Gig Report - Werners - Alten Zolln 24/02/2011

Another year went by, with the instruments all having been safely stored in Werners bunker. Come yesterday, and the cobwebs had all been dusted off for this now tradional annual outing. It had taken some persuasion to get this motley crew back on the road. With 16 years of history and a combined age greater than the US of A from whence much of their music originates, the Werners were back. Hardy was "gnadenlos" as they say in these parts. His efforts were instrumental in getting this gig together, and in truth, nobody regretted that in the slightest after the gig.

After demolishing the back end of the bar to make room for their truckload full of equipment, the band set about building up their backline. Werner brought out his neatly wound cables (all brought in triplicate) and installed various self-built constructions whose function god would never guess unless he saw them. Skinny as usual was hard at work rigging all the stuff together. Bewildered guests scattered as flight cases and amps the size of your grandmothers cupboards were wheeled in. After Kay completed his almost religious ritual of setting his drum kit up, with the kind of acribic attention you'd only expect when preparing a mirror for a space telecope, the stage was set for Heiko to turn up and take his corner with all the aplomb of a bottle of ketchup being squirted over an omelette. Jules as usual was last up, looking at the cables below him with trepidation, wondering if there was any protruberance that could at least partially function as a guitar stand, and how he ever managed to get out of one of these gigs with a full set of teeth.

The sound check proceeded with some confusion. Was the song in G or A? As it happens the leader of the band decided to play it in Gsharp without telling anybody. There followed a good few minutes of embarrassed guitar tuning. Well it was only the sound check, and the first time these guys had set eyes on eachother in a year.

The gig proper kicked off with Not Fade Away, and rarely had the band delivered it with such a thump. Five Knuckle Shuffle, a song about teenage self-relief, followed, with all the scary bits having been navigated perfectly. But by now there was a feeling in the air that this just might be one of those good days for the band, where even the first set was celebrated by the audience with wild enthusiasm. And so it turned out to be. Many of their songs have a southern feel, and there was even a Texan in the audience who made time to come out and watch the band. The band closed the set with a finger picking masterclass from Heiko on Folsom Prison Blues.      

Set two included most of the band's originals, which were received with even more enthusiasm than some of the covers the band were playing. The opener, however,  was the Elmore James inspired Highway 49. Werner was roaring away on the slide guitar as if he was on a Honda at Hildesheim, and Jules was giving the most raucous renditions he could. The audience definitely loved it, and the stage was set for an equally successful set 2. The boys were definitely helped on by some pretty faces in the audience, and were playing to impress (or so it seemed). Jules was warbling at his best, and Heiko was searing up and down the fingerboard with scant regard for modesty. Tom Petty's Wont Back Down  was followed by the poor mens Elvis Chris Isaak  (Blue Hotel, Wicked Game was in set 1). The girls in the audience were shifting mischievously on their seats, if they were lucky enough to find one. The originals then started, with the broad and catchy crescendoed ballad Boulevard East being received rapturously. The funky Dont Stop, about a fictitious frolic in a funbar gone wrong, was followed by the more straightforward country styled, but harmonically ingenious Sugar and Gasoline. The band closed iwth Brown Eyed Girl, much to the pleasure of the brown-eyed girls in the audience.    

Set 3 was high powered, and the adrenaline was flowing. For some reason Heiko was playing even more virtuously and extrovertly than he was in the second set. Their self-styled version of Hey Joe was followed by rasping versions of Things Going On and Nadine. Save Tonight was sung along to by everybody, almost true to the original, after which a lively version of  Sympathy for the Devil  was played with somewhat funky and jazzy accents. The southern ballad Willin was followed by the bands only real clanger of the evening. These boys had not practiced in a year, and it was about to show in the next song. What Its Like was in fact  Definitely Not What It Was Supposed To Be Like. Kay thought he was playing another song, Heiko and Jules were completely out of sync with Werner and Skinny, and Skinny was providing a good impression of a monkey on a tea chest bass. Most of the band were looking around, not knowing where to go, and scanning the room to see if there was a hole they could all crawl into.  It was much to the bands credit however, that the audience excused this slip up, and this paved the way for the band to play its final planned song for the evening. The traditional rendition of Gloria was delivered with almost unprecendented enthusiasm by Jules, with only his mike in his hand, and the audience were rocking. It was the last song, but the band could not end there.

The encore was started off with a rocking version of Honky Tonk Woman, and You Cant Always Get What You Want provided the backdrop for what should have been the final song. Jules was full of himself ( as was everybody in the band) and the band even managed to go into a reggae passage with Jules providing fake echoes and Kingston accents through the microphone. It should have been the end, but the audience wouldn't have it, and the band closed with an emotional rendition of the country tear jerker Lonesome Roads.

And so another year had passed, and it was clear that this was one of the band's better gigs. They played with true enthusiasm, and there was no routine about this performance. The Werners are not precision mechanics, they do the carpentry and the heavy duty work. What counts is the atmosphere they create. Call it Horse Jazz, Industrial Bluegrass, or whatever you want, the band is definitely a unique mixture of characters, directions and abilities, and that is one reason behind its longevity, even if the heady days of Helgoland are long gone and gigs have become harder to come by. And who needs to throw TVs out the window anyway, when you can get to ritually demolish the back end of one of Germany's oldest pubs on a yearly basis.