Social media affords the benefit of sometimes catapulting relatively obscure musicians to the forefront. Take Rainer Brunn, from Bamberg in Bavaria, Germany.
He essentially does not tour and has released two independent, low-budget home recorded CDs that are not in distribution. His claim to fame is Facebook and YouTube, as he has drawn international attention simply for posting some homemade clips of him playing country blues, and how! He can play the blues! It becomes quickly evident that Brunn is not just another delusional guy playing for YouTube on his sofa imagining himself a real bluesman. Brunn is a masterful guitarist, picking the Piedmont style with natural ease and virtuosic perfection. That’s because he is a guitar teacher in his day job, a life-long player who studied music at the conservatory (Meistersinger Konservatorium, Nürnberg). He studied classical guitar with the famed Italian guitarist and composer Carlo Domeniconi before finding his love for African American deep roots blues.
Chances are you still don’t him. Like many talented musicians he prefers to keep a low profile, “I am not a person who likes to call venues to ask for gigs. I am not good at self-promotion or the business end of things. I get out maybe three times a year to perform on stage, but mostly I keep to myself.”
He has played classical guitar (he owns a Gerhard Schnabel classical guitar) and as guitarist in Irish bands, and has been a session guitarist, but he found his place with the gentle fingerpicking style of the mid-Atlantic Piedmont fingerpicking style. “That music flows for me. It feels right as a guitar style that fits to me. I learned that some music does not fit to me. After a while I realized that I would rather play Clifford Gibson’s “Old Time Rider” than classical guitar, which I studied for a long time.”
Now he takes on the greats like Arthur “Blind” Blake, Blind Boy Fuller, Big Bill Broonzy, Bo Carter and the like. “I don’t really play slide too much. I am a fingerpicker.” Even though one of his CDs is called “Going to the Delta” he’s not really a Delta style player. He’s played with his superb German compatriot Willie Salomon, but mostly he plays at home after long days of teaching guitar to students of all ages at the local music school, the Städtische Musikschule Bamberg.
So there he is, over there far away in Germany playing the Piedmont blues on his fancy Blazer & Henkes and Martin OM18 guitars (and many more), content with the love of the music. Check him out on Facebook and YouTube.
