Worpswede house concert

Yesterday we drove down to Hamburg to stay with Jörn who played trombone on the track Wind And Steel on Ray’s new album. It was good to split the driving to the next concert and today was only a short drive from Hamburg to Worpswede for a house concert. Having a free morning gave us the opportunity to plan Ray’s UK tour in October which will be a very complicated tour for reasons that will soon become apparent.

It was a short drive to the autobahn then only an hour’s cruising. Coming off the autobahn we drove through countryside of long, tree lined and straight roads with either forest or large farm fields either side. This is a very agricultural area with good soil. Looking at the map we realised that we were very close to Moorhausen/Oldeburg where Ray played last Friday.

A house concert is always a very special event, both for the hosts and their friends and also for Ray. Tonight there were musicians in the audience who all enjoyed Ray’s songs with guitar or cello or piano with harmonica. The hosts want him back again.

After the concert, we enjoyed a bottle of their local dark beer. The countryside around here is called the Devil’s Moor (as in English) but in German it’s more to do with the depth of the moor. The local beer is called Moorbier with a picture of the devil on the bottle. It’s very nice.

We knew that our host, Karl-Heinz, played double bass with many local jazz groups. Talking over breakfast, we learnt that he started playing in a session in a spanish restaurant in Bremen in the mid 1950’s and still plays there once a month. The session began sometime between 1949 and 1951 in a pub because the owner was a pianist and wanted others to play with him so they began a session on the first Monday of every month. It continued for some 60 years until the pub was knocked down to make way for a redevelopment of the area. They moved to another restaurant which was not so good for music and moved again to a more suitable venue in 2016. They play while some people are eating – the real music lovers sit on the left and those eating, while still enjoying the music, sit on the right.

The sun is shining and we will set off shortly for the next show which is an outdoor concert.

As an extra, Click here to watch a video of The Puritan, recorded at St Johannis Kloster in Schleswig on 20 May 2024. When played live, this has an extra verse which is not in the recording on the album Tales Of Love War And Death By Hanging.