May 18, 2023
Marcos Coll interview
Marcos Coll joins me on episode 86. Marcos is a Spaniard who has been living in Berlin for the last twenty years. Marcos rose to fame at a young age on the Spanish blues scene playing with the Tonky Blues Band before forming the the Los Reyes del KO band, touring the world and sharing the stage with many famous names. Moving to Berlin in 2004, Marcos became a regular on the vibrant blues scene in Germany and recorded with many great artists. In addition to playing blues, Marcos likes to mix m...
Marcos Coll joins me on episode 86.
Marcos is a Spaniard who has been living in Berlin for the last twenty years. Marcos rose to fame at a young age on the Spanish blues scene playing with the Tonky Blues Band before forming the the Los Reyes del KO band, touring the world and sharing the stage with many famous names.
Moving to Berlin in 2004, Marcos became a regular on the vibrant blues scene in Germany and recorded with many great artists.
In addition to playing blues, Marcos likes to mix modern beats such as hip hop into the blues, as well as playing traditional Spanish and Latin music, including cutting a Latin song with Charlie Musselwhite.
Marcos has an online tuition site called Harp and Soul, has been a judge at the Trossingen World Harmonica Championship and is a regular at Seoul, and other harmonica festivals.
Links:
Marcos’s website:
https://marcoscoll.com/
Online tuition website:
http://harpandsoul.info/en
Videos:
With Los Mighty Calacas at World Harmonica Festival 2013:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLcLlgcJHLU
Latin workshop at Hohner masters 2022:
https://youtu.be/9Qi0nxFsJbg
Chan Chan song, playing chord harp (and others) also effect part way thru
https://youtu.be/_sBZj8CoB6Q
Marcos rapping on basketball anthem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yHcGFfXVTg
Harp and Soul tuition introduction:
https://youtu.be/ErHO7pI64HE
Seoul festival, playing with Antonio Serrano:
https://youtu.be/ks88GMCDj_s
Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com
Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB
Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ
Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
01:29 - Marcos is a Spaniard, currently living in Berlin
01:52 - Was inspired to take up harmonica from the British Blues Boom bands and American 50s rock ’n roll
02:27 - First instrument was violin, but didn’t continue with that
03:13 - Spanish music influences and blues scene in Spain, including Naco Goni
06:32 - First harmonica was a Chinese made Huang
07:08 - Starting out playing music as a teenager, which progressed into performing until late 5 nights a week
08:26 - Mother’s reaction to Marcos becoming a full-time musician
08:58 - Great training ground playing in the late night clubs in Spain where Marcos learned to entertain
09:59 - Tips on how to entertain the audience: be yourself and feel what the audience wants
10:49 - Energy Marcos puts into his performances
11:43 - A big influence on Marcos was a big festival in Spain with many famous names and the value of seeing live performances
12:51 - Moved to Madrid in 1999 joining the Tonky Blues Band and shared stage with many famous names
15:10 - Leaves singing to the great singers
15:27 - Los Reyes del KO band (The Knockout Kings) with name coming from dressing up as boxers in an early gig
16:57 - Touring with Los Reyes del KO and sharing stage with idols
17:38 - Live in Berlin album from Los Reyes del KO and Paul Butterfield influence
19:17 - Mixing modern beats like hip hop in with traditional blues
20:57 - Relocated to Berlin in 2004 and the great blues scene in Germany
23:37 - Started playing with Aron Burton in Berlin
24:30 - Under The Wings compilation album
26:17 - Hucklebuck duet with Keith Dunn
27:16 - La Paloma is a Spanish song, which Marco found was popular in Germany too
29:09 - Street Preaching album with Stefano Ronchi, mixing modern beats with blues again
30:21 - Album with Will Jacobs, a Chicago musician
31:18 - Now in a band called The Blues Jacana, Marcos’s jam band around Berlin
31:54 - Charlie Musselwhite has recorded a song on an album with Marcos with the Los Mighty Calacas band
33:33 - New album coming out in 2023, called Nomade, playing traditional Spanish music
37:07 - Going to keep the Spanish influence in his much moving forwards
38:10 - Marcos ran a Latin workshop at Trossingen
38:46 - Playing orchestral harmonicas and chromatic: not highly skilled on them but can get by
39:57 - Session work includes for a big Mexican film
41:02 - Chose harmonica over playing basketball professionally
43:14 - Teaches harmonica and online tuition course: Harp and Soul
44:58 - Been a judge at various harmonica festivals, including the World Harmonica Championship at Trossingen
46:35 - Performed at Seoul Festival, including with Antonio Serrano
47:02 - Appeared at the Harmonica FEN Festival in Berlin in 2022
47:29 - Popularity of harmonica in Asia
48:16 - 10 minute question
49:16 - Harmonica of choice: Hohner endorsee and plays Crossovers (wood) and Rockets (plastic)
49:50 - Doesn’t use customised harmonicas
49:54 - Doesn’t use overblows
50:23 - Marcos picture is on the box of Hohner Blues Bender packaging
50:58 - Different tunings: likes Harmonic Minor
51:20 - Prefers sound of a note played without an overblow
52:27 - Embouchre: uses both
53:00 - Amps: did use Fender Princeton Reverb, but now works with what’s available
53:59 - Effects pedals are now usable for harmonica tone
54:29 - Likes to add effects to his sound sometimes, including Octaver from ElectroHarmonix
55:38 - Mics: vocal mic and Hohner Harp Blaster
56:13 - Future plans
WEBVTT
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Marcus Cole joins me on episode 86.
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Marcus is a Spaniard who has been living in Berlin for the last 20 years.
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Marcus rose to fame at a young age on the Spanish blues scene, playing with the Tonki Blues Band, before forming the Los Reos del Keol Band, touring the world and sharing the stage with many famous names.
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Moving to Berlin in 2004, Marcus became a regular on the vibrant blues scene in Germany and recorded with many great artists.
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In addition to playing blues, Marcus likes to mix modern beats such as hip-hop into the blues, as well as playing traditional Spanish and Latin music, as well as cutting a Latin song with Charlie Musselwhite.
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Marcus has an online tuition site called Harp and Soul, has been a judge at the Trossingen World Harmonica Championship, and is a regular at Soul and other harmonica festivals.
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This podcast is sponsored by Zeidel Harmonicas.
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Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world, at www.zidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zidel Harmonicas.
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Hello Marcus Coll and welcome to the podcast.
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Hello, it's a pleasure to be here.
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You are Spanish and now living in Berlin, but you were born in Madrid, yeah?
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Yeah, that's right.
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I grew up between Madrid and Santiago de Compostela and since almost 20 years I live in Berlin, Germany.
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It's
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good to pick up on your Spanish influences, your playing, and you brought some of that into your playing as we'll get into later, but what got you started in harmonica?
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I was reading your uncle was your first inspiration to take up the harmonica
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yeah that's right as you said i come from spain and and the background of my parents for instance was flamenco music but my parents at that time with the franco years they was trying like looking at flamenco or spanish music like associated with that which is totally not true you know but so they was listening to the rolling stones jimmy hendrix the who you know anglo music that comes from the blues so like when i was around 13 more or less i was fooling around with different instruments in fact i started with violin but i didn't like it too much and especially the the way they were teaching me anyway so my uncle is a musician too and at that time he was really into the blues and at that time i was 13 12 13 something like that and i was really into the 50s rock and roll little richard chuck berry all of that so you know the classic he went to me and told me hey if you like this you gotta hear where it comes from so that's how it was I remember listening in his room to a Reverend Gary Davies album and especially a Sonny Boy Williamson the second with Jimmy Pates and Brian Auger so that really turned me on I've really got in love with the harmonica and until now
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Did you have many sort of Spanish music influences besides the flamenco at this point?
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Yeah I mean I don't play flamenco at all I mean the only real player that I know who plays flamenco is Antonio Serrano and he plays really good by the way i mean i was listening most mostly anglo music you know rock and roll i also like punk and but obviously i grew up there and i always listen in santiago in galicia in the in the local parties you hear galician music spanish music but you also hear a lot of latin american music so i listen also when i was kid to cumbia to corridos norteñas and merengue, salsa, so it sounds familiar to me, you know, when later on I developed and more into playing more my roots music besides the blues.
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And then talking about the blues scene in Spain as well, so I believe you were influenced by a Spanish blues player called Naco Goni.
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Naco Goni
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Jaco Coñi was like, for the people, my generation, like beginning of the 90s, that we were starting playing, he was like our god, you know.
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Him and Mingo Balaguer and a very few others was like the first real blues harmonica players who could really play, not just classic guitar player who brings the harmonica for a couple tunes.
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I was crazy for him.
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He was like my idol when I was like 15 or so.
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And yeah, he influenced me a lot.
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a lot because he was playing with Malcolm Scarpa, the traditional blues, but very personal.
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Of course, obviously, the great Sonny Boy Williams, James Cotton, Walter Horton, you know, the classic blues players.
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But you did get to play with Nako.
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You've got a song, you playing big raw blues on your
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album.
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Oh, you got me crying Oh, you got me crying I'm traveling all alone, I'm traveling light, I'm traveling this big road.
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I ended up even living in the same building because I arrived with 15 to Madrid like a little kid and I want to play harmonica like you, you know, the classic thing.
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And we got along very well and we became very good friends.
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And yeah, actually we ended up living in the same building in Madrid.
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Yeah, he's like my brother.
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Did he teach you things?
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Not really like sitting down and, hey, dude, this I do it like this this I do it like that no just by by living by in fact we we talk more about boxing or other things than about blues itself but we was like leaving it there you know like like hearing it all the time we was hearing a lot of music together but not really like talking about techniques too much of course sometimes yeah but but more like feeling it
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interesting you should mention boxing there we got a link so we'll get onto that shortly but your first harmonica I think is a Horner Blues harp, was it?
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Well, not exactly.
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My first harmonica was a Huang, this Chinese brand, which some of them were pretty good.
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Because I remember I went to the store and the Horner Blues harp was like 800 pesetas, which now is like, I don't know, five euros.
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And there was a Huang for 300 pesetas, which is like two euros.
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I don't know.
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Yeah, I could only afford the Huang harmonica, but my goal was to get the blues harp sooner than later.
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You
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know, going on into your progression and into music and becoming a professional, you got your first paid gig at age 17.
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Well, before, I think before, I think when I was like 15 already.
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Yeah, I started playing and like one year I started, okay, with my schoolmates.
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Come on, yeah, play guitar a little.
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Nobody in Santiago at the time played blues, like a blues band.
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I got together with some schoolmates, even Adrian Costa.
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To this day, I still play with him.
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We was kind of with a punk attitude and very funny partying.
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I So we started playing a lot almost every night in the local pubs and stuff.
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So it's like suddenly in one year I see myself playing from 9 to 4 a.m.
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five days a week and getting some money, getting free drinks and everything.
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So it's like I never thought about being professional or nothing.
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You know, we were playing in the street and suddenly I was saying like, hey, I'm playing five days a week.
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And as soon as I got 18 I said to my mother hey I think I can make it with what I'm getting doing this so I rent me a room with a friend and yeah that's how it started.
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How did your mother react when you said you were planning to be a professional harmonica player?
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She was
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very happy in one way because at least I was doing something because at that time not good in the school I was always just trying to have fun and she saw me so interested into it that she said hey at least he's doing something you know he didn't like obviously that I play until 4am in those dirty places but at least I was doing something she was happy
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That sounds like a great training ground playing from 9 till 4am it sounds like this kind of classic you know jazz musicians you know they're playing all night in clubs it sounds like you had a bit of that scene going on
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Yeah totally I mean that's what made my who I am in a way because you can imagine when those places we were playing there was no theaters or not like fancy clubs it was like wild and dirty clubs so you had to entertain those people that was rough people and you had to find your way to entertain so I developed more the entertaining thing than technique than studying theory you know because we were playing almost every day so it was playing playing playing finding ways to entertain the people and to make them laugh and and with the little technique we had.
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Yeah, that made me develop the stage knowledge.
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I've seen you play live and that is something I really noticed about you.
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You're very energetic on stage.
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You know, you could really see that you're pushing the entertainment and any tips for how to do that?
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I tell some students, for instance, or some people that you have to be like you are.
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If you're shy, that's cool too.
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There's some musicians that really make the stage full, you know, that they got a light because they are themselves so my main tip is be yourself and try to think that the people is there for having a good time and they don't care about overflows they don't care about if your microphone is crystal or you know so try to feel them you know it's like for instance even to this day in big festivals I don't do set list because I'm gonna not respect it at the end because I'm seeing what the people kind of like okay they like more funky maybe they like more slow songs you know so to feel the people to try to read the audience that's my main
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tip what about the energy levels you know is that something you'll try and keep very high energy levels or you know you're happy to sort of bring it down and slow it down and you know you're reading the crowd in that way so how do you approach that
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It's cool to play fast tunes and everything.
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We put all the energy, sweating and dancing and blah, blah, blah.
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But if you play a slow song, especially a slow blues, like, but with energy, oh, people really react to that.
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they really feel it.
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You know, even whatever country in the world or whatever, it's like, it's not about the language, it's not about the style of music.
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It's like, if you play it with all your heart, somehow they feel it and they get to it.
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I gotta say, also one thing that really influenced me and made a big change in 93, 92 and 93, we had the chance when we was 14, 15 to see like B.B.
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King three times, Charles Brown, Ray Charles, Prince the Rolling Stones, Sting, Lucky Peters.
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I don't know.
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It was like every day, something on that level.
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I mean, there was one concert that we saw.
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It was in La Coruña, in the Deportivo La Coruña Stadium.
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The first day, imagine being 15-year-old, and the first day you see Sting, Neil Young, Chris Isaac, and George Benson.
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The next day starts the Kings, then Bob Dylan, then Robert Plant, and then John Mayall.
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And the third day, Eric Barton, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Wilson Pickett, and Jerry Lee Lewis.
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So that was a huge influence for us.
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Yeah, really sure.
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Seeing live music is a big inspiration, yeah?
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Yeah, for me, it's the best inspiration.
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What you're going to learn seeing somebody live, you don't learn in any video or any book or nothing.
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It's a magic.
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I was reading that you moved to Madrid in 1999, age 21, joining the top The biggest blues band in Spain at the time.
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So this was your move to sort of go fully pro, was it?
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Yeah, I mean, at that time in Santiago, there was not really many blues players.
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And Madrid had a pretty good blues scene at that time.
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Now it's even much better, much bigger.
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And yeah, I had records from Tonki Blues Band and Ñaco Ogoñi was the former harmonica player of Tonki Blues Band.
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You know, at that time, it was very crazy that I could sleep whatever, you know, if we If I had to sleep in the street, no problem, whatever.
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So I said, I go to Madrid and I want to learn more and learn from Nyako, learn from Tonki and everything.
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There, I arrived there.
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And soon, I was lucky that in three months or so, Tonki called me to do some gigs.
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And well, he liked how I played, what I was giving to the band.
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He made me a full-time member.
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And after one year, we was backing up Buddy Miles.
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mick taylor from the rolling stones i didn't have time to process it you know i was like okay cool oh yeah nick in two months we play with with mick taylor oh okay cool now i think it and i said like what you know
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actually you mentioned buddy miles so he was a drummer with jimmy hendrix right so these are the sort of names you're playing like you said when you're that young you probably don't quite appreciate these things
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i appreciate a lot because as i tell you i mean since i was a kid i had records i was never a me toman that oh you No, but like, you know, I had a lot of respect for the old blues players from the, you know, from the top musicians.
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So I really had that respect.
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Don't get me wrong.
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It's not like, oh, yeah, I'm playing this.
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No.
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But yeah, it's like everything goes so fast that you don't have time to assimilate, to process it.
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Now I realize how it helped me develop my style or my musicality or whatever, just being with them and touring with them.
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You were the harmonica player with them.
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You weren't singing or anything else.
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No, no, I was just playing harmonica.
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You know, I was singing with my first band and then I realized to sing the blues, no, that's not, maybe you cannot really do it.
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So I stick to the harmonica.
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Great.
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So you had a great success earlier on when you were young.
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And I think your next band then was your first main early band, Los Reyes del Cayo.
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Yeah.
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This stands for the Knockout Kings.
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So interesting story.
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And the boxing connection from earlier on is that you had to play a gig in a sort of boxing venue and you had to dress up like boxers.
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Is that right?
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Yeah, that's me and one of these kids that I was telling you before from the school that we started playing together.
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Later on, after I was two years in Madrid, I talked to Tonki.
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Hey man, I got a friend.
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He made him join the band too.
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And after another year or so, we decided to make our own band because he's like my brother, you know.
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We was on the same page.
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We really like boxing, both of us.
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So they hired us to play in a box in event and we had a lot of contact with professional boxers so then one day we decided like hey why don't we dress like boxers and we do this show like with a presentation like and yeah and we got us even an endorsement with a boxing brand and that they gave us like all this the gear and the gloves and the trunks now I wouldn't do it you know to go on stage dressed like a boxer you know I would feel very embarrassed but at that time it was fun and yeah and people liked it.
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But you didn't play the harmonica wearing boxing gloves, did you, Marcus?
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No, no, no, no, no.
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That's for sure.
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Yeah, that might get an interesting new sound, playing
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boxing gloves.
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Well, that's how good war work is.
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Yeah, brilliant.
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So, you know, with this outfit, you had a great success playing with Buddy Guy and Chuck Berry and John Mayle and Fabulous Thunderbirds.
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Yeah, we started doing big festivals, especially in Spain, because we got kind of famous in Spain in Spain, in the blues scene, but also crossover to the rock scene.
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You know, we was hired to play even rock festivals or pop festivals because, you know, the boxing thing and everything, we was making party and we was playing like up-tempo blues, funky blues.
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So yeah, we was getting very good festivals and yeah, we had the chance to share the stage with our idols.
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And so the first album I discovered of you is the live album in Berlin that you did.
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with Los Reyes del Queo, which is a fantastic album and loads of great, you know, high energy stuff and, you know, nice long solos.
00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:52.704
Born in Santiago is a song which is interesting on there.
00:17:52.724 --> 00:17:56.028
So this is from the Paul Butterfield song Born in Chicago.
00:17:56.068 --> 00:17:57.131
Yeah, your take
00:18:04.820 --> 00:18:04.921
on it.
00:18:04.941 --> 00:18:07.825
I was born in Santiago in 1979
00:18:09.761 --> 00:18:12.523
So, you know, we always like the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
00:18:12.624 --> 00:18:24.034
I'm a big fan of Paul Butterfield because my favorite harmonica players are the ones like Charlie Marcel White, like, of course, the old blues legends that you hear two notes and you know that it's them.
00:18:24.355 --> 00:18:25.736
And Paul Butterfield is like that.
00:18:25.935 --> 00:18:28.198
I love the first albums from Paul Butterfield.
00:18:28.397 --> 00:18:28.838
They are great.
00:18:28.919 --> 00:18:36.285
But what I love most is when he had the horns and he was playing like American music, soul mixed with funk.
00:18:36.925 --> 00:18:37.766
Oh, I really...
00:18:37.885 --> 00:18:39.728
Or the Life album, Life at...
00:18:39.728 --> 00:19:04.426
love that i love his sound his style and and he was a very big influence for us that was our goal you know to make something because For us, that sounded fresh.
00:19:04.507 --> 00:19:08.009
You know, it sounded like very personal or like war.
00:19:08.049 --> 00:19:13.335
You know, it was like a mix between war and the Paul Butterfield better days.
00:19:13.454 --> 00:19:17.137
And of course, the old traditional black American blues.
00:19:17.439 --> 00:19:22.962
So a really interesting thing that you do is you mix modern music into the blues that you do.
00:19:23.022 --> 00:19:27.126
So on the album Hot Tin Roof with this band, kind of got hip hop beats in there.
00:19:27.166 --> 00:19:28.708
There's some rapping on there.
00:19:31.150 --> 00:19:37.407
Everything, mi corazón Thank
00:19:39.314 --> 00:19:40.317
you.
00:19:40.546 --> 00:19:46.570
You know, what
00:19:47.031 --> 00:19:50.555
about bringing that sort of music in with kind of blues and harmonica?
00:19:50.815 --> 00:19:56.259
We always liked a lot of different music from flamenco to punk to hip-hop, of course.
00:19:56.440 --> 00:20:02.664
So hip-hop and blues is kind of the same in a way, you know, for Afro-Americans.
00:20:02.924 --> 00:20:06.147
It's their culture and it's the evolution.
00:20:06.588 --> 00:20:16.018
We had a friend from Detroit that was in the studio and and hey come on why don't you rap something here and we liked it and yeah that's how we ended up
00:20:16.298 --> 00:20:32.134
yeah no I think it's a great thing to do it really brings the harmonica into a modern set and I think a lot of you know a lot of people are yeah it would be great to hear some harmonica and the sort of you know hip-hop and other modern things so yeah it's fantastic to do that so you found it quite easy to sort of bring those people in to play with you and they were quite happy to do it
00:20:32.315 --> 00:20:57.402
yeah I mean hip-hop people always respect and love the blues every time you propose them something they are up to it you know in other productions that i did with other rappers or what the other way around there's many blues players that are hip-hop that's part of music and blah blah blah you know but the hip-hop people normally 99.9 percent they they love the blues
00:20:57.761 --> 00:21:04.410
and then in 2004 you moved to berlin so so what caused the move to berlin and to germany away from spain
00:21:04.690 --> 00:21:15.741
what it happened for me from to move from santiago to madrid after those years it's like Like we knew all the blues players in Spain already.
00:21:15.761 --> 00:21:18.023
We had done all the festivals.
00:21:18.104 --> 00:21:27.453
It was like there was nothing much more to do like new, you know, like we wanted to keep on learning and getting better and better and better.
00:21:27.534 --> 00:21:32.559
So suddenly we got a request from a festival next to Munich.
00:21:33.039 --> 00:21:37.924
Really, this was like kind of a crazy thing, you know, was there in Almeria.
00:21:38.365 --> 00:21:40.367
That's the desert in Spain playing a festival.
00:21:40.367 --> 00:21:44.412
And we start seeing that blues clubs in Germany and everything.
00:21:44.952 --> 00:21:48.817
By the internet, that was the first years of really looking things in the internet.
00:21:49.037 --> 00:21:56.464
We say like, wow, Germany looks, they really appreciate the blues and that there's a lot of blues clubs and festivals and stuff.
00:21:56.684 --> 00:22:05.795
So, hey, if they hired us for this festival and they didn't see us, they just heard the record, which was a thousand times much better live than in records.
00:22:06.095 --> 00:22:10.259
Hey, if we go there and we do our thing, I'm sure we can work.
00:22:10.319 --> 00:22:16.246
And, you know, as Spanish, we were thinking, and yeah, and Germany, they got more money, you know.
00:22:16.666 --> 00:22:22.532
So it was like the ticket, we bought the ticket one way and we say like, come on, let's go there.
00:22:22.772 --> 00:22:24.015
It was at the end of the summer.
00:22:24.075 --> 00:22:27.679
We didn't have more festivals booked and say, come on, let's go there and try.
00:22:27.798 --> 00:22:28.920
And that's what we did.
00:22:29.520 --> 00:22:29.840
Great.
00:22:29.861 --> 00:22:31.021
And you've stayed there ever since.
00:22:31.041 --> 00:22:35.227
So you found a good source to be able to play your music in Berlin and around Germany then, obviously.
00:22:35.586 --> 00:22:35.967
Yeah.
00:22:36.027 --> 00:22:42.635
I mean, when we arrived, there was a lot of black American blues mainly living here, like Guitar Crusher.
00:22:57.320 --> 00:22:59.944
Champion Jack Dufresne was living here, Luciana Red.
00:23:00.417 --> 00:23:11.326
We were amazed with the scene in Germany because, you know, in Germany, in Europe, Northern Europe, they had the American Fall Blues Festival since the 60s.
00:23:11.567 --> 00:23:17.792
So they knew much more about the blues and about this culture than pain at that time.
00:23:18.153 --> 00:23:25.380
Now it got more even, but at that time it was like, wow, so many blues clubs, so many in every little town, they got a blues festival.
00:23:25.460 --> 00:23:36.219
There's a lot of Afro-Americans living here that find good drummers, good bass players and and everything so so yeah it was like wow great we are in the the right place
00:23:36.420 --> 00:23:43.198
yeah fantastic and so was the first person you picked up with aaron burton
00:23:55.329 --> 00:23:58.212
Oh yeah, Aaron Barton was living in Berlin.
00:23:58.272 --> 00:24:00.855
He's a legendary bass player.
00:24:01.275 --> 00:24:05.979
He recorded with Carrie Bell, with Junior West, with Albert Collins and the Icebreakers.
00:24:06.058 --> 00:24:09.041
So that kind of people, it was normal to meet them.
00:24:09.301 --> 00:24:12.065
In Spain, you always had concerts like, okay, B.B.
00:24:12.085 --> 00:24:17.890
King comes to play or whoever, but you didn't have so much interaction because they wasn't living there.
00:24:18.109 --> 00:24:24.816
But this musician was living here in Berlin, so you could play with them, you could be friends with them and that changed a lot.
00:24:24.836 --> 00:24:28.058
And so we decided to stay I mean I'm still here so
00:24:29.279 --> 00:24:40.112
yeah great and you've got a great album out which is a kind of compilation called Under the Wings which is a double album which covers you playing with all sorts of different people and including some of the names you've already mentioned
00:24:40.332 --> 00:24:56.690
that's an album that is like a compilation it's a double CD album that I did already more than 10 years ago I just took a lot of recordings that I had that some were previously released some not like half was previously released the other half note.
00:24:57.029 --> 00:25:03.135
I have one or two songs with Aaron Barton, with the people that I worked with in those years.
00:25:03.477 --> 00:25:15.328
And yeah, luckily, well, Tonki, the leader of the Tonki Blues band, he let me use one of the recordings that we record with Buddy Miles, another that we record with Nick Taylor.
00:25:15.509 --> 00:25:27.243
And yeah, I did a compilation to have a remembering of all those years and to put all those people together that has the name of the album say they took me under their wings.
00:25:27.423 --> 00:25:30.529
Yeah, so picking out some of the names, we mentioned a few on here.
00:25:30.691 --> 00:25:35.299
You're playing a song called Commonine, which is an Afro-funk band.
00:25:38.025 --> 00:25:39.688
Yeah.
00:25:43.521 --> 00:25:49.867
Yeah,
00:25:50.407 --> 00:25:56.894
that's the band from Carlos Dalelane, that is Mozambique musician that lives here since many years.
00:25:57.114 --> 00:26:00.656
And he was the bass player from Los Reyes for a while.
00:26:00.696 --> 00:26:04.500
We was always hanging in different situations.
00:26:04.799 --> 00:26:09.044
And sometimes we was even in Congo together playing at jazz festivals.
00:26:09.324 --> 00:26:17.012
I said like, hey, I would like to have a little of this also on that record you know yeah it's an afrobeat song from his country
00:26:17.473 --> 00:26:39.708
and then you do a song with keith dunn you'd play the hooker book with keith dunn there's a sort of harmonica duet so you know so what about Keith Dunne he's an American when did you meet him?
00:26:39.988 --> 00:27:12.160
He lives in not in Germany in Holland but it's more or less the same you know like he lives six hours from me we had the chance to meet this kind of musicians you know and Keith is one of my favorite blues players you know I really love the way he his timing his sound I mean when he play alone it's incredible just him and his harmonica his foot as a friend he's a great friend you know we hang a lot, you know, talking about basketball for hours and hours, about boxing too.
00:27:12.320 --> 00:27:16.086
Big fan of him, plus he's a brother, you know, his family.
00:27:16.126 --> 00:27:21.195
And then you do a bit of traditional Spanish music, La Paloma, on this
00:27:24.582 --> 00:27:27.426
album too.
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
...
00:27:36.354 --> 00:27:43.961
Yeah, I mean, La Paloma is funny because when we arrived to Germany, I remember we was playing the first gig we ever played there.
00:27:44.000 --> 00:27:47.743
It was in München in a blues club that is called The Hideout.
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