Timo Gross Band

Influenced by Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton, the man from the Palatinate has found his very own style in the blues, which he brings to the stage tonight at the Laboratorium.

There was Pete Townshend, there was Eric Clapton: the energy and the blues. And the teenager Timo Gross knew: "Timo, your heart belongs to the blues, and that's exactly how you want to play guitar one day." Today, a good four decades later, he has recorded a dozen albums. For him, blues has "depth and heaviness that I don't hear in other things." Gross is a cautious innovator who breathes the blues into pithy rock with well-placed accessories and vice versa. He doesn't dwell on the question of genre boundaries for long. Blues is always when it sounds real. He sometimes calls it "blues-infected music", if a drawer has to be opened. It contains heavy rock alongside Americana and classic swinging shuffle, pure blues alongside southern rock. A metallic riff can slip in between or a song that sounds as if Keith Richards whispered it to the Palatine. Three of his works are nominated for the German Record Critics' Award, and "Fallen from Grace" (2012) finally wins it. In 2013, he released "Landmarks", a cover album that proves that he can also breathe his very own, unmistakable sound into third-party compositions.
Over the years, he has earned the status of "independent artist". His 2016 album "Heavy Soul" was released for the first time on his own label Grand Cru Records, and he even designed the artwork himself.
And it goes on: Gross is not standing still - and pays homage to the songs of blues giant Huddie Ledbetter with his new band Leadbelly Calls together with Adax Dörsam. Tradition with a future.