Talk about playing with the band.
Playing with the band means a lot to me. It’s hard to describe what it means exactly to me, because it’s filled up with a lot of emotions. We are playing now since 6 years together, and it’s the 4th year coming up since we’ve decided that we want to live only by making music with this only band. We went through a lot of hard things – but somehow we managed to go together through the hard times. And in some way, these hard times made us stronger together as a band.
To say it maybe in another way – playing not with Cobario would mean that I would fall in 2 pieces, because the half of my person would not live on.
Why do you play music, specifically your instrument?
Playing guitar means for me jumping into another world. In times of organizing a lot of things for the band, playing guitar means that I can forget all the other things around me and just let it flow. Shutting my eyes and just listening to the sound of the singing strings is like lying on an air mattress in the middle of the ocean.
The nice thing about a guitar is, that you have many ways to express yourself. I love rhythm, and in the years up to now I explored many different ways of playing the rhythm instrument in the band. But I also love to play slow tunes – so I explored the open tunings, which allows me to tune the guitar in the mood I am. Once you have your guitar in the mood you are, eyerything else comes along, because it feels like the composition is almost there, you just have to play it.
What is special about your instrument?
The first 2 years I was playing another steel string guitar. It was a cheap one because I didn’t have that much money that time. Because I didn’t like the sound that much, I went to my guitar teacher Bernhard Schnabel, and asked him if he maybe has guitars for sale. First he said no, but then he said that I should come with him. He brought me to a little lumber room, where the music teachers had some stuff inside since years as it seamed. Somewhere between old congas, rusted music stands, dusty music books and damaged instruments was a brown guitarcase. He told me, that he bought this guitar 15 years ago as a second hand guitar, and now it was lying there for 6 years. He didn’t have the time to play it anymore the last years,so he just said: “As long as you promise, that you will play it more often in the future than me the last years, you can have it.” So I opened the case, and there she was. The Ovation Legend Guitar, that I am playing now since over 4 years at every single concert of Cobario.
How did you begin playing?
I started playing guitar at the age of 13. My mother asked me if I wanted to play at a guitar camp in summer, because she thought that I would be talented. So I got this summer my first guitar lessons – which kind of founded my career as a guitar player. Maybe even more important, I got to know a guy called Stefan in this musical week, which is up to now one of my best friends.
Did you have any training?
I had an electrical guitar teacher called Erich Zinner in my early teenage years, he taught me a lot of basic things, which were really important to get a feeling for the instrument. Starting from the age of 15 I went to a school for nursery teachers ,where i also got classical guitar lessons in the first years. Later on, my new teacher Bernhard Schnabel showed me a lot of new techniques for rhythm guitar. He also founded a school band, in which I was able to play my first concerts as a guitarist.
But over all I have to say, that I taught myself a lot of things on my own. At the age of 16 and 17 I was playing sometimes up to 8 hours per day at my parents house, where I had my own guitar room in the basement. No parties, no girlfriends that time. Only the guitar and me. Weird time – but I don’t want to miss it.
Who are your biggest influences?
At the age of 16 and 17 I sometimes played guitar up to 7 or 8 hours per day. I just covered a lot of stuff – and I think if there wouldn’t exist the unplugged album of Eric Clapton, I wouldn’t have felt the passion as I felt it that time. I went crazy in playing the compositions “Signe”, “Hey Hey”and “Tears in Heaven”. I also remember myself sitting in my music room in the basement of my parents house, listening over and over to the tape of “Classical Gas” by Mason Williams. One of the best compositions for guitar I have ever heard. I don’t want to know how much time I spent that time in rewinding my old cassette tapes. Must have been weeks… but I really learned concentrating and listening exactly.
What kind of music do you listen to?
It always depends on my mood which kind of music I am listening to. Writing these lines here in my flat, 11 pm on a Sunday evening drinking a cup of tea, I am listening to smooth Dixie Land Jazz. Before going out I sometimes listen to bands like Guns’N’Roses, Hot Water Music, The Naked and Famous or to single all-time-classics like “Hotel California”, “Unchain My Heart” or “All Along The Watchtower (the Hendrix version)” – songs that bring me into the right mood of going out.
Dining at home with friends I prefer listening to Musicians like “Agnes Jaoui”, “Diana Krall”, “Norah Jones” or “Mark Gillespie”.
To maybe give a third example – the bands or musicians I prefer while driving in our tour bus on the road to nowhere are “The Beatles”, “Mark Knopfler / Dire Straits”, “The Lost Fingers” and “Jonathan Taylor”.
What is your craziest story related to Cobario?
At one of our first streetshows in Vienna we found a little letter in the guitarcase after the gig. It was saying: “Thanks for the music of life”. Noone of us saw who had put this letter inside. Some minutes later suddently a man came up and told us that he wrote the letter. I asked him what he exactly meant with these words. He told us: “I was walking by on my way home and had to stop. Your music stopped me and made me calm down. While listening to your music, a woman came up to me with a baby in her arms and asked me for some change. She said her boyfriend kicked her out of the flat and now she doesn’t know how to feed her kid. I just took her to the next supermarket and bought her food for the whole week. Normally I don’t do these things. It was your music making me help, thank you.”
