Armed with a battery of acoustic guitars (7-string baritone, 12-string, 6-string, 8-string), Claus Boesser-Ferrari has expanded the Hendrix cosmos by adding new colors. Boesser-Ferrari grapples with this material in an inimitable and individual way that certainly demarcates itself from the many tribute-to-Hendrix recordings. He stripped his Hendrix down to his DNA and lovingly and respectfully redesigned him using his own personal and free-spirited vocabulary. 

“Jimi Hendrix's performance at the ‘Beat Club’ in 1967, initially threw me for a loop. A guy who tunes the guitar in the midst of a deafening fuzz distortion sound and produces sounds from it with his meter-long tongue was just a taxing side-effect. I was fascinated and unnerved by this performance and, as a novice in a guitar band, I had the distinct feeling that this was about much more than just music.

The important, existential things were being discussed in the subtext, the approach! This was not merely a concert, this was a performance that reached several artistic levels. It hit you right in the guts – life itself.

A thought already dawned on me back then: If something is to fascinate me long-term in artistic expressions, it must be something I can lock horns with. Any approach needs time and involves endless roaming.

Then, I took a Schaller pick-up microphone (24 deutschmarks) and pinned it to my robust Höfner traveling guitar and killed off two old tube radios in a single afternoon (for the price of four trips to the movies! An insultingly low price to pay).

After what feels like a hundred years, I still lock horns with Hendrix. But it’s without any regrets that I gave up looking for the downbeat in ‘All Along the Watchtower’ (when the solo kicks in!).  I partially stripped the songs down to their DNA and struggled in my own way (respectfully) to find my own range of colors. 

Some of these versions arose during improvised dance performances with the dancers Jadi Carboni and Sada Damedova at the Unterwegs Theater in Heidelberg, because I wanted an additional artistic level as inspiration to approach this material. So the recording here is not a ‘tribute to’ …but rather a biographical look at key stations in my own (not only musical) self-development.

As for those who protect the Holy Hendrix Grail and will hate me deeply for these versions, I wish you speedy recovery.”

Claus Boesser-Ferrari