Ragnar Ólafsson – house concert, Spalt; October 22nd, 2023

Sunday was the last tour day and brought a house show in Spalt, near Nuremberg at C.’s place. It was a lovely late afternoon among family and friends with some setlist surprises and me taking part in the show as well. It could not have been any better.

Since bus connections to Spalt are rare on Sundays, I opted for the earlier one and therefore had to leave Zwickau at 7:30 in the morning. That meant a rather short night, but was totally worth it. Everything went smoothy and I reached my hotel shortly after noon. The room wasn’t ready yet so I had a great meal at their restaurant first. Then I still had time for a nap before heading off to C.’s place.

I arrived before Raggi and Marta did, even though they had originally planned to be there much earlier. 😉 It didn’t matter, since they didn’t have much to set up and while they did, C.’s kids introduced me to their plastic dinosaurs and other toys. 😀

Meanwhile all the guest arrived, got drinks and settled down. Raggi told me he was thinking of retiring ‘Dragonfly’ and I cheered. He then asked me to play the mini keyboard on the song and I agreed. After all, I did have my stage premiere during Dragonfly two years earlier. 😀

With a gong, everyone was called to attention and the show started. Some people had never seen Raggi before, so he introduced himself briefly, promising us songs and stories. ‘Warsaw’ was first once again and sounded especially good that day. ‘Homeless’ followed – those two are a great intro to the concert. He talked about Patreon a little before continuing with ‘Deva’. It sounded so different without Conny’s harmonies, yet still beautiful.

We heard some stories about John the “crazy hippie redneck buddhist cowboy”, their trips and the food and drinks they had on their trips, ending with the description of Jägermeister cinnamon vanilla as “Kaffka’s angst in a bottle”. That was the intro to ‘Bravery’ of course. 😀

The stage debut of ‘The Beard’ followed and he told us about going to get his beard trimmed and how the barber cut off too much of it, so he kept thinking about it and needed to write a song about this “huge tragedy”. It was lots of fun – clearly, that needed to happen to inspire the song. Another world premiere was next. Many years ago Raggi’s dad got suck in a blizzard on James Ross Island in Antarctica in 1986 for two weeks so nobody could leave the tents and he wrote Blues lyrics about it. Finally, for his 70th birthday, Raggi wrote the music to it. After a few tries and a false start, he played it for us.  ‘Bradly Bay Blues’ was awesome, I loved the music and the lyrics.

Raggi mentioned that he keeps hearing rumors about the ‘Fractures’ (Vitjanir) TV series coming to Netflix and told us a little about the soundtrack he composed before he played ‘Hugsanir’. 🙂 The ‘Örlög’ sing along was perfect, or “ausgezeichnet” as Raggi put it. Then we got a beautiful version of ‘Water’ on guitar. <3

He was gonna introduce ‘Muddy Waters’ as his “first and only” Blues song and realized he had just played another one. 😉 It’s always a fun one. Did we know the German Schlager about Łódź, Raggi asked. It was the intro to ‘Łódź’, his love song to the city he lives in part time. It is really a nice city as far as I can tell, at least with lots of places to go, so I understand. He added that he had found peace and love there and thus likes it.

‘Dragonfly’ was last and he spoke about the song attracting animals. 😉 This time Marta and me joined him on stage with her in the lemur costume on the glockenspiel and me on the tiny keyboard. It was really fun to join them and despite it being so easy I still screwed up because I looked at Raggi instead of playing. He even changed the lyrics slightly singing “Something about the way they make me smile. Two girls like no others and I am their brother.”. 😀

Everyone cheered for a Zugabe and for a bit K., C.’s kid, played glockenspiel while Raggi thought about a song. 😀 He asked for requests and I suggested ‘Winona’. It was fantastic!

After the show got invited to dinner for which C. prepared great Semmelknödel and we got a yummy desert too. We had great conversations too until it was time for Raggi and Marta to leave. At was the perfect end to a wonderful weekend. See you soon.

Setlist

Warsaw
Homeless
Deva
Bravery
The Beard
Brandy Bay Blues
Hugsanir
Örlög
Water
Łódź
Dragonfly

Winona