The Wildflowers

In love with love and with the blues

"Live im Stadtbad": Final show with "Nadja Petrick and the Wildflowers" - earthy handmade music

What happens when hard-boiled blues musicians fall in love? For instance an extended 'love song session' like in the second half of the show of "Nadja Petrick and the Wildflowers" which took place last Saturday on the Stadtbad stage to end this year´s cultural festival in Weiden.
The Berlin singer songwriter who made her second vistit to Weiden - twelve years ago she was here suppporting Roger Chapman - didn´t make no secret of her emotions. Sitting rather casually on her chair with guitar and harmonica the full blooded singer let the music speak for itself and completely won the audience over in the soldout Stadtbad.

Not only soft tones
The catchy 'Dance with me' or the romantic "Red roses are out of fashion" did please. But Nadja Petrick didn´t only strike those soft notes. Traditional folk songs a la Leadbelly like 'Only the leaves in the wind', hillbillies like 'Since you've been gone' show her wide-ranging understanding of blues (...) She couldn´t even be stopped, when the harmonica got stuck in the holder the wrong way round, and just played the solo 'backwards'.

It´s all well-known
Sure, you might say Nadja Petrick´s compositions sound a little familiar. In fact, the Wildflowers´reverences for the greats of blues, folk and country music like Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan or Hank Williams are plain to hear. And apart from that she has that unique voice that sounds like Janis Joplin´s younger sister, just a litlle less eccentric. Maybe that was the reason why she refused to play a Janis coversong (she doesn´t want to be categorized) although she made a little compromise at the end of the show: In her emotional tune "Too much liquor" Nadja Petrick sang of the sad side of love in Joplin-style, and rounded off a successful evening.

Der Neue Tag 31/7/06

A touch of Janis Joplin

From the smoky bars of the Berlin metropolis Nadja Petrick and the Wildflowers came to breathe some clean air at the openair concert at Pütttlinger Bahnhof.
Songs come easily to her and she has the feeling for what could be a good song. Against the "techno-era" Nadja Petrick writes and sings. You can meet her and her guitarist Axel Rosenbauer in small smoky clubs in the city where the blues is rooted. Now the chief of the "Kulturforum Saarbrücken" picked her up in the internet and invited her and her band to play an openair concert at Saarbücken´s castle and at the Püttlinger Bahnhof.

And here she comes: Acting casually but with concentration she is standing at the mike with her guitar. Dressed in jeans and waistcoat Nadja Petrick looks as if she´s just jumped off one of those railroad wagons for a short visit and a couple of songs. (...) She is all voice. Her songs sound mysterious and destructive and put a spell on the audience. You feel with her, become a confidant and get attracted by the fragile atmosphere of the big city Berlin. The melancholy gets closer, the gayer side, too, but not often, sometimes the irony and the madness in those modern lovesongs. One says she sings a little like Janis Joplin. And Nadja says later: People like to be reminded of something. That makes listening easier. She always lived for the music, she says, sometimes worked as a taxidriver to make a living. Then came the record contract, ten years ago...

SZ 30/7/01

Melancholy Madness Nadja Petrick & The Wildflowers at the Kulturbahnhof in Püttlingen. With a smoky blues voice and an unvarnished show the Berlin singer enchanted the audience.

An unpolished, wild and gentle beauty

Nadja Petrick was convincing 350 listeners at the concert in Püttlingen

Marianne Faithfull´s voice had that certain something: a sort of impatience hard to control which contradicted the "virginity" image laid upon her for marketing reasons. In comparison Nadja Petrick´s voice and spirit don´t seem so contradictory. Besides that unobtrusive gentleness she has there is a wild, unpolished beauty in her singing. Visually it could be compared to a flock herons flying up in the sky. Nadja Petrick and the Wildflowers are playing folkrock in a clear, intelligent manner, surely influenced by Dylan and innovative like Suzanne Vega. Nadja Petrick, the singer with the melodious name and the tousled hair, also captivates with her brilliant bluesharp playing, and she´s brilliant at the guitar, too. The music of the band immediately gets in your ear, there is no nerve-racking blast of sounds, quiet, calm, enchanting and far from being easy-listening.

KA 30/7/01

music BERLIN SCENE

Records

BERLIN NEWS

NADJA PETRICK & THE WILDFLOWERS

Down In The Groove (TNT Records):
Berlin, 1999. Our Dylan is called Nadja Petrick. And she uses the laurels she won from the Detlev Buck movie "Liebe Deine Nächste" for bringing her "Subteranean Homesick Tapes" out into the open one by one. Here we have three urban folk songs that reach international calibre by the clever mixing of samples and accoustic sounds and Nadja Petrick´s "goose flesh voice".

tip 1999

Nadja Petrick
A local hero in terms of bluesy folkrock

When you hear Nadja Petrick´s expressive voice you´re immediately reminded of the high times of earthy, true and handmade rock and blues - from Janis Joplin, Marianne Faithfull to Bob Dylan. The singer doesn´t need no posing, lets the music speak for itself...

tip 2001

Today´s tip

Who could be a better interpreter of Bob Dylan classics than Nadja Petrick (...) The singer was convincing as a support act for Roger Chapman and flabbergasted the American audience at the South-by-Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.

tip 2001

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