My Friends (Video)
My Friends is now out as a digital single including a live version of Widow as a b-side. On one of the last sunny autumn days in 2019 we shot this simple music video for the song. It was made with help from The Famous Gold Watch Records collective.
BPM Podcast
In July I had a visit from Ashley who records podcasts called Behind People's Music. We talked about the album Empathy, influences, the band and the future. The episode is now online and you can have a listen. At the end there's also an acoustic version of Lanugo that we recorded live in my living room.Empathy is released
Empathy, the first album by Grizzly Bird, is out now. We played it yesterday in Berlin – our first ever show as a 4-piece band. It was intense!You can get your digital version of the album now at Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Deezer or Tidal. Or you can make me happy and order a CD via Bandcamp. If you don't have a CD-player, there is also a book-version with a download of the album.
Empathy: About the songs (II)
Track 6: HornThis is the oldest song on the album. I wrote the lyrics on a train in Austria during a university excursion on alpine folk music in 2012, I think, and then wrote the music on the ukulele I had with me. It's kind of a mix of ideas for several songs that I combined into one. It only occurred to me very late that this song fits in with the concept of Empathy. It's not as based in reality as the other songs, but nonhuman and human animals – in the end we're all just stranded on this fragile planet with no idea why and at some point we're all going to die. It's a bit bleak, I'm sorry.
Musically, I saw this more as an acoustic campfire-like song, but when I started playing it with Nils and Florian, they went full reggae on it. So that's what it is now.
Track 7: Bloodlust
Well I guess when you listen to it, it's kind of obvious how this song came to be. After a terrible, sleepless night, I sat at university, couldn't focus and instead came up with the cello line and the story for this song. I don't remember much of it, to be honest.
This song was in fact the first song recorded for Head in the Air in 2013, but I later decided it would fit much better on this record. I re-recorded the vocals, but the rest of the song has been sitting on my hard drive for six years.
Track 8: La Selva
Remember I was in Colombia with during hurricane Matthew? I wrote a little song about, in case you forgot. After all that happened, Katharina and I hiked through Parque Tayrona. Matthew damaged some of the path and we got lost, but managed to find Playa Brava, where we stayed for the night. Anyway, on our way there I heard a bird sing a very catchy melody. It kept repeating it over and over. As I walked, I imagined how it would sound with some organ chords and electronic beats. Catchy indeed! This song is my memory of that moment, the feeling of the jungle and the bird's song recreated electronically. I didn't record it, unfortunately, so maybe what I remember isn't exactly what the bird sang. I did record some monkeys though and they found their way into the song.
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| These tiny monkeys can be heard in La Selva |
Empathy: About the songs (I)
Track 1: Koko & KanziIn 2013 I took part in class about animal cognition at university in Berlin. I learned a lot about the minds of apes. Koko and Kanzi kept coming up not as examples, but as jokes. As fascinating as they are, their leading researchers have become to close to the animals and have fallen to anthropomorphism. Therefore the experiments have lost their scientific value, according to much of the scientific community. So instead of admiring the animals, we laughed at videos of Kanzi cooking noodles and Koko looking indifferently at the cats she apparently loves. I instantly knew I wanted to write a song about them. As funny and sad as their story is, I do find them fascinating. I mean, Koko apparently finds human nipples funny. I seriously think even that tells us something important about animal minds.
The idea for the song stayed with me for some years before I actually wrote it. I watched every video about them, read every paper I could find and scrolled through blogs and comments by former employees. Then I first played it in 2016, during the tour for Head in the Air, if I remember correctly.
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| Kanzi enjoying some marshmellows |
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About
Grizzly Bird is the latest project for Bavarian-born songsmith Hans Gnendinger (formerly Hans Sølo), a multi-genre trio formed in 2017 with Berlin artists Florian Dietrich (drums) and Nils Wenzel (bass).
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