HONKY TONK LIVE • on air since 1999

16.02.2012 – Double-Bass Special

Steffan Rock — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:00:03 +0000

In this episode we intend to broadcast green music: we save some electricity. No electric bass. The big doghouse or double-bass is ruling! In roots music that huge and powerful instrument sets the beat and the melodic line and sounds like a heartbeat. The doghouse, stand-up, slap bass, double-bass or whatever it’s called is the pulse of country, blues and rockabilly. Even no need for a drummer if the double-bass player can slap. Some can even sing simultaneously! With the four strings elastically pulled or slapped against the neck, give an ear to Bill Black, Willie Dixon, Lee Rocker among other players and enjoy the real honky-tonk sound.

02.02.2012 – European Honky-Tonk

Steffan Rock — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:00:39 +0000

Since the American soldiers landed in Europe in 1944, the Europeans absorbed their culture through the clothes and the music they imported. Jazz, rock’n'roll and blues as well as blue jeans became well-exported American idioms. British bands of the sixties proved they could learn the blues without being raised in Mississippi and make it their own style. Still today Europe has artists who can play country, blues and rockabilly without even having stepped on the American soil nor talking English fluently. In this episode, you’ll hear as many European artists and bands as American ones. To hear the difference between both sides of the Atlantic is challenging.

19.01.2012 – Open mike to The County Boys

Steffan Rock — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:00:37 +0000

In this episode we are opening the HONKY TONK LIVE mike to the County Boys a.k.a. Andy Keinath and his sidekick Peter Görz picking his Telecaster. You can hear, live in the Wueste Welle studio, those guys performing real country songs by Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Johnny Paycheck… Those southern german boys can play the music like their southern US counterparts and perform roots music with no compromise as free as they are. Bakersfield twang all the way up!

This is the kind of thing that happens at HONKY TONK LIVE.

Support those true honky-tonkers at www.andykeinath.de.

05.01.2012 – Honky Tonk Live makes apocalypse for 2012 with nuclear power

Steffan Rock — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:00:53 +0000

2012 should be the last year for humanity. If we should go to Hell, we choose the nuclear option with “Uranium Rock”. Johnny Horton, Robert Johnson and Rufus Thomas are standing out of the grave. You will see Tiger Men. There will be Juke Joint Pimps with nuclear slide guitars. You will hear Robert Johnson moaning with Pablo Casals where blues meet classical music. Those men recorded on the same day in 1936 but never met each other. Elvis and Jesus are still alive. You will hear and see only things that Saint John didn’t even write in the Book of Revelation. That only happens at Honky Tonk Live.

22.12.2011 – Honky Tonk Live Christmas Church Service

Steffan Rock — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:00:43 +0000

Our traditional Christmas Church Service is provided by Reverend Elvis Presley with Christmas classics and Gospel songs to absolve us, Honky-Tonkers, from all of our sins in 2011 and to bless us for a new year in the 3rd Millenium.

A Guitar, A Cello, and The Day That Changed Music

Steffan Rock — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:46:09 +0000

Recently our colleagues of Radio Diaries from the US National Public Radio (NPR) featured a story about a particular day in the music history. On November 23, 1936 on each side of the Atlantic, two men recorded music that would have an effect on the music destiny. Robert Johnson recorded pieces that would became cornerstones for blues whereas Pablo Casals was performing with his cello to produce essential pieces of classical music. Those two men didn’t speak the same language, they lived in two different worlds, while recording keystones of the music history, at the same time, on the same day. Those men never met each other. What if they had met each other on that day ?

Listen to the amazing Radio Diaries story on NPR with Scott Ainslie, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, not to forget bluesman Honeyboy Edwards and cellist Bernard Greenhouse who both died shortly after they were interviewed for that story.

Last but not least, download what Robert Johnson and Pablo Casals could have done together. Music with no boundary…

08.12.2011 – Flashback on 2011 and a gunshot love

Steffan Rock — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:00:45 +0000

In this episode we’re having a look back on what year 2011 brought, the artists that we discovered and re-discovered at HONKY TONK LIVE : Hank Williams alive again, George Thorogood going back to Chicago, John Mellencamp recording in mono with T-Bone Burnett placing the mike, the Earle family business, Bob Wayne leaving his job as a Hank III roadie to perform by himself. Also through the voices of Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Charlie Feathers and Gene Vincent, we are listening to the old story of Frankie & Johnny, an archetypical bad-ending love story with gunshots, a true story from the 19th century sung by country, blues and rockabilly artists.

24.11.2011 – Rescuing roots music with superheroes

Steffan Rock — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 21:00:19 +0000

In this episode we are trying to rescue roots music from pop no-taste with the help from Batman and Robin backed-up by Link Wray. We are boarding for a fantastic journey from the blues with George Thorogood and his Destroyers, through bluegrass, country music with artists writing further Hank Williams songs, rockabilly with the Stray Cats and looping back to the blues with that rockabilly band because rock’n'roll is the bastard son of the blues !

10.11.2011 – Hank will never get out of this world alive

Steffan Rock — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 21:00:19 +0000

In this episode open with Steve Earle, we are discovering Bob Dylan’s controversial project “The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams”. This tribute to one of the most influential songwriters in country and popular music takes unfinished songs to write them further and record them with the collaboration of various artists like Alan Jackson, Merle Haggard, Lucinda Williams, Patty Loveless, Levon Helm and more. We are traveling the country from California with John Fogerty to the Appalachian mountains where the bluegrass resonates. Some Hank songs also played live in the studio.

Welcome on the new HONKYTONKLIVE.COM !

Steffan Rock — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 23:37:42 +0000

This is the brand new layout for HONKYTONKLIVE.COM in order to bring a more dynamic content.
You can subsribe to the podcast here at www.honkytonklive.com/podcast.
Have fun, stay tuned !

Steffan Rock