’s face in my mind. In the end, my experiences with those people are the roots of the songs. Those experiences root the songs in reality. Without them, the songs would have just come from thin air. They wouldn’t be honest. They wouldn’t be true. They wouldn’t be worth a damn.

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ROOSMARIJN - LET GO

Roosmarijn Tuenter loves to lay on the couch with her cat. The young multiinstrumentalist and composer will soon finish her studies at the Conservatory in Utrecht and start to record her first solo EP. „It has always been music, actually”, she says.  “When I was four, I heard someone play the violin and was so mesmerized by the sound of it, I said to my mom: ‘I want to do that too!’” With the viola as her main instrument she tries to describe in songs all the feelings that can’t be put into words  „I play music to express myself“, the singer-songwriter tells. „And the most beautiful thing is when other people recognize the feelings.”

What makes the viola special for you? I really like the sound of it. It’s warm, lower than a violin. I don’t like the high squeaky sound. And it can move with you, more than a cello can. It just fits me, I think.

You are performing with a band but also solo with a loopstation. What do you prefer? I have no preferences! Solo with loopstation is what I have been doing for some years now and it’s really close to my core. I started a band one and a half years ago because I wanted to give my songs more energy and I really like to play with other people! All songs start with my viola and voice and most of the time I know which direction I want them to go. The songs I play solo are different then the ones with band, only one song ¬– “Frost” – has a solo and a band version.

To combine a viola with a loop station seems to be a rather non-conventional use of the instrument. I’m always looking for new sounds, with pedals but also preparations. I’m actually doing research on that now. I’m just trying to get the most out of my instrument!

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