On the day the rain came, no one was humming "Long longed for, hotly begged" with Dalida's song in their ears.

At least not at the Draiser Hof in Eltville, although the fields and vineyards in the Rheingau are glowing and the forests are thirsty.

If rain is generally welcome there, maybe it shouldn't have rained down on the place early on Friday evening, where the three-day Heimspiel Knyphausen festival had just started.

However, since Woodstock at the latest, a proper shower is simply part of a proper festival, which is why the seats in front of the stage in the idyllic park of the winery filled up again immediately after the rain, because the organizer Gisbert zu Knyphausen was planning a special appearance.

The native of Eltville,

Christian Riethmuller

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

  • Follow I follow

That shouldn't play live at all, but only release an EP every year.

The three have said goodbye to this premise, brought in three more musicians and founded a band that will tour well into autumn (on October 13th they will be guests at the Schlachthof Wiesbaden).

She only gave her second concert at the Draiser Hof and those who only had Gisbert zu Knyphausen in their ears as the melancholic songwriter of his wonderful solo albums were surprised to find that the baron also knows how to bang the strings with a lot of taste and with songs like "Wir brennen" or "Sometimes I dream of dreams" offered snappy indie rock that got in your legs and thus loosened the joints for the main act of the evening and one of the highlights of the festival,

With all the enchanting kitsch attitude of her latest album "Gelb ist das Feld" she has of course not forgotten her hip-hop and funk influences and certainly not her tongue-in-cheek rock mannerisms, for which, in addition to her charismatic frontman Maurice Ernst, the formidable guitarist Michael Krammer, who with his string skills and his poses would certainly also be a show for the metal fans in Wacken.

There, one would perhaps only be surprised at the stage lift of the Austrians, who were walking around in high heels, which also got Maurice Ernst into trouble during the concert.

The high heel of one of his shoes snapped off, which the cheerful singer commented on with the sentence "The problem is, we rock too hard" to unmoved after handing over the shoes, exactly,

With the band Bilderbuch, Gisbert zu Knyphausen and festival organizer Benjamin Metz were able to secure a guarantee of success, with almost 2,200 tickets for the festival, which is becoming increasingly popular, having been sold before the line-up was announced.

The longing for the special atmosphere of the home game, which in the past two years due to the pandemic could only take place as a streaming concert or as an event with massive spectator restrictions, was huge.

Being able to sit down between the vines during the day like having a picnic, stroll around and chat a little, play with the children or take part in a wine tasting and more or less be able to listen to the music on the side was something that many visitors enjoyed on Friday and Saturday sufficient.

The ambitious music program has always been worthy of all honor and deliberately does not rely on mass sound reinforcement.

The main program on Saturday evening also challenged the conscious listener who was willing to get involved with a bulky band like the Atlanta-based Algiers formation around the idiosyncratic frontman Franklin James Fisher.

Their dystopian-looking post-punk, intertwined with gospel and soul, is certainly not catchy, but it resonates for a long time.

The Dutch formation Yin Yin, on the other hand, seemed almost exuberant, with their sound of funk, disco, psychedelia and Southeast Asian pop, dubbed Thaichedelia, which would bring a smile to the face of even the most grouchy.

And he would also have his dancing shoes on in no time.

It doesn't have to be the ones with the high heels.