Interview mit Cheyenne Hohmann von FMA

Lobo Loco, a musician from Germany whose name means "Crazy Wolf" in Spanish, joined the Free Music Archive roughly two years ago, but has added nearly 500 songs to our collection since! As an active member of the FMA community and a prolific contributor to our archive, we wanted to know more about him. This interview was conducted over email and posted, with light edits for clarity, below:

 

FMA: Tell us a little about yourself. 

Lobo Loco: Hi, my name is Lobo Loco. I was born in 1968, in a small village in southern Germany, Mittelstadt. I live with my family in the town Göppingen near the Swabian Alb. Making music is my passion.

FMA: How would you describe the music you make?

Lobo Loco: Mostly instrumental, with much improvisation … easy playing straight on … on a journey.
Diving deeply into the music ... I love it ... for me the most beautiful moments come from music.
My music styles I like to play are manifold … from classics, blues, jazz, folk, international over to electro, vintage, space up to rock.
My favorites are Delta blues, folk with my guitars … and boogie woogie, improv jazz and vintage electro with my keys.
Even just a mixture and a changing of acoustic and Roland sound-module generated instruments. I like to experiment with sounds.

FMA: How did you start off making music?

Lobo Loco: I started at the age of 8 with piano lessons, but I had a terrible teacher. He had the opinion that I was not talented and very lazy. Yes, I was very lazy, and before each lesson I even prayed that he or I would be ill. After two years I happily ended lessons with him … At sixteen, I started playing piano again without a teacher, then at 18 I started to learn e-guitar and acoustic guitar for myself. Making music became more and more fun, playing in different bands and often with friends.

One song, called, "Sofa" is about how I met my wife. She was singing this song at the Christmas market and her daughter was very embarrassed. A good friend of mine told me about it and I become curious and wanted to meet her. One year later, we got married!

FMA: How did you find the Free Music Archive, and why did you want to put your music on our platform?

Lobo Loco: I was searching the internet for a platform with free music content, where I can publish my music productions with the intentions:

• … to be heard by many people
• … to give my music away, for free, for projects with private and common interest. I have been contacted over FMA by fans asking for usage.
• … to help me to get commissions from commercial interests, they purchase licenses and certificates on my platform musikbrause.de

On more great thing is that FMA for itself is not a commercial platform, so all users arround the world can hear and download everything without registration or payment. And finally I want to remark that I felt welcomed on FMA since the day I'd asked you if I can be an artist here. I like the personal contact FMA gives to artists.

FMA: Why do your songs have an ID number after the titles?

Lobo Loco: Oh, yes I know it’s very crazy. It’s an idea to prevent me or the persons who use my music for trouble with collecting companies.

One of my favorite Bands "Schwoissfuass" had to pay a lots of money for life playing their music afterwards. This band than died from the costs. I want to prevent this from happening to me.

I registered all my songs on safecreative.org, so I can easy ensure collecting companies (AKM, SUISA, SACEM or GEMA) Creative Commons registration.

Another reason for me is, that music titles are sometimes similar or the same, and the musician name Lobo Loco too (I've seen this name twice for other musicians). With the registered ID no one can easy assert that my music is his music.

FMA: Tell me about some of the places your music has ended up.

Lobo Loco: Here I like the variety of people and their projects too. Often I go on Youtube and Vimeo and have a look what is published this day under my name with credits of my music.

There are family videos, holiday videos, nature videos, adventure videos, blogs, drone flyovers, sometimes very professional videos from film students.

Sometimes free podcast and radio shows asked me to use my music. I like them all … I like the feeling that my music is used all arround the world, that gives me the feeling to be part of all.

The only thing I dislike is if my music is used for discriminating or racist content. This only one time happend on Youtube, and I wrote to them to remove it. But there was no reaction from Youtube.

FMA: Some of your albums have strong themes. Do you make music to fit the themes or do you find that different albums 'naturally' have themes that can fit to them?

Lobo Loco: Everything was very intuitive. Sometimes daily news and personal feelings came into the music. During mixing and recording, I reflect on what title or theme the song is about. At the end of mixing, I hear the music during working on a cover for the album, which I think is proper to the songs and the feelings I have.

But I’m a manic music maker, sometimes I make more and more music and think in a calm moment about it, what to do with it, and if maybe someone could like it.

FMA: Do you have any artistic influences?

Lobo Loco: Oh, yes very much! My main inspirating musicians are:
"Champion Jack Dupree" (Boogie Woogie Piano – saw him live, standing beyond the piano)
"Bruce Cockburn" (Canadian Folk Guitar)
"John Hurt" (Delta Blues Guitar – He’s got it)
"Rory Gallagher & Lou Martin" (Irish Tour burning Guitar with excellent keys – saw him live, short time before he died)
"Beatles" (Whole time through my childhood - nothing else to say)
"Daniel Amos" (Very own style even changes over the years, with the head Terry Scott Taylor and his unique creative moments)
"Tangerine Dream" (One of the first spherical Synthesizer worlds)
"Chick Corea" (Incredible improv jazz piano)
"Commodores" (I even have to dance - super funky music)
"Helge Schneider" (Cool comedian and jazz organ musician – saw him live)
"Vangelis" (Wonderfull synthesizer melodies)
"Schwoissfuass & Grachmusikoff" (Great swabian musicians, perfect combination of brass music with rock and having fun – saw them 20 times)

... and surely my friend and band companion Kieli. Without him I would never play live music.

... they're still more and more fabulous musicians … this was only a part of it.

FMA: What do you like best about sharing your music with a Creative Commons license?

Lobo Loco: That my music has so many listeners and downloaders. It makes me very happy to see on FMA the number of listeners rising.

And often people asked me if they could use it in their projects so I have a lot of contacts with my music worldwide. Some commercials purchase licenses, with this I fincance my instruments. Eventually, I hope I can reduce my day job a little bit and sell more music. We will see.