German Beat #2: Roland Heinrich

With a nickname that speaks of the trails and trials of Kerouac and Guthrie, Dylan and Waits, a European roots musician proves apt choice to pen liner notes for a new collection of Beat-linked songs

A LITTLE earlier this year, I was pleased to encounter a new double CD set from the well-established and innovative German re-issue label Bear Family Records. Jack Kerouac: 100 Years of Beatitude (a neat play on the title of Gabriel García Márquez’ wonderful 1967 novel) is a smart anniversary compilation that gathers Kerouac and other Beat recordings alongside period songs and compositions evoking the flavour of that late 1950s/early 1960s moment.

Annotating this treasure chest of more than 50 spoken word and jazz, R&B and rock’n’roll, tracks is an extended essay, in English, by a writer called Roland Heinrich Rumtreiber. His lively centenary history of Kerouac and the Beat Generation – ‘A portrayal of the artist as a young man (mostly) in 15 minutes (speedily written without Benzedrine)’ (a reference in itself, of course, to James Joyce) – provides a rich introductory account of these novelist/poets and their times.

Pictured above: Discs and Roland Heinrich booklet from the new Bear Family Records Kerouac celebration. Note that the CDs feature facsimiles of the labels from late 1950s vinyl album releases by the On the Road author

I was intrigued by this piece of writing and its author, a musician also known simply as Roland Heinrich, then discovered that the term Rumtreiber actually means hobo (or at least close to that) in German, a word obviously charged with a potent draft of the open highway and a strong Beat mystique.

Rock and the Beat Generation has now had a chance to gently interrogate this versatile performer and songwriter, a tramp like us perhaps, and unravel further the reasons behind that fascinating nickname and his own interests in the world of Kerouac and friends…

Greetings, Roland. Please tell us something about your background. What part of Germany are you from and who were your family?

I was born in 1969, grew up in the Ruhr area, Germany's former coal mining and steel mill centre. My family were steel mill workers and coal miners with a robust Protestant background on my mother's side. My father's family were farmers and humanists from Potsdam and rural Brandenburg. A strange but strict mix.

At home, growing up, classical music ruled, and I still can't listen to it. Otherwise, I try to be open. My musical influences are pretty varied as a result. As a young kid, I discovered singing cowboys and Hawaiian guitars via the weekly televised B-Westerns; blues and swing in weekly jazz matinees; and I liked old rock’n’roll whenever it was on the radio. I luckily won the second prize inYou a children's drawing contest – a 40 Great Oldies compilation from Polydor! The first prize would have been two dull tickets for a movie of my choice…

Who are your main musical influences?

Rock’n’roll was frowned upon my family but later I was enrolled in a children’s choir travelling through Germany and further afield to Japan and Israel. In England, I came across a Hank Williams’ Greatest Hits album which was definitely influential. Later I played double bass in various roots bands then, shaped by a Merle Travis record and two Jimmie Rodgers LPs, switched to guitar and henceforth haunted European street corners with originals, blues and country classics.

In 1996, I studied and travelled in the US and witnessed the birth of the American alternative country phenomenon. In 2003, I was invited by Richard Weize, founder of Bear Family Records, to do Jimmie Rodgers’ songs in German for his label. Einsam und Ausgebremst: Lieder von Jimmie Rodgers was released to critical acclaim, and the press credited me with rejuvenating the German country scene.

In 2004, American expatriate director James Lyons contacted Weize in search of an actor/musician for his new play Johnny Cash: The Beast in Me. He suggested me. From 2004 until 2012, in over 500 shows, I played a demon in various guises: Jimmie Rodgers, evangelical preacher, drug dealer, etc. The play won a cross-over award and inspired quite a few copycats.

Finally, in 2013, tired of make-up and make-believe, I returned to playing Wurzelmusik* can with my National guitars and Hohner harps. I now live, together with my family, in the soggy bottoms of the Havelland outside of Berlin. We grow kale, maize, and turnip greens as a hobby.

Which artists are on your playlist?

I listen to all sorts of American and Caribbean music from the 1920s to the 1960s. Punk and the English garage scene of the 1980s also significantly impacted me in terms of my general approach to life and music. My main influences as a guitarist are Merle Travis and T-Bone Walker. Hank Williams, Lightning Hopkins, Chuck Willis, Fats Waller, Jimmie Rodgers, Son House and Townes Van Zandt have left their mark, too. And the Milkshakes/Delmonas from Rochester/Chatham. My double bass playing was influenced by Ransom Knowling (from the golden days of Chicago blues) and Oscar Pettiford.

Is live music your main preoccupation, or is recording an important part of your life, too?

My most representative recordings are yet unfinished and buried on my computer. The last couple of years were quite unstable: no money, a broken-down tour bus, my father's Alzheimer's disease resulting in his death, several relocations, etc. I played as much as I could but never quite finished my album.

When things finally got better, Covid came along. That's life, and it's OK. I started working ‘a real job’ in July 2020, so there is not a lot of music going on right now. My 2009 release Lichterloh is on Spotify. It was representative back then. Most of the songs I still play, but the arrangements have changed. It's less hillbilly these days, and the styles I cited have all merged. These days, it's less musical history with German lyrics and more music, if you will.  

Aside from the CD liner notes, what other writing have you done?

I never considered myself a writer and did not really write regularly before Bear Family asked me to write about a forgotten Dutch-Surinamese calypso singer in 2020. In the 80s, I drew a short-lived comic strip for a punk fanzine. In the early 90s, some contributions for a local garage and rockabilly fanzine followed. In the later 90s, I contributed two articles for a German/American cultural studies mag called Internationes (the VW Beetle myth/Lyonel Feininger's early comics). I did a piece on gospel steel guitars for German jazz magazine Jazzthetik in 1997. An exhibition catalogue followed in 2004. The Leipzig artist Tilo Schulz and I held an exhibition on the mobility myth and masculinity in American popular culture – Western-related or inspired.   

Do you write in English or German?

I write in English and German. German is tricky though – me being from the Ruhrgebiet and such! My mother tongue has only recently been officially declared a dialect. Before that, it was thought of as bad German. English is a constant challenge too. But I love English – always did – and I hardly read German books or periodicals. English has so much variety, so much flow. I guess a language that has pain rhyming with vain can't be beaten!

What drew you to the Beat Generation? When did you first encounter this world?

I was very anti-intellectual during the 80s, too much punk rock and rebellion against the heavy yoke of the Dichter und Denker** myth. In 1985, I came across Billy Childish's poetry books in a Camden bookstore. Here was a young man – a contemporary – and a musician, writing poetry. I was mesmerised, and it reconciled me with literature/culture – probably not Billy's intention. My father's mother had some Kafka and Hemingway – I checked them out. It was a turning point.

I stumbled upon Jack Kerouac, John Clellon Holmes and James Baldwin in our public library three years later: I always checked out the music book section. Someone must have put The Horn, The Subterraneans and Beale Street Blues (If Beale Street Could Talk) in the wrong place. It was pure coincidence. At that time, I was heavily into 40s R&B – honking saxophones – and had just fallen in love with Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday/Lester Young. So, the books accompanied the sound. It created a visual and narrative dreamworld, a reclusive adolescent escapism. Instead of going to the army, I worked as a geriatric nurse in a nursing home. Off duty, it was 1940s America.

After 20 months of service, I played double bass in a blues band and drove a taxi at night. An old hippie working the same shifts was happy I knew about his heroes, and he gave me several Kerouac, Corso, Snyder and Cassady books in German. Unfortunately, the translations weren't too good. Once I received English versions via import, I was hooked.

The passion, the dreamy and youthful attitude, the philosophical and spiritual elements, the beautiful and unconventional use of language, the rebellion, all that spoke to me – spoke for me, it seemed. The concept of life on the road, life as a road, redemption, living in the moment, the passionate acceptance and indulgence of life – that was new to me, yet seemed to be me. It helped me find myself and get rid of many nasty habits.

It was during one of those long nights behind the wheel that a friend suggested I pursue American Studies and do some serious reading. It helped with my ongoing reconciliation process and later took me to America for real. I also had to pay fewer taxes as a taxi driver.

Which are your favourite novels/poetry from that cultural scene?

There was a time I always carried a copy of San Francisco Blues with me wherever I went. I guess it is my favourite. The poetry collections or novels that I always return to are Holmes’ The Horn, Snyder's Turtle Island and The Practice of the Wild, Kerouac's On the Road and Lonesome Traveler and all his recordings. Depending on my mood, I also go for Corso's Gasoline, Bukowski's Ham on Rye and LeRoi Jones' Dutchman. I always liked Cassady's letters. Haven't read them in a long time, though.

Since I started reading for the Kerouac anniversary release last October, I have been walking among stacks of books. I am about to start with Burroughs and Thomas Wolfe real soon, but I need to finish some interesting secondaries and Joyce Johnson first. It's too much, and time is scarce – I guess I’ve got to quit working again.

Rumtreiber? Is that a nickname? I appreciate it means something akin to hobo. Please explain your attachment to it.

After recording my Jimmie Rodgers adaptations for Bear Family in 2004, I was asked to play some shows. So I formed a band out of the many lovely people that helped with the CD and called the band Die Rumtreiber. It best translates as ‘rounder’. A hobo travels to find work; a vagabond is like a drifter. A rounder is moving for moving's sake. The term seems not as connected to homelessness and desolation as the term drifter, I suppose.

After I couldn't afford bands anymore, I played solo. Some papers announced shows with ‘Der Rumtreiber is coming’. It became a moniker/synonym. I started calling roots music Wurzelmusik, called myself a Stahlarbeiter and Liederschmieder (steelworker and songsmith as a nod to my ancestor's line of occupation and due to the steel- guitars I play).

This whole Teutonisation of Anglo-American terms is fun because it bugs a lot of German hardcore Americana fans who act like grail keepers. Culture needs to be lived, and my songs are closely related to everyday life. I don't sing about Route 66, mojos or moonshine ‘likker’. I am not an American, neither are they. It's one thing I had to learn myself and the Beats helped me with that. Try to be real and yourself. You'll be busy for the rest of your life.

Now there is another band calling themselves Rumtreiber. They do party, carnival and oompah music. So let's drink and be merry!    

What interest in the Beat Generation exists in Germany?

When I grew up in the 1970s and 80s, Kerouac was still big with hippies and all sorts of alternative/eco-freaks. Up until the mid-90s, one room of the medical faculty of the Ruhr Universität Bochum was still painted with the three pictures used on the German versions of On the Road, Lonesome Traveler and The Dharma Bums. Grunge brought back interest on a larger scale, and suddenly the mural made sense again. It also helped loosen up all things German and Prussian and made kids turn towards Eastern religions, philosophy, etc.

Currently, I do not recognise a particular interest in the Beat Generation as a cultural or literary movement outside the American Studies departments or art and literature circles. I work as a music and English teacher right now and have a fourteen-year-old son: I don't see a connective point between their worldview and the dharma of the Beats or a yearning for the great wide open. A lot has been published in tandem with the Kerouac anniversary, though. Maybe it will spur a few things. Small steps, one at a time – I tell the kids that it's unnecessary to obtain a BMW to be someone and that an influencer can work offline too.  

Are there German Beat books/poets you might identify? I'm thinking about original texts rather than translations into German.

I am not aware of any German Beat poets/writers. As I said, I hardly read any German books. I doubt there ever was a genre or school as such. But there are a lot of artists, filmmakers and writers who have been directly or indirectly influenced by the Beats. I would wager Wim Wenders is influenced by the Beats, for example.

Back in the 50s, the return of reason/Vernunft was substantial. Rock music and jazz were catalysts for the younger generation. The German intellectuals of the 1950s and 60s seemed more attached to existentialism and surrealism. I guess the impact started during the late 60s. Germany always lags behind. By the time the Beats became influential over here, Warhol and Mailer had also made their mark. I guess it was a big jumble of things back then. But I am not an expert on that. To me, Herman Hesse is as close as you can get to the Beats. They shared a lot. 

Do you see an overlap between this cultural setting and your own music-making/artistic life?

I guess it does, in a philosophical way, as I tried to sketch out earlier. But I think you need to bring along a certain mindset, discontent or longing to embrace the Beats/the cultural setting. You can feel attached to anything and model your life around it for a while. Follow a trend or an idea, so to speak. But to keep doing it, you need to feel its rhythm. And you need to accept the environment it creates. In addition, you need to be willing to sacrifice a few things. This sounds like a cliché, pathetic and self-important. I think of it as a means to deal with myself and everyday life. We need to find ourselves and live according to accepted beliefs – or choose alternatively to live out of bounds. Either way. It is as easy as that and as hard. It’s why the concepts of Zen and dharma were and are so central. It's all about learning, respect, and awareness. It's hard, and I am not there yet. Small steps.

I have just come across news of the first biography of Kerouac in German by Nicola Bardola. Are you aware of that? We are planning to write something about it.

Yes, a writer from Augsburg, Franz Dobler, told me about it, and I got hold of a copy. Franz reviewed various Kerouac-related releases recently. It's on top of the mentioned stacks alongside your fine book.

* Wurzel in German means ‘root’, hence Wurzelmusik might be considered root or roots music

** Germans traditionally mythologise their own nation thus, ‘Das Land der Dichter und Denker’, translating as the Land of Poets and Thinkers

Note: Rock and the Beat Generation carried a preview of the CD set Jack Kerouac: 100 Years of Beatitude, ‘“Rare” tracks on Kerouac centenary set’ on January 29th, 2022. An interview with the author of the new German biography of Kerouac, ‘German Beat #1: Nicola Bardola’ was published in these same pages on March 20th, 2022