Biografie

Tears for Beers now already exists for almost nineteen years!

In the start time it was called “Ten Beers After” and made themselves as a disgrace of the north German folkszene.

After one year the name was changed in Tears for Beers, because of a same named band from Bremen and actually the speech of disgrace could never be. Tears for Beers hadn’t already been beginners at that time; all four initial members could already look back on experience and success in other regional bands.

Roland came from “Me + The Boys”, a punky-dirty rockband in which also Ebby was a member.

Lars + Nis had retired themselves from other bands and founded a folkduo . This duo was the shoot cell of the new band to which Roland and Ebby then came . With them the direction was given: folk-rock.

Already under the initial name “Ten Beers After” it started well: after few concerts the band was well-known as one of the best regional (bands) – the concpet came up:Traditional Irish and Scottish items were provided with modern influences and brought with it up to date.

Also the name change was born without any problems.

Tears For Beers constantly won fans from most diverse musical stocks in addition. The first CD Tears For Beers was taken up 1992 in the Kieler supersonic recording studio with Andreas Linnemann. The first edition of 1.000 pieces, financed by the trade union “ÖTV”, was sold in wind hurry and had already to be pressed twice again until today . The ascent of the band from a local secret tip to an international active “branded article” carried out itself in partly breath-robbing speed: Beside innumerable gigs in all clubs of northern Germany all large festivals in northern Germany were afflicted.

In addition to that foreign appearances came in Tallinn (Estland), Denmark and Ireland as well as the support for “Torfrock” and the “Hooters”.
Meanwhile Tears for Beers themselves promoted as headliner and they annually invited guests into the Kieler “Traumfabrik” in order to celebrate the Irish national holiday “St. Patrick’s Day” with the local audience. For a band, that call itself as semiprofessional and whose members have regulated jobs at the same time, it is actually too much of the good at once.
Nevertheless Tears For Beers produced still further CD’s apart from numerous concerts: In 1994 “Cracky Bones” was produced ,it was already sold 2.000 times. For the third album they took themselves more time: almost one year from 1998 until 1999 (again with Andreas “Captain” Linnemann in the (supersonic recording studio) they worked on “Mud Water Dance” before the CD was introduced on St. Patrick’s Day 1999 in the “Traumfabrik”.

Naturally there were also setbacks: Several times the label was changed.
A major recorddeal did not come up until today (which is not amazing in the folkrock category) and like each other band Tears For Beers had to bear some changing of the cast, too.

The violin had to be recasted four times, the drums also and was recasted later again, andan accordeon was added, too. Nevertheless two of the four initial members remained, only Nils changed his domicile because of vocationally causes, Ebby left for new musical casts.

Tears For Beers are today:
Lars Jensen vocals, citer, banjo, pipes + flutes.
Roland Schneider vocals, guitars.
Dimitar Bonev bass.
Stefan Baumann violin.
Bert Ritscher accordeon.
Christian Belau drums.

In this occupation the band achieved the highest level.
The instrumenting permits both subtile acoustic arrangements and forward-driving, rocky party music with traditional base. The musical abilities of the musicians are throughout on high professional level.

The head of the band is Lars Jensen. The great arrangements all come from him. He also finds many traditionals which are then transferred together into the typical style of Tears For Beers.
Also the numerous self-compositions come predominantly from the frontman Lars, who is also singing most titles.
The counterweight to the traditional background of Lars are mostly Roland and Stefan. Rolands preference are countrysongs and bluegrass and he likes to play the e-guitar. Originally Stefan learned playing the classic violin, but the work with e-violin and digital effects is almost perfect.
Bert however swears on accordeon sounds which already would have arrived well on the old “Hamburger Veermaster”.
The rhythmical backbone are Dimitar and Uwe who cannot deny his origin from the rock music.

The various musical preferences of the musicians add themselves in Tears For Beers to an overall view that permits loans from country music, bluegrass, hillbilly or reggae apart from traditional Irish and Scottish folk and also grooving rock music. That developes an individual non-standard music style that Tears For Beers selfconscious call “Folk’n’Roll”. With this own mixture they inspire young as well as old people, folk-fans as well as party-girls, rocker, pop-fans and also the world wide Internet-participations: Since 1999 Tears For Beers are represented in mp3.com.

In this time it went rapidly upward. As so far first and only German band Tears For Beers reached several number 1 quotations into the mp3- charts for folk, for celtic in the column world/folk. Numerous quotations of further titles in the top 20 of that category were added. The title “Jacobites” was the number 1 hit for 14 days and even went into the top 40 of the complete charts of mp3. (place 36, before the Eagles!!)
International concert inquiries, label supplies and fan-mails were the result.

Now the band works intensively on the analysis of the contacts, on a Canada-tour and on e-commerce.

Also with this Tears For Beers prove that they take the linkage of tradition and modern trends very serious.

Good music is timeless, it mustn’t be dusty, but have to go toward its audience like the musicians.

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