by Frank Matheis 2020
Way over in Rüti, Switzerland, the most unlikely place for a fiery blues woman, Tanja Wirz represents the universality of music and the power of the acoustic blues. She is one of the finest in Europe, a superb guitarist and singer, a musical preservationist who passionately digs into the broad spectrum of blues, jazz, ragtime and swing. If she was living in New Orleans, Memphis or New York she would be world famous by now, en par with peers like Del Rey, Maria Muldaur and Rory Block, because she is every bit as good. Instrumentally, Del Rey’s versatility comes to mind, as Tanja Wirz has the same joyous approach in the similar musical pocket, and both are a direct throwback to the great women of the golden era of jazz and blues. Tanja’s sultry singing is reminiscent of Katherine Whalen of the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Erika Lewis of Tuba Skinny, although Wirz is distinctly unique and individual.
There is a vibrant but small blues scene in Europe, including the operational sphere of Wirz in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. Besides her musical endeavors she is a professional freelance journalist who writes mostly about arts and humanities, history, sociology, psychology. By now she is predominately a full-time musician of considerable artistry. Interestingly, one of the swiftest practitioners of classic blues/jazz/ragtime studied 19th-20th Century history at the University of Zürich. Like many immensely gifted blues/jazz virtuosos, outside of the musical mainstream, she wanted to do music for a living, as she said, “since forever”, but it wasn’t a possibility until late in life. Now she is fully dedicated to life as a professional musician with occasional writing gigs. Tanja Wirz is stunning and she can really swing, and how! She’s plays exuberantly, unbridled and brash on guitar and stand-up bass. She and her regular duo partner, the equally talented guitarist Rainer Wöffler, are the wild and crazy Red Hot Serenaders, and they often perform with a complete 1920s jazzy horn section to complete the early 20th century sound as if you were sitting in some New Orleans speakeasy.
thecountryblues.com interviewed the talented songstress, and fellow freelance writer, via telephone on May 10, 2020 in the midst of the pandemic lockdown:
TW: “I got into blues and prewar jazz when I was a kid. My dad had some records by Lightnin’ Hopkins and from the American Folk Blues Festival and there was also a neighbor who had some jazz records. I was nine or ten years old when I listened to them. I thought this music was just great, and I wanted to know how to play it! The first instrument I learned as a kid was the clarinet, and I still play it sometimes. But the great thing about guitar was that I could sing along to it and I always loved to sing!
I started playing guitar when I was 13 because I had some friends who knew how to play, mainly campfire songs or songs by Mani Matter, a Swiss German singer-songwriter. I wanted to know how to do this too, and so I asked them to show me, and that’s how I began. But mostly, I’m self-taught. I asked everybody who played guitar to show me a bit, and I found books with tablature of some blues songs, from Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Blake and Memphis Minnie. And I just played along to records.
I always would have liked to be a musician, but I only started doing it professionally about ten years ago when I met Rainer Wöffler. I went to an acoustic blues guitar workshop he was teaching, and then we started to play and perform together as «The Red Hot Serenaders».
Before that I worked as freelance journalist. I still do some writing, mostly for the magazine of the University of Zürich, because I like doing it and I also need the job to supplement my income, but my main occupation now is performing and teaching music.
I very seldom perform solo. Most gigs I play as a duo with Rainer Wöffler. Sometimes we also perform as «The Red Hot Serenaders Orchestra», which is a seven-piece band with horns and washboard in the tradition of the street bands from New Orleans. And sometimes I also play with my cousin Nanina Ghelfi, who is a singer, in a duo called «The Cousin Sisters», or as guest musician with other bands.
My main guitar is a Gibson L-5 copy by luthier Michael Brey from Munich, but I also play quite a lot of ukulele, mostly a National resonator ukulele from the 1930s. Another guitar I love to play is my old Triolian National resonator guitar.
My repertoire consists mainly of covers of old tunes. I like doing songs by Memphis Minnie and Bessie Smith, but also jazz tunes from the 20ies and 30ies, for example by Fats Waller, The Harlem Hamfats, by Duke Ellington, Louis Jordan, The Cats and The Fiddle and many more. Some of my guitar heroes are Memphis Minnie, Eddie Lang, Al Casey, Lonnie Johnson and Oscar Aleman. I love this old, acoustic style of playing, be it blues or jazz. And I like mixing all these genres: prewar jazz, swing, ragtime and blues. Today, a lot of people think, playing blues and jazz are two very different things to do. But back then, musicians like Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong or Lonnie Johnson played both and mixed them up. That’s what I like to do, too.
The singing is also very important for me, and I’m influenced by a lot of different singers. I learned a lot from Ella Fitzgerald records, but also from Dinah Washington and Oscar Brown Jr. One special interest of mine is harmony singing as done by The Boswell Sisters or The Mills Brothers. I love singing together with other people in harmony!
Contemporary musicians I like a lot and try to learn from are singers Maria Muldaur, Catherine Russell and Cecile McLorin, and guitarists Mike Dowling, John Reynolds, Toby Walker and Matt Munisteri. And I especially love to see other women who play guitar and sing ! So there’s Bonnie Raitt, Erin Harpe, Rhiannon Giddens, Del Rey or Jo Ann Kelly. Kelly certainly would have been a role model for me if I could have seen her on stage when I was younger! It’s always nice to see other women play this music and play instruments, because it makes me think: «Oh that’s cool – I’m not the only one!»
I couldn’t really say what technique I use on the guitar. Perhaps my own. I play with fingerpicks, because I like the sound of them and also because this way I can mix swing-style strums with real fingerpicking and bass runs. I really love playing rhythm guitar and also chord solos like they played before the invention of amplifiers. But actually I never thought too much about my technique – I just wanted to play this music. I listen to a lot of music that isn’t really guitar music – like Duke Ellington or Fats Waller for example, and I just try to play it on the guitar, as well as possible. Right now, I’m trying to learn some open tunings and playing with the slide, but I can’t do it too well up until now. My duo partner Rainer Wöffler is a really great slide player and I learn a lot from him.
When we’re touring we’re mainly travelling Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. We’re playing quite a lot of gigs, perhaps around eighty per year, mostly small theaters, clubs or private parties. In Switzerland there are not many bands or musicians that do this kind of music. It would be nice if there were more!»
