Photo by Florian Trykowski
Oh yeah, we are in the middle of this year’s festival season and one of each event’s big goals is to give joy and create euphoric moments for guests, artits and everyone involved. It’s all about feeling the music’s good vibes and forget about the world around us. While we normally like to read between the lines, this time we decided to go straight ahead to the core: at this year’s Maifeld Derby Festival we didn’t ask the artists many superficial stuff but rather wanted to know their true thoughts on just two things: their darkest and their brightest music experiences. We met the young producer SG LEWIS, LIIMA‘s singer Casper, the two lovely German girls BOY, MARTIN KOHLSTEDT, Billy McCarthy from AUGUSTINES and MØ for that matter. Let’s talk that talk!
SG LEWIS
Brightest moment
It was probably seeing JAMES BLAKE live for the first time in 2013. I was at Bestival, on the Isle of Wight in England. Or was it 2014? The one or the other. I knew a couple of his songs and I wasn’t like a massive fan at the time. I never heard a full album or saw him live. I lost all my friends, was completely by my own. It was like a religious experience. I fell in love with his music and until now he’s one of my favorite musicians. His live show is incredible. He’s like this one in a million artist.
Darkest moment
Good question. It isn’t even that dark, more funny. I played my first ever festival in Manchester. It was a really good crowd and I was up on the wall, you know. I played to other people. And when I was finishing my set, clapping my hands above my head, I was walking backwards to exit the stage. There was a monitor on the floor, or a speaker, and I tripped over it and fell flat on my back in front of four thousand people. Four thousand people. And I was laying on my back. The whole tent was just screaming and there were many headphones. So I had two options: either run off stage and be embarrassed or to walk to the front of the stage and give a bow, make a joke out of it. I did the last one.
Casper OF LIIMA
Brightest moment
I played my first concert when I was fourteen in a festival somewhere in North Denmark. The Youth Band Festival. I was playing drums. It was a cover band. We made all sorts of them, a lot of horrible ones. I think we were playing some Guns ‘N Roses song for example. When I was around thirteen some girls in my class wanted to start a band and they knew that I had been playing drums for some years so they asked if I wanted to join. Before that I just practiced for myself and due to that I wanted to join the band. It was their band, I was just playing drums.
Darkest moment
I don’t know… No answer will come up right now.
BOY
Brightest moment
Sonja: Oh…it’s always difficult to find something like a superlative. But we played once at the Paléo Festival in Switzerland and CAMILLE played there as well. A part of our band could go and watch her, we didn’t play at the same time. So she played some songs solo, there were the four of us – Valeska, me and two other members – and we started crying at the same time. All of us. Not because it was sad – we were just flashed and it was very emotional. It was such a perfect moment.
Darkest moment
Valeska: It’s strange when you are at a concert and you’ve got the feeling the musicians on stage don’t really care about what they do or say. That’s always a bit depressing to see. As a listener, you feel like you’ve been cheated on in some way. Music is such a big, wonderful thing. An opportunity to express and share something and maybe build a connection with people. When the artist doesn’t really seem to care…i kind of stop caring, too.
Sonja: (laughs) Well, there was this one time when I was really, really hungry during a gig. We were just in the middle of our show and I wasn’t sure if I should just run off stage to eat something or not. But somehow I managed to forget about it and everything went good.
MARTIN KOHLSTEDT
Brightest moment
Of course there have been a few; some of them happened while playing myself, some of them while listening to others. But if I have to pick one it would probably be the moment of successfully playing my first own minor chord — completely out of the blue. In the very beginning I just played single keys on the piano without having a clue what I’m actually doing. But even without the knowledge of harmonies and such your brain constructs melodies upon what sounds good to you, without the knowledge what the names of the notes or chords or harmonies are. But it filled me with a lot of unexpected joy when I played my first complete and true minor chord. That was roughly last millennium, around 1999.
Darkest moment
It was during a concert with my first band during a big festival, a gig we all were really excited about. Sadly the neighboring stage where PAUL KALKBRENNER was playing during the same time was about four times the volume we could put out and basically played completely over our music. There was no way — with no sound we could create by any means — to compete against their sound system. We could just surrender to the neighboring stage and let it be; it felt like opening your mouth to scream and no sound escaping your lungs. That was not a nice experience.
Billy McCarthy of AUGUSTINES
Brightest moment
When my band first got signed. We hadn’t quit our jobs yet and I was driving a truck for a living in New York City. I’ve been telling everybody ‘I’ve got this dream and I will try it one more time’. I was working and driving in Queens – and our song came on the radio. I was working with a guy from Trinidad, he was looking up the window and I was like ‘Do you know who this is?’ He answered no and I said ‘It’s me!’ He looked at me and said ‘You can do it, man!’ Then I quit my job.
Darkest moment
I had a very bad injury. I was on stage in Chicago and I fell on a broken glass. It cut my finger very badly and in America there is no health insurance. So I was walking around, bagging to people to help me at hospitals. They closed the hole, the cut, but they didn’t fix the hand. So I was going from hospital to hospital, but they wouldn’t help me. I told them I am a guitar player, that I pay taxes and I won’t leave. That they have to call the police to get me out. Well, the police came and they took me from the place. So I called a radio station, bagging for help. They put me on the radio and fans had to donate money for me to get my hand fixed. I was very embarrassed for my country at this moment. I dedicated my life to music, to make people happy – and my country couldn’t help me. It was an American failing.
MØ
Brightest moment
That’s really hard. It’s hard to pick. There have been a couple of those moments where it’s been like: Ohh … But a moment I remember where I kind of felt it all was actually – strange enough – while we were shooting the video for Lean On when I was on top of the bus. We were in India and the sun was setting and I just remember feeling like: oh my god this is a dream coming true. You know, just had a moment of nostalgia and thinking back. I’ve been making music for many years now and I’ve been dreaming about collaborating with MAJOR LAZER for such a long time that this moment was a moment of fulfilment in a way.
Darkest moment
I think it was some time during last year because at some point I actually had a few months of creative blocking. I never had that in my life before. It always just has been popping out of me. And last year for a couple of months I felt totally lost. I was really scared because I never thought that I’d have this creative lock down that everybody talks about, but I did. That definitely was the darkest moment.
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