Big Joe Stolle - Stecker rein und los (2020)

As a music lover, you can look forward to any new release of established greats of your preferred genre not only with superficial interest, but with tension and downright curiosity. If the last record release was a long time ago, this is of course all the more true.

With the blues veteran Eberhardt Stolle there was the last sign of life of this kind despite a constant stage presence 15 years ago. Now "Big Joe" has risen up again, and it can be anticipated that this idea was fully appropriate! Anyone who has ever experienced the heavyweight live knows about the immense joy of playing Stolles and his men, and especially about his undisputed qualities as a Mundi player. The album "Plug in and go", which has been available since February 17, can now be seen as a quasi-snippet of this performance, and the title is quite a program. The way of life of a musician, to whom the blues with all its facets still pulsates in his veins, runs like a thread through the entire work.

With the exception of two reminiscences of his old friend CÄSAR ("My Brother Blues", "Whiskey"), all the songs were written by him, as were the (without exception German!) Lyrics. The listener can expect rock-solid craftsmanship, enriched with this or that anecdote that life writes in this way. The last song of all places the credo most succinctly: "Life is like a boogie - sometimes crappy, sometimes hard, but nice". If we want to give us a "message" along the way with the record, it is this.

In an interview with Deutsche Mugge (HERE), the artist told us that the album had been worked on for two years. And the sometimes tongue-in-cheek texts are also quite authentic, for example "Be Married", "To Paradise" or "Boogieman". Stolle does not write to fill the music with text, but to fill it out. This credibility is another pound that the competition occasionally misses.

The disc, which runs for a good 37 minutes, comprises a total of 11 songs and was recorded as "Low Budget Production", which you don't notice. So once again nothing to complain about. At best, the tempos of the recordings sometimes seem a bit restrained compared to the live performance, almost tame. In the concert he likes to shift up a gear or two. One more reason to watch the goings-on at the next opportunity.
(Rüdiger Lübeck)