I recorded HARD ROAD BLUES in two nights (October 6-7, 1994) at the OPUS Recorder Music Studio in Austria in analog and in one go. It was quite a meditative affair, which was very well recorded by sound engineer Andreas Fabianek. We used a vocal mic, a guitar mic and a few other microphones to capture the natural space. The recording sounds very organic; you can feel every movement and breath and can literally hear the fingers dancing on the fretboard.
The record was first released on vinyl, CD and music cassette in 1994. HARD ROAD BLUES was highly praised by fans and the press and sold very well. If a copy of this pressing turns up in good condition at all, you will have to pay quite a lot of money for it at the moment. Unfortunately, the firebug has since struck at the German pressing plant - many masters and matrices were destroyed, including those of HARD ROAD BLUES. Re-pressing was therefore impossible.
During Corona 2020, however, I had a lot of time to look through my stock of recordings and I also found the HARD ROAD BLUES master tapes. This gave rise to the idea of reissuing this record. I contacted Christoph Stickl from CSMastering. Christoph had already done an excellent remastering of my "Baby Wants To Boogie" LP from 1987 and was therefore predestined to carry out this rather delicate work for HARD ROAD BLUES as well. He checked the tapes, which were already 27 years old, and then said he would have to "bake" them in the oven in order to be able to play them and start the remastering. Fortunately, the tapes were still in good condition and Christoph was able to avoid having to interrupt the AAA chain.
Hans Theessink
Analogue and recorded in one piece in two nocturnal sessions, the Dutch blues guitarist and singer Hans Theessink delivered a strong album with “Hard Road Blues” in 1994, whose vinyl and CD releases are now collector’s items. Many years ago, the matrices were destroyed by a fire in the pressing plant, which is why a repress was impossible. Fortunately, when cleaning up in the protracted COVID pandemic, Theessink found the original master ribbons in good shape in its shape, which brought the idea for this new edition.
Christoph Stickl from CSMastering, who already worked on Theessink’s “Baby Wants To Boogie” LP from 1987, was remastered for this. The recording, wonderfully captured at the time by sound engineer Andreas Fabianek, convinces among other things by their organic sound; the smallest details can be felt, you literally listen to the fingerboard.
Recorded and mixed at Recorder Music Studios Judendorf, Austria, by Andreas Fabianek (autumn 1994).
The label HORCH HOUSE from Germany has stood for purely analogue sound enjoyment for 10 years and has specialised in tapes. Work is carried out exclusively with historical and new analogue tapes, which are carefully restored on analogue equipment at csmastering in Vienna if necessary. The tape copies are manually produced for meticulously maintained machines from Studer. The catalogue contains titles from the genres of classical, jazz, blues, rock/pop and easy listening. The packaging is adequately stable, high-quality and excellent transport and archive capable of transport and archive.
Tracklist
1. Big Bill's Guitar
2. You Make Me Feel So Good
3. Prison Blues
4. Blind Willie
5. One Kind Favour
6. Vicksburg Is My Home
7. Hard Road Blues
8. Two Trains
9. Sugar babe
10. Minnibels
11. Shotgun Blues
12. Cypress Grove
Recording information:
Title: Hard Road Blues
Artist: Hans Theessink
Genre: Pop-Rock
Media: 1x 1/4" Metal Reel Tape Stereo 38cm/s (15ips), RTM LPR90, . Standard Master Copy, Metal reel, 1/4", 15ips, RTM LPR90, 320 nWb, EQ CCIR, Horch House Deluxe
Label: Horch House
Cat#: HH05.00.232
Released: 2024 in Germany
Original release: by Blue Groove BG-6020
