"That stuff wants to get out!"
"So Damn' Cool": Philipp Fankhauser re-visits some classic Blues tunes on this raw live-cd.
Damn' cool: In times of fully styled, high gloss music productions, Fankhauser releases a cd that seems to contradict all rules and regulations of the music business today. A frugal live album entitled "Live - So Damn' Cool", "because a live recording seems to be the best way to catch the Blues in its authenticity and with its emotions" says the 39 year old Fankhauser. A work that sounds rough and unpolished - consciously so: "It had to be low-fi, almost like a bootleg album. We did not use any tricks in the mixing studio, left it as it was" says Fankhauser. "The main thing is the content not the sound quality".
Back to the roots
Damn' cool: Philipp Fankhauser and his established Blues band with Tosho Yakkatokuo on drums and bass player Richard Cousins play a cumulative batch of classics. From the beginning, with the good mood Blues "I Feel So Good" up to the bitter end with Hank Willams's "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry". "During past eight years I sort of drifted somehwat without orientation through different blues styles", recalls Fankhauser. "It was really Tosho's idea to re-concentrate on the essentials. So it was with absolute enjoyment that I re-visited all my teenage blues songs, from Muddy Waters to Lightnin' Hopkins and Big Bill Broonzy". There has still been place on the cd for two originals penned by Philipp Fankhauser.
Damn' cool: Above all that's life for Fankhauser. "You must realize how good we have it in Switzerland. Thinking about myself: I have the opportunity to live from and with my music, I do not have to compromise a big deal. Isn't that extremely cool?". Where, under these circumstances, does he find the inspiration for his "dark" music? "I don't think of my music as dark, but intense. I get inspired by everyday's life, that's geographically irrelevant. Besides, that stuff is inside of me and wants to get out!"
Wrong ain't wrong
And it is coming out! The tunes are at times fleet-footed, then subtle, upbeat, and at times heavy, always carried by Fankhauser's rough voice. After the second song, Philipp Fankhauser explains in his language, the Berndeutsch, how he's always messing with the song "Baby Please Don't Go" . "It doesn't matter", Richard Cousins told him. Most blues singers he's worked with were the same: "John Lee Hooker was never right!" Which shows, that wrong is sometimes right! "Live - So Damn' Cool" is a cd like a piece of life, with rough edges, good humoured, blue and intimate. And sometimes simply damn' cool.
CD: Philipp Fankhauser Blues Band, "Live - So Damn' Cool", distributed by Funkhouseblues/Musikvertrieb.
Michael Gurtner
www.bernerzeitung.ch