Interview: Spirit of Soul
"Spirit of Soul": a firework of groove and soul
Reading time: 5 minutes
With which line-ups do you perform most often and what kind of events do you serve with them?
Today we talk to Bobby Stoecker, guitarist and musical director of "Spirit of Soul" and learn how a band with variable lineups from small to a 12-person troupe can deliver phenomenal shows!
"Spirit of Soul" - The name already indicates the style! Can you give our readers a short self-portrait of what one has to imagine under it?
Spirit of Soul offers a wide range of soul & black music party program and high class entertainment for events of all kinds. The line-up is peppered with exceptional singers & musicians of international level and plays throughout Europe at the largest corporate events, city festivals and exclusive parties. To hear there is from Motown classics, to new songs from the charts.
Each of the singers has a completely unique, powerful or distinctive voice and offers entertainment in a class of its own.
Together with the passion of the accompanying band, which consists of the best professional musicians in the Rhein-Main area, the band melts into a firework of "Groove" and "Soul". Most of the time the "spirit" we spread grabs our audience within the first 3-4 songs, and we are not satisfied until we have made our audience dance. Under the motto "The finest of Black Music" our repertoire ranges from the great stars of the so-called "Old School" era, such as James Brown, The Temptations, Kool & The Gang, Earth Wind & Fire and Marvin Gaye, through the 80s with Michael Jackson, Montell Jordan, to the new R&B stars of the modern scene, such as Usher, Taio Cruz and Pharell Williams. All eras of Soul & Motown are mixed together, so that a wide repertoire can be presented.
Interaction with our audience is just as important to us as the fact that we don't just play down the original versions like on CD, but add a personal touch to the respective song live.
Wow! That is of course an announcement! How long have you been around?
Last year (June 2016) Spirit of Soul celebrated the 15th anniversary in Mainz on the occasion of the Johannisnacht in front of a boisterous audience of several thousand guests at the Schillerplatz in Mainz.
Congratulations! 15 years are already a house number. You play with incredibly variable line-ups. How do you manage to put together a stage program as a quartet, a quintet, a 7-9 band or a 12-man/woman troupe?
The different lineups we offer because not every organizer can necessarily always afford a large band of 9-12 musicians & singers, let alone have enough space & budget. Since we did not want to alienate these requests or customers, we have created solutions with different sized lineups. Of course this is only possible with great musicians like our keyboarder Jan Härterich, who is able to play bass with his left hand and piano or keyboard with his right hand. With us everything is handmade, without playbacks or midifiles.
We play throughout the year, from large city festivals, corporate parties, to celebrity parties and exclusive weddings everything at events and in any size. The vast majority, however, are large corporate parties in large casts.
Cool thing! Do you play the same style of music in all formations or do you have different sets for different lineups?
We try to play the same direction and the same songs in all lineups. However, it is difficult to implement this to the last detail, because you also have to respond to the strengths of the respective singer and the instrumentation of the pieces. The fewer musicians and singers, the more difficult it is, of course. The 100% Spirit of Soul can best be implemented from the 7 - 12 instrumentation.
And the cast of 12 is our Mercedes!
That's probably a good description! Your singers and musicians have already been on stage with international stars like Simply Red, Lionel Ritchie or Weather Girls. Is it easy to find such musicians in Groß-Umstadt or how did you find each other?
That would be too good! We have excellent musicians and singers in Groß-Umstadt and the surrounding area, but our band comes from all over Germany. The musicians are all from the Rhein-Main area. The singers are Americans and live e.g. in Trier, Kaiserslautern and Cologne..
You play in several bands, including the party band "Groove Control", which is also with us. Do the musicians overlap here between the different formations?
It all started with Spirit of Soul. Later, other party & tribute bands (which specifically cover an artist or a band) in other musical directions were added. In our formations play exclusively very good and variable professional musicians, who overlap here and there also in the individual bands sometimes.
And finally: Which performance or feedback are you particularly proud of?
Personally, I'm especially proud of the fact that we've been around for 15 years now and that we played a great gig in front of a large audience in Mainz last June (just in time for our anniversary). This evening was also filmed and recorded. We got another nice concert and feedback at our concert last February in the event series "Live aus dem Südbahnhof" in Frankfurt. On this day people were already standing on the tables at noon at 13.00 and danced/celebrated. Our next big gig in the largest possible line-up of 12 we have on 24.06.2017 in Reinheim (near Darmstadt) on the occasion of the Reinheimer Musiktage (22.00 - 0.00, on the big main stage) Also live from the Südbahnhof you can hear and see us again in Frankfurt. Namely on Sunday, 01.10.2017 from 12.00 noon.
Great! Thank you for the interview and good luck with Spirit of Soul!
Thank you for the interview!
