Just listen to him. Quite a humorist this cabaretist, like in Dadaism is alive and well and Karl Valentin isn’t dead. Maxi has studied the many buttons of the accordion as a classical discipline, majoring in the rakata-rakata mode, his personal contribution to the art while he was apprenticing as a gardener. Tonight, he’ll appear all by himself beside himself while taking a break as the leader of the notorious Bavarian band Kofelgschroa («Schroa» as in «shouting», you guessed it). A band that had called itself «Leisure musicians with lots of leisure».

Maxi’s current and lofty ambitions, one of them being for him to make «pure» music, are well expressed in his self-titled album and we think he succeeded not only with flying colors (those of the Bavarian flag) but well beyond anybody’s wildest expectations. Of course, as always, you be the judge or the hangman. Some of the titles of his songs, all from 2019, are indicators of what’s bubbling inside Maxi, take «Gras drüber (Let things settle down), «Es geistert» (It’s ghosting), «D’Nocht is miad» (The night is tired), «Liesl» (90% of the women in Bavaria are named that way), «Augenlied» (Eye song) and «Passkontrolle» (Passport control). About the travels of this prodigiously talented artist Rolling Stone wrote: «Of course there are the typical, laconic existentialist observations which disclose that Maximilian Pongratz has a different and welcome definition of time, urgency and necessity than most people of his generation».

Maxi Pongratz, live at El Lokal. Schroa! if you like this guy.