Recalling Lucius Reichling, of Germany's historic country band Truck Stop

Lucius Reichling & Truck Stop at Geiselwind Trucker and Country Festival, 2007 Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber


I've just learned of the death six weeks ago of Lucius Reichling, one of the founding members of Germany's oldest and most enduring country music band, Truck Stop. Lucius, who was 65, passed away August 15, from complications of pneumonia and cancer.

I met Lucius, who sang and played fiddle and guitar, in 2007, when I attended Truck Stop concerts at the Geiselwind Trucker and Country  Festival and at Pullman City Harz, the wild west theme park in central Germany.

Lucius Reichling (c) and Truck Stop at Pullman City Harz, 2007. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Truck Stop is Germany's most durable country western band and set the tone for a lot of the home-grown, German-langauge country scene that developed in Germany from the 1970s.

It was was formed in Hamburg in 1972, and though its musicians came from rock and jazz backgrounds, Truck Stop adopted a cowboy image from the start. Band members, then in their 20s, wore long hair, beards and moustaches like any rock musicians of the era, but they dressed in cowboy boots and hats and over the years have adopted ever more elaborate cowboy costumes. 

The Truck Stop logo includes a pair of western pistols forming one of the "T"'s. At first, the group sang American country western standards in English. Hoping for a bigger market, however, they switched radically in 1977, and began to sing in German.

They have recorded numerous of CDs, LPs, DVDs and tapes, more than two dozen of which are available on their online store.

Their 1977 LP "Zu Hause" (At Home) included a song that became a hit, defined their style and helped them achieve cult status. It also opened the door to a broader genre of German-language country. "Ich Moechte so Gern Dave Dudley Hoer'n" (I'd Love to Hear Dave Dudley) tells of the frustration felt by a German truck driver, on the road late at night, unable to pick up the American Armed Forces Radio (AFN) signal and hear his favorite American country singers: Dave Dudley, Charley Pride and Hank Snow.

Here's a clip of it from a few years back -- with Lucius Reichling on fiddle.

Truck Stop ICH MÖCHT SO GERN DAVE DUDLEY HÖR`N - MyVideo

For more information, clips, photos, etc, see this NDR.de report

Hermann the German's new Album

"Hermann the German" at the Country Music Messe 2010. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The German country-western singer Hermann Lammers Meyer has sent me links to information on his new CD, "Nashville is Rough on the Living"-- including to this video clip of the song Honky Tonk Hearts.

I've seen Hermann, who sings, plays guitar and pedal steel guitar, perform many times -- mainly at the annual Country Music Messe in Berlin.

He has one of the longest careers in German country western music, dating back to the 1970s, and he has toured and played in Texas and elsewhere in the U.S. One of his most recent tours was eve further afield -- to New Zealand!

Germany -- Willy Jones back at Pullman City for Christmas Season

 Willie Jones performing at Pullman City, 2003. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The American banjo player and country singer Willie Jones will be at Pullman City in Bavaria, Germany's biggest wild west theme park, for the coming month, performing each weekend at the German-American Chrsitmas Market (Deutsch-Amerikanischer Weihnachtsmarkt).

A large man with a full beard, Willie was one of the first people I met in the European country and western music scene, and he has provided me with a lot of anecdote and insight. I actually met him at Pullman City, on my first visit there - I think it was in 2003. Willie had remained in Germany after getting out of the service and took up a career as a country singer, in various bands, most notably one called Shady Mix, which started out in America, moved to Germany and then moved back to the U.S.

When I met him, Willie had a job as the "singing cowboy" of Pullman City -- he gave set performances in the theme park's saloon, but he also roamed around the area, playing and singing.

We hit it off from the start. That weekend, Willie had some Slovak musician friends -- a bluegrass band -- playing at Pullman. I was working on a story for the New York Times about wild west theme parks in Europe, and I had intended to go directly from Pullman City to the Silkluv Mlyn theme park in the Czech Republic.

Willie convinced me, though, to go with him and the Slovak band (some of whose members now form the group Grasscountry)  to a country road house somewhere in southern Bohemia  for a country western party. Of course I said yes, and we drove there in a sort of convoy -- Willie in one car, the Slovak guys in their car, and me trailing in mine.

As I posted in this blog earlier:

The road house was in a village too small to appear on my map. From the outside it looked like an anonymous village restaurant, but inside it was decorated with Wild West paraphernalia including horseshoes, sepia photographs of Native Americans and Billy the Kid, and a framed arrangement of pistols and playing cards.

The occasion for the party was the 50th birthday of Franz Zetihammel, a figure well known on the Czech and German western show circuit for his portrayals “Fuzzy,” an “old coot” persona harking back to characters played by comic western actors such as Gabby Hayes or Walter Brennan. Fuzzy has long straggly grey hair and beard and never appears in public without his cowboy hat, cowboy boots and turquoise bolo tie and other jewelry.

A Czech country duo got the guests up and dancing with locally written Czech country songs and Czech covers of American hits such as John Denver’s “Country Roads” and even “I’m and Okie from Muskokee.”

One of the party guests, a man in his forties, was dressed head to toe in full cowboy attire, including sheriff’s star and a six-shooter – which Fuzzy at one point pulled from its holster, brandished at the dancers and then fired at the ceiling – fortunately, it was loaded with blanks....

(I haven't been back to that place -- I'm sure I could never find it again. But I ran into Fuzzy last year [that is, 2007]; he was working as the blacksmith at the Halter Valley private wild west town near Pilsen in CZ.)

"Fuzzy" at Halter Valley, 2007. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

I'm hoping to be able to get to Pullman City while Willie is there, as I haven't seen him  for several years.

He moved to Texas in 2005, and the last time I saw him was in May of that year -- I visited him where he was living near Templin, north of Berlin, and he took me to explore an abandoned former Soviet army base nearby. Willie and his wife had moved there to work for a new Wild West theme park, Silver Lake City, which -- at that point -- had gone bust.  So they picked up and moved to the real west. The park has since reopened as Eldorado. I have yet to see it in action... Willie took me on a tour of Silver Lake City out of season in the winter of 2005, but almost everything was shut.

Sauerkraut Cowboy -- Don Jensen Sings the Song

I posted this more than a year ago on my youtube channel -- but I've finally got to post it on this blog.

Don Jensen, the American-German country singer, performs his iconic song "Sauerkraut Cowboy" live at the Country Music Messe in Berlin.

"Hermann the German" on German TV

The German country singer Hermann Lammers Meyer sent me the link to a piece on him on German TV.

I've met Hermann, who sings and plays guitar and pedal steel guitar, a number of times at country music festivals in Germany. Along with Truckstop, he is one of the most enduring German country artists -- his career dates back to the 1970s, and he has also toured in the U.S. The video shows him and his band, The Emsland Hillbillies, on tour in Germany -- you can catch a little of the flavor of a downhome German country music festival.

Roland Heinrich sings at Berlin Country Music Fair

I thought I would post some videos of a few of the performers who took the four stages at the Country Music Messe in Berlin last month... It's taken me a little while to download the video clips, but I'll add them one by one.

Here is my friend Roland Heinrich, singing a Jimmie Rodgers song. Roland calls it Betrübter Jodler #3 (Evening Sun Yodel) but it sounds to me like a combination of the Evening Sun Yodel (Blue Yodel #3) and Muleskinner Blues (Blue Yodel #8).

Roland put out a wonderful CD of Jimmie Rodgers songs -- in German, his own translations --a couple of years ago, on Bear Family Records. It's called Einsam und Ausgebremst: Lieder von Jimmie Rodgers, BCD 16733 AH. This song is one of 14 tracks on the album. 

While I was in Berlin, I also saw Roland perform in a musical/play about Johnny Cash called "Johnny Cash: The Beast in Me,"  by James Lyons. Described as a "musical portrait," it has three characters -- Johnny Cash, June Carter, and a sort of Jimmie Rodgers/spirit of country music figure, played by Roland. The performance I saw was sold out -- as apparently are most performances of the play.