Live Review: Static Roots Festival, Oberhausen, Germany – 7th-8th July 2023

Euro-Americana lives – in Germany! Fans came from many countries in Europe to enjoy this mini festival, with a great line-up of performers. You will want to know a little bit a about the artists that played at this event and the quality of the performances, and as is traditional with our festival reports I will address the price of beer and the adequacy of the toilets. If you want to know more about the history of Static Roots, have a read of the recent interview with its founder, Dietmar Leibecke.

Of the twelve acts who appeared over the two days, seven were full bands with drums. Of the remainder, three performed solo and there was a duo and a trio. About a third of the performers were women, although half of the main vocalists were women.  The majority were from the USA (5), but other countries were represented – Canada (2), Ireland (2), UK (1), Netherlands (1) and Norway (1). One of the great things about this festival is that there is no fomo.* You don’t have to worry about which act to go to, or leave halfway through a performance to catch another of your favourites, because there is only one stage. Also, there was enough time between performances to go to the bar and toilet, and even get something to eat because there was rarely a queue.

One Eleven Heavy was a great choice for the opening act with their harmony-rich songs influenced by the Grateful Dead and Little Feat. There were many more performances to come featuring great harmonies. An outstanding example was from Woolf, three women from the Netherlands with three-part harmonies (mostly sweet but sometimes deliberately discordant), all sung into a single mic. The performances ranged from those that would be ruined by anyone in the audience talking, to those where any chat was impossible. You could almost hear the tears dropping during Evangeline Gentle’s set. Gentle, a petite artist from Canada with a huge expressive voice, sang emotional songs, mostly about her various girlfriends. Rowan, from Ireland, were in the loud category, being described in the programme notes as comparable to the Strokes, Arcade Fire and Bombay Bicycle Club. Static Roots likes to have a ‘wild card’ act that introduces the audience to a different type of music. Some were very happy with this introduction, others less so.

Of course, most of the songs we heard were originals, but several of the performers played a cover or two. Dylan Earl ended his set to devastating effect with ‘Will You Go Lassie Go’, sung in his classic country baritone. Performing solo, he sang great story-based country songs, often with spoken interludes of real-life experiences that added (often amusingly) to the story.  The Hello Darlins, another Canadian act, opened with ‘Will the Circle be Unbroken’ which set the tone for their set of soulful, gospel-tinged songs. But it was another cover sung by the bass player from North Ontario that had us all joining in on the chorus. Yes, you’ve guessed it – ‘Helpless’.

The Hello Darlins have a husband and wife in the band, as did two others. Beth/James played some great love songs which have the potential to crossover into mainstream rock/pop, as evidenced by the placement of ‘Lion Eyes’ in a Spike Lee movie. The husband and wife team of Ferris and Sylvester, the only UK act, have won an Americana UK Album of the Year and whilst many of their songs start out with an americana ballad feel, they build into great rock songs. They also did a spellbinding cover of ‘Little Wing’.

Mostly everything was perfect, or pretty close. Gorgeous weather for eating and drinking al fresco, reasonably priced beer (other drinks were available), excellent toilets with no queues, air-conditioning and of course great music with excellent sound engineering. I say mostly, because Malin Pettersen’s set was marred by difficult to control feedback. This was probably as a result of her band having to borrow instruments as theirs went missing in transit from Norway. She started out well and played some great songs influenced by modern country, but halfway through the gremlins crept in and the delay trying to fix this meant she couldn’t perform all the songs in her set. The other mixed pleasure was Jim Bryson’s solo set. Great guitar-playing, but his singing and harmonica-playing was influenced by his self-admitted stoned state. Despite this and his references to carrying a knife on the way to gigs and “kids being better on drugs” (he might have been joking), his performance was well-received.

Static Roots can’t get enough of the Cordovas who headlined on Friday night, and I don’t blame them. This band have played Static Roots several times, including the last time AUK reviewed the event in 2019, and despite some recent personnel changes they are still top notch with superb playing and harmonies. The first half of the set was performed with acoustic guitars and without their keyboard player and drummer, but it worked really well, and when the full band did come on we were ready for them to take us into the fast lane. The icing on the cake is their showmanship, and they won the audience-participation prize hands down with us all joining in on the chorus to ‘High Feeling’ for over four minutes!

The much-anticipated finale on Saturday was provided by John Blek & the Rats, who have reformed for just three gigs, and they didn’t disappoint. John Blek and his support vocalist Anna Mitchell are both successful solo artists, particularly in their home country of Ireland, playing music that has developed beyond their roots – but for tonight the pedal-steel guitar was back.

After a rousing speech from the MC, Jeff Robson, we all drifted out into the courtyard for a final beer, chat, dancing and mingling with the performers.

Static Roots is a small but perfectly formed festival and is surprisingly easy to get to. For me it was less than five hours from home to hotel. A big plus is you get to meet lots of interesting and like-minded people. It was worth the trip.

* fomo – fear of missing out

A huge thanks to Dietmar for inviting AUK to Static Roots and to Nick barber for his photography. You can see more of Nick’s pics on his Flickr pages