Americana UK’s Rick Bayles’ monthly column, Vox Continental, shines a light on what is happening on the americana front in Europe. In his most recent column, Rick gave the nod to the Static Roots Festival, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year in Oberhausen, Germany, on the 10th & 11th July. The festival holds the distinction of being the only americana festival currently held in Germany, and as such, it has a dedicated fan base from not only Germany but across Europe, including the UK. Indeed, several Americana UK writers have made the trip over the years. Americana UK’s Martin Johnson caught up with Static Roots Festival founder Dietmar Leibecke at home in Germany over Zoom to chat about the background to this year’s festival. Dietmar shares his passion for americana music and gives the lowdown on this year’s lineup, which includes 12 artists, six of which are returning, and has Jesper Lindell and the Vandoliers as headline artists. The slogan for the festival is “Chasing the shiver since 2016,” and Dietmar reminisces about when he first experienced the shiver while listening to music. It is clear that the UK americana scene has been a source of inspiration to Dietmar, and he talks about how much he is looking forward to Americana 25 in Liverpool, which will celebrate Americana UK’s 25th anniversary. Finally, Dietmar explains how the festival supports the charity Doctors Without Borders through its merch sales.
What’s the state of americana in Germany these days?
Well, it’s still a niche. We’re promoting our festival as the only americana festival in Germany, and it’s still the only one. Sometimes there are things like a tiny event in Berlin or Bonn, where there are two or three bands playing in the name of a festival, but these are kind of one-time events. We are the only one in Germany, so it’s a niche. A couple of years ago, I saw Yola, the British singer; she had just been nominated for a Grammy in the US, and she played a show in Hamburg. I thought it was gonna be packed and sold out, and there were just 80 people in the room. So, it’s still some kind of niche here.
You have an impressive list of artists for your 10th Anniversary Festival. You have Ben De Cour, Julianna Riolino, the Dreaming Spires, Leeroy Stagger, Vandoliers, Joana Serrat, Emily Nenni, Kirsten Adamson, Irish Mythen, Silver Lining and Jerry Joseph on the 2026 bill, all artists that Americana UK has featured. How do you do it?
Well, I think it is because we are the only americana festival in Germany. These acts want to play to the German audience. We’re still a country with 84 million people, so you would think there should be more interest and more people coming here, but then again, on the other hand, 50% of our audience is from other countries. We have a whole bunch of people coming over from England, from Ireland, from Scotland, from the Netherlands. We have people coming over from the US, Australia, Scandinavia, and I’d say probably 10% are local people, 50% from outside Germany, and 40% from all over Germany and the big cities: Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart. Yeah, from everywhere.
You have a non-commercial core principle. How do you ensure the commercial viability of the festival?
We try to live from the ticket sales. It’s always tough, and being a promoter, you feel the pressure of needing to reach a certain amount of money to pay the bill. For the last 3 years, I have found a sponsor who’s putting a little money into the festival, so I don’t need to pay on top for the festival. You probably have read the story about the founding event of the festival. It was my 50th birthday, it was our 25th wedding anniversary, it was the fifth anniversary of a kidney transplantation where my wife had donated a kidney to me, and it was the 20th birthday of our daughter. So, there were a couple of events, and we’d been putting on shows for 10 years by then, so we said let’s try to invent a festival. I’ve been to the Kilkenny Roots Festival and, in Newcastle, the Americana Summertyne Festival. These were the first two festivals that I went to, and I thought, man, I love this. I can see every band, and any act that is playing, and I love it, and it’s great. It’s not 20 bands playing, and I’d like to see 3 of them; 20 bands are playing, and I love everyone. So, I wanted to have something like that in Germany, and that was in 2016, when we founded the Static Roots Festival; it goes back to all these celebrations, to those anniversaries.
Yeah, we also had the idea of supporting something. We didn’t want people to come to the festival and pay for it for the first event. We wanted to do something good, so we donated all the money we received to Doctors Without Borders, and I think it was about 10,000 euros back then that we donated at the first festival. We kept the idea alive, so we sell merchandise at the festival, but we don’t have a price for festival merchandise; we let people pay what they want. All the money we receive for festival merchandise goes straight to Doctors Without Borders. We could have used the money to pay the bills for the festival, but I want to keep the idea alive to do something good with music. Bring people together, have a great weekend, and by that, also support a good cause.
What do you think will be the highlights of Static Roots 2026?
I think there are a couple of highlights in the lineup, and we have this slogan, “Chasing the Shiver“, and that’s what touches me since I had an experience in 1981, where for the first time, I got goosebumps while listening to music. If music can do this to me, it can probably do it to others, and I want to have bands that give me the shiver. Probably the artists that will do this at this festival are Irish Mythen, and I’ve seen her three times. She made me cry with laughter, and also her songs are so deep and touching, and I think she’s gonna be the emotional highlight of the weekend. Yeah, and we end our two nights on the Friday with Jesper Lindell, with his Memphis Groove Band; that’s gonna be a highlight, definitely. On the second night, it’s the Vandoliers playing, and they are an absolute bunch of energetic folks, and they will make the whole hall dance, so it’s gonna be fantastic.
What is the Static Ruhr Tour?
People asked me in the early years of the festival, what can we do in Oberhausen, can we go to some place, is there something we can go and see? There’s not that much going on in Oberhausen, to be honest, but, yeah, the Ruhr Valley, it’s become such a beautiful place. It’s still one of the most populated areas in Germany, and it’s been one of the most industrialised areas. But the area has changed since the 1980s. You’ve been through that as well in England, like, the coal mining, the steel mills, they have largely all gone. We try to bring people closer to what has been here, and what’s happening currently, and how thes the future looks. This year, we are based in Oberhausen; in previous years, we’ve been to Essen, Duisburg, and Gelsenkirchen, and our foreign friends love it. They come over, and we show them around, and it’s really a great way to meet people, like-minded folks who come for the music, but meet up early on the Friday morning for a walk or a trip by bus to some place, and see the beautiful scenery here in the Ruhr Valley. People can’t believe how beautiful it is over here. Just the other day, the Telegraph had a great article about the Ruhr Valley and its beauty, and how it changed from all the industrial sites to just pure nature and beauty, while still being so heavily populated.
Has Brexit impacted your access to UK-based artists?
Not really, I don’t feel Brexit here when it comes to booking acts from the UK. I hear British acts complain about the problems they have coming over, bringing merch, renting stuff, backline, and so on, and yeah, that’s become difficult. But as a festival promoter, I don’t see what’s happening from their perspective. When they come to our place, they feel loved, they feel the energy of the audience, and they always deliver.
It shows the standing the festival has with fans and artists alike.
Yeah, definitely, and we always have a few British artists in the lineup, and we don’t have any Germans in the lineup. We had a German band a couple of years ago, but there’s not really a German scene, though there are signs one is beginning to grow here as well. You’re doing a great job; Americana UK is fantastic at promoting americana music, and in combination with the Americana UK Music Week in London, which didn’t happen this year, but it’s been such a great event, and brings so many artists into London. Yeah, I love all the festivals you have in the UK: Black Deer. Red Rooster, and the Cambridge Folk Festival, but I see the issues; like, it’s not getting easier.
For the first time, I see at my festival that tickets don’t sell as fast as they used to sell, and I was in Kilkenny a couple of weeks ago, and I heard folks saying, yeah, affordability is a big issue. The cost of living is too high, and people have to decide where to go. They can’t go to every event like they used to go, so it’s tough, but what can you do? I try to make it a great event, bring people over, enjoy the event and the weekend, meet friends, and make new friends despite the circumstances.
Any plans yet for 2027?
At this time of year, the last 2-3 months before my own festival, there’s so much work to do. I have a day job, and I’m running the festival weeknights and on the weekend. It’s a one-man show during the year, but I have plenty of folks and volunteers helping me at the festival. I have a great team, really fantastic people working there. But yeah, the other stuff I do, like accommodation booking, merchandise organisation, logistics, and there’s thousands of messages, and you need to keep them together, and as soon as you booked all the accommodation, then a band says, oh, we’ll come a day early, and we need another room, and we have a third person come in, and that’s keeping me busy all the time, and I think, oh, next year, I don’t think I’m gonna do it again. But then again, it’s so much fun putting on the festival and seeing the happiness in the people, and everybody says it’s a fixed event in their festival calendar. The other day, I went to an event where there were a couple of Static Roots Festival fans, and they came up to me and told me they love it so much, they can’t wait to be at the festival, and they call it our festival, which makes me really proud that there are folks calling the festival their festival. I love it; it’s fantastic.
What are you currently listening to that you want to recommend to Americana UK readers and listeners?
There’s this band, Bleachers; I didn’t know them, and all of a sudden, they have a following of 3 million people on Instagram, or 3 million listeners on Spotify. I’ve been blown away by the quality of their music, and it’s been so touching, and I thought, man, how did I not know this band? Jake Antonov is the singer-songwriter in the band, and he’s worked with Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey and stuff, so big names, and I hadn’t heard about the band. I had my 60th birthday just 2 days ago, and my wife presented me with two tickets for a Bleachers’ show in Hamburg later this year. So yeah, I’m really looking forward to that, and that’s what is currently playing up and down my playlist all the time.
I’m about done, Dietmar. Is there anything else you wanted to say?
Steve Wynn; he’s been my inspiration to just about everything I do in music. When I was 17 in 1983, and I heard the Dream Syndicate and The Days of Wine and Roses for the first time, and, I tell you, when the first song is over, the drums, the guitar, I thought, this is music made for me. It was so new to me, and yeah, that opened a completely new world, and, in 2000, I celebrated my 40th birthday by inviting Steve Wynn over, and he played with the Miracle 3 and played all the Dream Syndicate stuff on my 40th birthday. He told me that he thought I was a person to put on house shows. Have you ever heard about the concept of house shows?
Yeah. I’ve never put on a house show, but Mark, AUK’s editor, has, as have some of the writers.
He got me into doing house shows a year later. I started putting on shows, and Steve played our house a couple of times, and he played in the bookstore of my wife and my daughter. I’m going to see him at the Americana 25 weekend in Liverpool, celebrating 25 years of Americana UK on 28th November.
Great.
So that’s a nice connection. Steve Wynn has had such an impact on the development of my taste and all the things I do in music, so I’m looking forward to seeing him in Liverpool at your event.
Not only that, but Chuck Prophet, Dean Owens and the Often Herd are on as well.
Right on, yeah, Chuck Prophet from Green On Red, great days. I put on shows next to the festival; I do a series called Static Roots Presents, and I had Chuck playing there twice over the last 3 years. Fantastic band, and so much fun seeing them live, so much energy.
Everybody’s looking forward to November, though Mark is a bit shocked that it’s 25 years.
Excellent, and congratulations on your anniversary.
Okay, Dietmar, thanks for that, and we’ll have a chat in November in Liverpool.
I’m looking forward to it, Martin. Thank you very much for taking the time to interview me.
