Wake Up

Little Rock Nine was a band which I founded in 2007 together with the American one of a kind Gospel / Soul / Jazz vocalist Dean Bowman.

Couple of years prior Christian Mohrhenn introduced to me the live album of David Fiuczynski´s Screaming Headless Torsos, where Dean was in charge of the vocals at that time. I really loved what I was hearing, so sometime in 2006, when Myspace was coming up in the music scene, I put up a profile and started reaching out to people.

Dean was one of the first to get a message from me, to which he responded by suggesting that we meet up. We did so in Amsterdam in late 2006, and decided to form a band. I invited my friends Mickey Neher (drums), Martin Scholz (hammond organ) and Karlos Boes (sax) to join us, and everybody accepted the offer. 

The band came together in Wuppertal, Germany for the first time in April of 2007, after a very brief rehearsal played a first show the same night, and entered a recording studio for a recording session the very next day.

 In my enthusiasm of youth back then, I wanted to make an album out of those recordings, but to cut a long story short, I just was not able to pull it off.

Nevertheless Little Rock Nine made some great music, and we really had a great time together. The band played a couple of live shows in Europe over the course of the next 2,5 years and although it never officially disbanded, it ceased to exist in late 2009, as the Royal Street Orchestra had already come together and I knew that I wanted to put my focus there. 

While I have still remained friends with Dean over all the years, and there definitely will be cooperations in the future, I don´t think the recordings from 2007 will ever see the light of day. Here you you can listen to Mickey Neher´s composition “Wake Up” from the studio session, and a rendition of Charles Mingus´classic “Good Bye Pork Pie Hat” (with beautiful lyrics and vocal delivery by Dean) from that first live show we played in April of 2007 in Wuppertal, Germany. 

Studio recordings were done live by Andreas Herr at his Heyday Studio in Wuppertal, the live recording is a soundboard recording. 

Below you can listen to a conversation Dean and I recorded in early 2021 for my Talking Spirits Podcast.

Dean Bowman on Facebook

Used equipment:

Music Man Stingray 5 bass – straight into console via Radial JDV – MK3 DI