The second Sofar in Berlin took us to one of those well known old building flat shares in Kreuzberg. Herve, Frederick and Anja welcomed us into their lovely flat, which slowly but surely filled up until it was finally packed out with eager music lovers.

The night kicked off with WellBad, a band consisting of five guys from Hamburg, who played the Blues, but not the sad kind, as lead singer Daniel Welbat explained, because there is more to Blues than just that. It is more than just sad, old men who drink a lot and sing about their hard lives. The guys did their thing true to their motto “the Blues is the roots, everything else is the fruits”, just like their inspiration and blues musician Willie Dixon once said. Strong sounds and a powerful voice provoked the occasional howling as well as whistling from the crowd, a very good sign. [caption id="attachment_536" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="WellBad by Kassandra Carelos"] [/caption]

Find out more about Wellbad on their website.

They were followed by Celina Bostic and band. This singer/songwriter, a native of Berlin, has played with several renowned artists of the German music scene, such as Udo Lindenberg and Farin Urlaub. She had the crowd singing along, which became a bit of a contest between the guys and gals in the audience during her song “Ausser Papa” (“Except for dad”), where she sings about how the men she’s been with had nothing on her dad. Her accordionist had his very own premiere, as he was still learning to play the accordion but more importantly had never played it in front of an audience before. [caption id="attachment_537" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Celina Bostic by Kassandra Carelos"] [/caption]

Find out more about Celina on her MySpace.

The third act of the night was Rob Longstaff. Originally from Australia, he’s now living in Berlin where he’s playing the streets as well as parks. Even though he himself claims he hasn’t managed to learn how to play jazz, he still was more than convincing, not only with his first song of the night, “It’s Jazz, Baby”, but also with his other songs, where he had the audience chuckling. While trying to tune his guitar he explained to us that this very guitar had survived a car crash and a fire and was thus difficult to tame in terms of tuning, which did not lessen the effects of his guitar playing or his memorable voice, quite the opposite. Find out more about Rob on his website. Last but not least, Johannes Oerding, whom probably most of the present crowd had heard of before, wrapped up the night. Just with his guitar and some keyboard backing we got to enjoy acoustic versions of his otherwise with a full band recorded songs. At the sight of quite strong rain he gave Reggae a shot where he laughingly sang about sunshine and beautiful weather and when the camera needed a battery change he sang about that until the camera was ready to go again. With his song “Zurück” (“Back”) he concluded the night, singing about missing a loved one whilst travelling, hoping to be missed just the same, and his voice matched the sentiment. [caption id="attachment_539" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Johannes Oerding by Kassandra Carelos"] [/caption] Find out more about Johannes on his website. Sofar #2 in Berlin, and already #59 worldwide!, came to an end but before all acts of the night left I grabbed them one by one (or five, in the case of WellBad) and interviewed them for Sofar Sounds! Thank you Abby for hosting! Thank you Herve, Frederick and Anja for opening your doors to a big bunch of music lovers! Rafe, Rocky and Dave - we missed you! By Kassandra Carelos