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Actually, songwriter Jon Flemming Olsen, founder and ex-singer of Texas Lightning, wanted to present his work live on a club tour in December.
His third solo album “Der Mann auf dem Seil” brings together 13 songs - from the ballad to the love song to the catchy tune “Something will happen”, accompanied by a string quartet from the Bremen Ensemble Konsonanz.
The concert in December was canceled, after all the release concert took place on the weekend before the ongoing lockdown - in the Bremen Weserterrassen, where the 30 spectators afterwards cheered as if they were 120.
WELT AM SONNTAG:
To be on stage again, how did it feel?
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Jon Flemming Olsen:
Well, on the one hand a great pleasure to finally be able to celebrate the album release with a concert.
On the other hand, we had to reduce the whole thing bit by bit: From originally a maximum of 160 spectators to two rounds of 60, then to twice 30, and in the end without serving alcohol and with the windows open.
Everything in the matter perfectly understandable.
But still pretty sobering.
I would have loved to play for the first time in the Nochtspeicher in Hamburg in December - also because I'm such a big fan of this venue, I've already seen many great concerts here as part of the audience.
WELT AM SONNTAG:
Now the concert will be one of those that will be rescheduled.
Olsen:
Yes, I hope that the game situation and the culture in general will normalize to some extent by summer or autumn.
What will be destroyed in the end, from individual professional biographies but also at venues, will only be noticed in two or three years when the smoke has cleared and we can look at the battlefield and see who actually got left behind.
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WELT AM SONNTAG:
A lot is already unusual.
The release concert in front of a good 30 spectators was quite familiar.
Olsen:
It was actually more familiar than I would have liked.
But: Better to play than not to play.
After all, I have been working towards this day for months, which has already been postponed by half a year.
WELT AM SONNTAG:
That was a concert with an unusual line-up, you were accompanied to vocals and guitar by a string quartet, which sounded very round and lively.
Who wrote the arrangements?
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Olsen:
The cellist Hagen Kuhr wrote one.
A second comes from the violinist Anne de Wolff, a good friend of mine.
I made the other arrangements myself, that was really a lot of work.
WELT AM SONNTAG:
They are very well worked out.
Olsen:
Thank you very much.
This work phase also lasted months.
What helped me is that nowadays you can simulate volume levels and different types of playing on your computer with reasonably good string solo samples.
In theory I would never have been able to just write notes on a piece of paper.
When I went to the Ensemble Konsonanz in Bremen for the first test rehearsal, I had only finished arranging three pieces.
And then the strings had their notes, started playing - and everything sounded immediately, it was like a small miracle, a really uplifting feeling.
WELT AM SONNTAG:
You are a musician, have worked as a graphic designer and play the takeaway owner Ingo in Olli Dittrich's program “Dittsche”.
Would you describe yourself as a headstrong person?
Olsen:
Unfortunately, yes.
I usually have relatively precise ideas about what I would like to see or hear - not only from others, but also with myself.
But when working with other musicians, I sometimes have to remind myself to be diplomatic.
I do believe that I'm basically a very nice person.
But when it comes to the matter, and I notice that something is not allowed to be like that, then I bite myself there too and it is difficult to let go.
WELT AM SONNTAG:
You said in a concert that you went to Denmark to write songs.
Your name sounds a bit Danish too.
Olsen:
Yes, totally Danish.
But only by chance, because somehow it went well together for my parents.
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WELT AM SONNTAG:
But your parents are not Danes !?
Then why Denmark?
Olsen:
Nope, not at all.
My parents are hamburgers through and through.
A few hundred years ago there must have been Danish ancestors, but that was too long ago.
I only go to Denmark because I think it's nice to be somewhere while writing songs where people speak another language.
Maybe then I will feel even more unobserved.
And feel even more like I'm gone.
It is important for me that I am totally out of everything else and that I never even get the idea of wanting to take care of anything else.
“And where does it all come from in the end?
No idea"
WELT AM SONNTAG:
How does it actually start? That's inventing at the push of a button.
Olsen:
In the meantime, I've had some of these little trips behind me and already had a little routine.
I unpack the things and take the guitar in my hand and then play something - and, funnily enough, that's always something I've never played before.
WELT AM SONNTAG:
And where do the topics come from?
Olsen:
Hard to say.
It always takes two or three days for me to sink into myself enough for the first lines to appear.
I'm diving somewhere looking for things that I don't know what they're going to look like.
And where does it all come from in the end?
No idea.
Of course, I also constantly collect topics, keywords, lines or musical ideas in everyday life.
I then fall back on this fund when writing.
I quickly pick up on everything that happens in between and never listen to it again until I'm on a trip like this a year later.
When I hear the snippets again, I often think, oh, that's interesting, what did you play there?
But writing itself is ultimately a mystical process.
WELT AM SONNTAG:
You are definitely a political person, but you do not make explicit political songs.
Olsen:
I always hang between the tree and the bark inside.
When I try to imagine my songs from the outside, that is, stand next to my little work, then I sometimes have the feeling, 'oh, you have to write a song with a very clear political message, where you don't have to guess where you really call horse and rider. '
But I also find that very difficult because the poetry aspect then always crumbles away.
I don't want to be the know-it-all and don't want to stick my index fingers.
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WELT AM SONNTAG:
Instead, your songs are more like small journeys, they take the listener with them through feelings, moods, situations in life or cheer, they encourage.
Olsen:
I think that discovering things for myself is what I enjoy most about all things: in songs, in art, in contemplation of nature or in conversations or in myself. I don't want anything to be rubbed under my nose.
If I tell something about the song in a moderation in a concert to make it a little more vivid, for example in a political sense, then that's enough. But that's not a final statement.
WELT AM SONNTAG:
One more question about the content: Do you have to be in love to write a love song?
Olsen:
There are of course an incredible number of forms of love songs, but if it's a reasonably happy love song, it should be, otherwise it will be very difficult.
WELT AM SONNTAG:
I ask because there are two love songs on the new album.
Olsen:
Yes, I'm fine.
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WELT AM SONNTAG:
Is there still Texas Lightning, the band you once founded?
Olsen:
Yes, it still exists in a kind of pseudo-reality, a deep sleep.
I fired myself in 2008.
WELT AM SONNTAG:
Why actually?
Olsen:
Because this very unexpected pop start, which it was for a brief moment, was on the one hand very nice for me, but on the other hand it was also very terrible - in the further course.
At some point there was only pressure, fear and loss of control.
I felt like everything was slipping out of my hands.
I didn't want to end up as a good mood combo with cowboy hats.
And what this band had made for me could no longer be conveyed to the large mass of people who only knew our one hit.
WELT AM SONNTAG:
What should it be?
I only know the pop version.
Olsen:
It's not that easy to explain.
This country thing is very multi-dimensional to me.
There are things that I find terrible, both musically and in terms of attitude, just a few centimeters next to those that I find great, touching or simply wonderfully old-fashioned.
But of course you can only make these distinctions if you deal intensively with this genre.
Olsen as a member of Texas Lightning, with singer Jane Comerford to his left
Source: dpa / Kay Nietfeld
WELT AM SONNTAG:
What was your personal problem?
Olsen:
Since its inception, the band has relied on two equal vocalists, with a singer and a singer - that was the core of the whole thing.
And of course that was exactly what collapsed immediately after we had this big hit - because the record company said: Great, now we want to have “No, No, Never” number two and number three as quickly as possible.
And sung by Jane, please.
In the concerts, of course, I was still in demand as a singer, because we had to fill the 90 minutes.
But for the public I no longer appeared in this position.
That actually offended me.
And the fact that the band in no way fought over this concept with the record company.
WELT AM SONNTAG:
So there was the expectation of a hit factory.
Olsen:
Yes, of course.
The pressure to keep delivering now was enormous.
You have to say: Until the ESC we were a pure cover band.
When “No No Never” went through the roof, we didn't have a single other self-written song lying around.
Where would they come from all of a sudden?
In the end, all of these factors led to severe mental health problems and at some point I just had to pull the rip cord.
I thought: No, the steamer is too big for you, you can't get it into any body of water where you feel at home again.
You have to get off the ship now.
That was inevitable, but it was incredibly difficult for me.
WELT AM SONNTAG:
What was it that bothered you?
Olsen:
It was difficult in this great euphoria.
Of course, ten thousand people pat you on the shoulder and are happy for you. At some point, however, I was no longer able to respond adequately.
You can't tell people, you don't have to congratulate me, it's not as great as you think.
It makes you feel like a fraud.
You don't want to disappoint people either.
I had nowhere to go with this inner truth.
So for months I didn't tell anyone how I was doing, at some point it just couldn't be anymore.
After I left, I gave up my music for a year and didn't touch a guitar anymore.
WELT AM SONNTAG:
Then it started again in 2012 with an acoustic trio.
Olsen:
Yes, that was the precursor to the solo story.
In 2011 I thought “it doesn't work without music either” and asked Markus Schmidt, our Texas Lightning guitarist and Laurens Kils-Hütten, who used to play with Texas Lightning Bass, if the three of us would not be relaxing after work. Want to make music.
That was my recovery period.
No longer on the big stage, no longer at high volume, without in-ears, without stress.
WELT AM SONNTAG:
The trio didn't last long.
Olsen:
Funnily enough, it was like this: At the very first concert we played in Kiel, the manager of the Hamburg record label "105 Music" snuck in incognito.
Ina Müller, Annett Louisan, Stefan Gwildis and Anna Depenbusch were also under contract with him.
We knew each other very well because I had already worked a lot as a graphic designer for the label.
The man came into the cloakroom after the gig, was very enthusiastic and said: “Flemming, can you imagine what you are doing now, doing in German?
Then we'd get into business. ”I couldn't ignore this opportunity, this challenge.
In this respect, when the trio was born, it was almost history again: Markus and Laurens had different professional priorities, they couldn't go this way.
That's how it started for me with the German lyrics ...
"Why did it take so long?"
WELT AM SONNTAG:
You
've
been doing your thing
ever
since, and it feels good ...
Olsen:
Yes, absolutely!
Although I also have to say: Why did it take so long in my life?
Why did I understand so late what I really have to do musically?
That's the only thing that hurts me a little, that could have been ten or twenty years earlier.
But that's the way it is.
In any case - as cheesy as it sounds - I'm incredibly happy and just keep going.
I would like to go back to Denmark for ten days next week and see what kind of songs tumble out of me.
I would like to be able to play more with people again in addition to the solo performances, which I enjoy very much.
It's not that easy nowadays.
Not because of the corona, but more money has to be created so that you can do that.
But I'm confident.
This text is from WELT AM SONNTAG. We would be happy to deliver them to your home on a regular basis.
Source: Welt am Sonntag