Before you add me as a friend I would like you to take your time and read my blog about the art of requesting and commenting. Thank you.
Martin Praetorius - vocals, guitars, harmonica, mandolin
The Innocent Bastards:
Andy Schmidgen - piano, hammond, accordion
Christoph Lindner - guitars
Marius Goldhammer - bass
Wolf Simon - drums
Einflüsse
All the great singer/songwriters like Steve Earle, Robert Earl Keen, Greg Brown, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, John Mellencamp, Todd Snider, Shawn Colvin, Lucinda Williams, Counting Crows... and this goes on forever
Martin Praetorius, born in Essen, Germany, grew up a middle-class kid in one of Germanys biggest industrial areas.
Introduced to music at a very early age by his parents, he started singing in the school choir and was soon overheard singing The Beatles "Ob la di ob la da" in the bathroom, a song considered to be obscene in those days.
His dream to become a rock'n'roll star was fired up by a small woman from Detroit called Suzi Quatro. Sexual awakening of a nine year old fed by the unproven tale that she wore nothing underneath her tight leather overall.
"Singing in school and church choirs wasn't really the thrill I was looking for, so I broke my fingers trying to learn my first few chords on daddy's "guitar". More a piece of wood with barbed wire than anything else but it didn't break my guts."
Martin Praetorius then started playing locally in various bands and was influenced by artists like The Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Jackson Browne, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen and Steve Earle, just to name a few.
In 1988 he formed Scooter and the Streethearts, a band that would last for more than eleven years and peaked in a European tour hitting 11 major cities from Barcelona to Glasgow and London supporting "Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers", a Pittsburgh, USA Springsteen protégée band. (Scooter was Martins nickname for more than two decades, but, unfortunately, the name was at a later stage taken up by a German Techno act)
Here the story of the band ends, with a distributor gone bankrupt taking with him most of the copies of the debut album Stories to tell which received a nice little review in the US Billboard magazine.
Martin Praetorius started working as a solo artist, accompanied only by his acoustic guitar and over the past 10 years played mostly Irish pubs in Germany, The Netherlands and Ireland, developing his style as a singer/songwriter.
He has also been running a recording studio until the end of 2003 where he produced a great variety of radio programms, comedy, bands and solo artist such as the well known irish singer/songwriter Ronan Leonard with whom he produced two albums.
In the course of last year Martin has co-produced two albums with the wonderful Dania Koenig, "Auf weiten Raum" and "Auf dem Grund" which both have been released recently. Check them out here: www.myspace.com/daniakoenig
Martin Praetorius is now back with a new band that includes some of the finest musicians in Germany and a strong set of new songs that deal with some of Rock'n'Rolls most beloved themes:
Good love and good love gone bad, leaving home and coming back, always looking for the place where the road and the sky collide.
The new album "Affairs of the heart" is set for release early this year.
While I may have bored you with all this talk about me, here's something of much greater importance:
Enjoyed the music? Have a look at the website, maybe there's something you can do to help making this world a much needed better place:
Hi Martin, heute hatte ich mal richtig Zeit um in Ruhe deine Musik anzuhören, yooooo man, klasse Songs und wie immer astreiner Sound. So, thank you for the music ! Any live gig's around OB ?
Hey Martin, na klar doch, das mach ich:-)) Werde ein paar Mal am Tag auf die Seite gehen und meine Stimme abgeben;-) Drücke Dir fest die Daumen + lieben Gruß Melanie
hey martin,danke für die einladung für radio hören,aber ich glaub denn wdr2 kriege ich hier in berlin nicht rein. hey und der tip mit den saiten war sehr gut ,klingen echt klasse.jau matte
Hi Martin... and a (belated) Happy New Year to you! I've been on holiday and just got back in spite of "Daisy"... hope all is well with you and here's hoping for a rockin' 2010. 'bfn, Maggie
hi,ja ich war bei der bandgründung dabei und wir habe 2-3jahre da rumgehampelt mit wayne s. ich bin dan da raus die haben dann noch ein paar jahre weitergemacht,aber ich glaube die gibs nicht mehr ,bin mir aber nicht sicher.ok gruss matte
hallo martin,danke für deine freundschaft,du bist der genau 2000 freund. hab 35jahre in essen gelebt und jetzt aber wieder in berlin-.gruss an bahnhof süd.matte
Thanks Martin and happy New Year to you. I enjoyed your song and have donated some money to the charity you mentioned. Good luck with your projects and your music. Keep in touch!
Hallo Martin, Danke für die lieben Wünsche zum neuen Jahr. Dir auch ein gutes und erfolgreiches Jahr 2010 mit ganz vielen glücklichen Momenten.. und hoffentlich genauso vielen Live-Auftritten.. bitte hier in der Nähe.. Wünsche werde ja doch manchmal wahr... ;) So langsam ist "Christmastime" ja vorbei... aber ich lasse den Song noch eine Weile in meinem Profil.. und tausche ihn dann gegen einen anderen von dir.. Liebe Grüße Christa
