David Lübke and a meeting of the minds (and music) in Germany.
Six years ago in the almost mythical town of Bielefeld, Germany (seriously, look it up) we settled into a small music club to play a show and found out that a young man named David Lübke from Hannover was going open for us. We didn’t know it, but this would be the beginning of a friendship that grows stronger every year and most recently resulted in David joining us on stage in front of thousands of music fans to sing a song well known across all of Germany.
Jake expertly grabs a photo on stage right after we played with David in front of a massive audience in Rudolstadt.
Check out this terribly lit interview we did with David backstage the first night we met him.
We naturally stayed in touch with David over the last few years and last summer he reached out and said he was coming to the US to soak in the culture and hopefully get inspired by the music here. I (Ben) told David to send me a quick video of his intentions and I’d post about it on my socials in hopes that people would offer to put him up on his journey. Below is that video that so many people responded to. (THANK YOU FOR BEING SO AWESOME!)
If you can’t already tell from his video, David is a one-of-a-kind human being. I don’t want to exaggerate here, but David leaves you with hope in humanity. He stayed at my house for a week, explored Chicago and then casually mentioned that he planned on hitchhiking for most of his trip. I cautioned him, rather feverishly, that it might not be the safest way to get around and he simply smiled and said he did it all the time and wasn’t worried. On the last week of David’s adventure we picked him up in North Carolina and he shared tales of people he’d met and stayed with. My favorite was the guy who picked him up on the side of the road and decided to drive him 5 hours to the Clifftop festival, and then promptly decided that he too would stay the weekend at the fest. That’s such a powerful testament to the spell David doesn’t even know he puts on people. You see him living his life to the fullest and you realize you probably should too.
We had David sit in with us at the Earl Scruggs Festival in North Carolina and then brought him back to Illinois and exposed him to his first jam band festival (one of our favorites!) Shoe Fest.
Below is the video of David’s Illinois hippy fest debut with his song “Leb wohl du kleine Stadt”. His introduction here is so cool, too. Here’s
So, fast forward to now (July 2024) and we found ourselves playing the same festival as David in Germany, the Rudolstadt Folk Music Festival. If you’ve heard the Bluegrass Ambassadors Sessions: Volume 1, you know that we had David collaborate with us on the song “Heute tier, morgen Dort” and it’s a wonderfully beautiful track. The song was originally written by arguably the most famous German folk singer Hannes Wader. The song had been suggested to us by several people over the years, simply because it’s such a powerful tune, telling the story of the joys and sometimes sadness that comes from being a traveling musician.
It only made sense to have David join us on one of our main stages sets and to sing the song. It became immediately clear that everyone in the audience knew the song and sang along. In all honestly, this was one of the coolest moments of our career as a band. To stand on a stage in the middle of a beautiful German square in front of thousands of people…and have them sing along? Crazy.
Honestly we owe so much of this experience to David’s kindness, curiosity and gentle mastery of German folk music. Do yourself a favor and read the English translation along with this video of the performance below.
Today Here, Tomorrow There
Today Here, Tomorrow There - Hannes Wader
Today here, tomorrow there, just arrived, I must go,
Never complained about it.
Chose it myself, never counted the years,
Never asked about yesterday and tomorrow.
Sometimes I dream heavily
And then I think, it's
Time to stay and now
Do something completely different.
So year after year passes
And it's long clear to me,
That nothing remains, nothing remains, as it was.
That I'm hardly missed, forgotten after days,
When I'm long gone elsewhere,
Doesn't bother or concern me, maybe my face
Will stay in someone's mind.
Sometimes I dream ...
If someone asks me why I'm like this, I stay silent,
Because the answer is hard for me.
Because what's new becomes old and what was valid yesterday,
Is already wrong today or tomorrow.
Sometimes I dream ...
Today here, tomorrow there…it’s all worth it in the end. Make sure you check out David’s socials AND the Rudolstadt Festival. The lineup was one of the most diverse and bombastic we’ve ever seen. Plus, it’s nestled into a beautiful old East German city and unlike anything else we’ve ever been to. Now we all have even more reasons to visit this beautiful country.
David Lübke:
Rudolstadt Festival: