From: christian.buechele@arcormail.de

Subject: Ron Baggerman: a live solo! Date: Sun, Nov 21, 1999

Hi all,

Thanks to Ron Baggerman, more and more Stick shows are reaching Bavaria these days. After hearing Ron play in Bamberg last week in a duo performance with a local percussionist (Harald Rost wrote a review here at Stickwire on Nov. 15!), I had the pleasure to hear him in a solo performance last Saturday at "Kuenstlerwerkstatt Pfaffenhofen".

Ron asked me to play a few warm up songs in the beginning and I was pretty nervous, knowing that all eyes were focused on me and there was noone to blame in case anything went wrong. For some 20 minutes I could feel the loneliness of a solo performer and I thought about "poor" Ron who had some two hours of playing solo before him!

Then Ron started to play, showing us all that he's truly at ease with his instrument. Simultaneously playing chords and lines with complex rhythms all over the board, he quickly made us clear what a pro can do with the Stick. The most fascinating thing is that he makes it all look that easy!

And as if it wasn't difficult enough, he kept singing along on a couple of songs, making a perfect one man band. Ron used some MIDI sounds in the background to put a little colour on and he also played some right hand stuff on his keyboard along with the left hand bass on his Stick. I'm sure, if he had four hands, he wouldn't have any problems in coordinating them.

Hi Ron, maybe you should work on it :-)

Again he played a mixture of his own songs along with some Soul and Jazz standards and even hits like Stevie Wonder's "Superstitious" have their own "Baggerman character". At the end of the show we heard Muddy Waters' "Hoochie Coochie Man" with Bernhard Singer - the owner of the club - on the blues harp and Ron playing his keyboard and Stick simultaneosly.

Big sound and guaranteed without rehearsal. Guess why the audience asked for more. Now folks: go and hear Ron playing live.

I'm sure he'll land somewhere close to you soon.

Christian Buechele