Bio

Masterpicker Dave Goodman and harmonica maestro Steve Baker enjoy well-deserved reputations in the blues and roots music scene as both excellent instrumentalists and inspired performers. Their stylistic spectrum reflects their wide-ranging musical experience and goes far beyond the blues tradition to include delicate ballads, ripping rock grooves, jazz inflected songs à la Tom waits or driving bluegrass numbers, performed with passion and infectious enthusiasm.

Despite this diversity, their sparse instrumentation creates an instantly recognizable sound which binds the whole thing together and gives it a clear identity. This exciting duo project gives both protagonists the opportunity to break new ground together and share their joy of playing with the audience.

Dave Goodman is a remarkable guitarist who is equally at home on acoustic or electric instruments, a truly eclectic musician who embraces styles as varied as jazz, blues, rock, Celtic, classical, country and folk. He's also a great singer and gifted songwriter, who creates deeply personal songs with sophisticated arrangements and a powerful emotional impact, which immediately sound familiar but are hard to pigeonhole.

Steve Baker is undoubtedly one of today's most influential harmonica artists. His fascinating style doesn't rely on demonstrative virtuosity, but combines groove and melody with a remarkable intensity. His playing is always aimed at bringing out the best in the song and fuses elements from the blues tradition with rock, country, folk, funk, soul and jazz to create an exciting, original and unpredictable mixture which has inspired many younger players.

Dave Goodman

"This man can do it all. A virtuoso guitarist and fascinating singer, he writes evocative lyrics and turns them into great songs with hit potential."
Akustik Gitarre 01/2010

Dave Goodman's live shows bubble with energy and humor. He takes his audience on a musical and emotional journey which can move from sensitive ballads to powerful blues in the blink of an eye. His lyrics tell stories which are sometimes funny and often deeply moving. Not only a great guitarist and songwriter, Goodman's deeply personal performances make him one of the most exciting "folk" artists appearing on stage today.

Goodman grew up in Victoria, British Columbia as the youngest of seven children in a thoroughly musical household. After graduating from school he moved to Vancouver and studied jazz with Bruce Clausen at Vancouver College before settling in San Francisco. There he became a fixture in the Bay Area music scene and shared the stage with countless local and national artists including Tommy Castro and Jeff Healey as well as working for the Mesa Boogie amplifier company for several years. During the 1990s he toured Europe as a member of the Ford Blues Band and decided to stay, relocating to Bremen, where he now lives. His abilities as a guitarist soon attracted the interest of Yamaha and for the past several years he has presented guitar workshops for the company all over Europe. He also gives workshops with Peter Finger and since 2010 has been an instructor at the European Music Workshops with Steve Baker and Martin Röttger. Dave has released several highly regarded  CDs including "Roadbook Rhymes" and "Rocks, Skies and Waters" on CrossCut and "Side Of The Road" on Acoustic Music Records. His latest recoding in collaboration with Steve Baker appears on AMR in autumn 2012.

Steve Baker

"When Steve Baker plays, I listen!  He is my favorite European harp player and one of the most powerful and moving melodic players that I have ever heard."
Joe Filisko, legendary harp player and pioneer of harmonica customizing, 2011

Few people can claim to have made their living for over 35 years from the diatonic harmonica, but Steve Baker is one of them. He can look back on a career which has included literally thousands of live performances and hundreds of studio recordings in the most varied styles. He is the author of The Harp Handbook as well as several other seminal works on the instrument. As a consultant to the Hohner company since 1987 Steve has also been closely involved in the development of several new harmonica models.

Born and raised in London, he now lives near Hamburg, where he came by chance in the late 1970s with a crazed Anglo-American jugband named Have Mercy. Since then, he has earned an enviable reputation as an innovator and pioneer on the instrument and was recently cited as one of the world's top ten harmonica stylists by no less than Detlev Hoegen, boss of the renowned blues label CrossCut Records. As well as countless live appearances and half a dozen CD productions with Abi Wallenstein, Steve performed and recorded with the great guitarist and songwriter Chris Jones from 1994 until the latter's untimely death in 2005, releasing four duo CDs on Acoustic Music Records.  Steve is also very active in the field of harmonica education and is artistic director of the Harmonica Masters Workshops in Trossingen, Germany (headquarters of the Hohner company) as well as co-organising and teaching at the European Music Workshops in Alsace, France.
 

Mehr Infos:

www.dave-goodman.info

www.stevebaker.de