I know, I know, it´s been a while since my last update. In my defence I have been quite busy in 2022. Let me start with what I never thought would happen….me playing with an artist from South Africa!
I had planned a small trio gig at a club with two friends mine when one of them told me:“ Hey, is cool if we invite this guy from Tansania to play with us at our gig?“ I said:“ Yeah, sure!“. So, we rehearsed one time briefly and went to play our gig. All went quite good and we finished our short set before the jam session started at the club. I went off stage to get a drink. After a few minutes I return and see Lukas (the bass player) talking to a woman I didn´t know. As it turns out this was the lady managing the artist from Tansania. The three of us talk for a little while before she asks me if I could play two shows with an artist from South Africa, Nomfusi. Luckily I was available for the dates so I agreed. I got the material sent and since I had some time off, decided to prepare these two shows like I would go on a long and extensive tour. This time I went all in. I learned the material by ear. I transcribed it. I played along to the songs every day and recorded myself playing to the live versions they sent. Before I had to go to Munich for rehearsals I went shopping for some new clothes especially for the gigs. We rehearsed, played the shows and everything went very smooth. After playing these gigs I went to Sweden for holidays thinking:“ Well, that was fun. Bummer that it is over already.“
A few days before my holidays were over I get a call from the management asking if I could do the upcoming gigs because the original drummer got Covid. So I booked a flight from Stockholm to Munich for another rehearsal before we went to Karlsruhe and Nuremberg where we played the biggest festival for world music in Europe. It was live broadcasted and recorded for ARTE. Massive thanks to Zildjian for hooking me up with some nice cymbals super fast!
After that we went to play in Sweden twice and some shows in Germany before this year´s Europe tour of Nomfusi came to an end.
Long story short I am happy to say that I am the new drummer for Nomfusi now! Can´t wait to play more shows in 2023 and to see my African family again!
Klaus