Greenleaf & Dozer

At the beginning of the school year, I had to organize a class trip with my graduating class. While the other three classes went to tourist hotspots in Italy, I booked 10 days in Zurich because Dozer and Brain Police were playing at the legendary "Rote Fabrik" on October 2nd. Well, the organizers crammed the two bands into the smallest venue, and our ears were blown off, the bass thumping into our guts. In short: it was physically unbearable. So my wife and I sat outside the venue and drank beer to stand the sound. We enjoyed the concert. Then my students came by and brought beer too. It went a great evening.

I wrote about Dozer´s gig at the Hellfest and it happened that each band pushed the following band to another level of performing. And Dozer was incredible good.

Dozer just topped the previous gig with a best of-setlist, a monster of a sound and a band tight as fuck and groovy as hell. The audience gets nuts and today is an incredible day with incredible good concerts.

My wife and I wrote for the Spanish online magazine Metalegun from 2014 to 2017. We were the first to report on Hellfest in Spanish, which has since led to an increase in Spanish attendees from 10 to 10% of the total audience. We were also the first to cover stoner rock for a metal magazine. That was at Stoned from the Underground 2015. Dozer and Greenleaf performed there, and Greenleaf were so different and so good that we knew even then that this band would become one of our musical favorites.

Dozer

A somewhat tired performance with a setlist which didn´t make the audience go crazy. What a difference between their gig at the Hellfest last year. This was a bit disappointing gig.

Greenleaf (Swe)

No, the Swedish supergroup is not a Stonerband, but a band in the tradition of North American heavy-rock bands like April Wine, Triumph or the Ambuy Dukes, based in Detroit between 1969 until 1975, with a voice inspired by the MC5's Rob Tyner. Proto-punk rock and post blues rock with a very tight rhythm section that keeps pushing forward. The audience went completely nuts and over time I did just that as well.

In February 2016, Greenleaf toured with Mammoth Mammoth and My Sleeping Karma. For me, these were bands I saw several times before; My Sleeping Karma in 2011 at Hellfest and Feierwerk, and again in 2013 at Hellfest. My wife and I got to know the My Sleeping in 2011 at the Feierwerk. We saw Greenleaf and Mammoth Mammoth at the Stoned from the Underground in 2015. But my companions—my son Lukas, his friend Fabian, and my neighbour Peter—only knew the bands by name, never from seeing them live. In retrospect, this concert was the gateway into the stoner and psychedelic scene for all three of them.

In June 2016, Greenleaf played at the Race61 festival, the largest US car meeting in Germany, held at the Finowfurt Aviation Museum, along with the two Dutch bands Black Bone and Death Alley. The latter got stuck in a massive traffic jam on their way there, which allowed Greenleaf to play longer. I was wearing a Zeke shirt, which opened the door to the backstage area for both bands, because even Dozer played with Zeke and Zeke´s second home are the Netherlands due their collaboration with Peter Pan Speedrock and countless gis there. And that's how we got to know each other personally after a few concerts. The backstage area was actually are storage hangar for helicopters used in agriculture.

It is a real mystery to me that this band full of top skilled musicians, creating a monstrous sound to fuel their progressive Garage and Stoner Rock, is one of the most insider bands in the actual music scene. Sebastian´s thundering drums and Hans´s growling bass on one side and Tommi´s fuzzed guitar and Arvid´s powerful vocal lines on the other side is almost like a ying and yang, a contradiction as a unity, and that´s the reason I completely into this band, their history and their music. And.. the concert just passed in two minutes of banging, dancing and admiring.

This was a kind of trip to get from La Palma, Canary Islands to Eindhoven: We flew from La Palma to Düsseldorf, get the Flixbus from there to Eindhoven, slept 5 minutes from the Klookebouw close to the PSV-stadium, spent one day with full of Rock´n´Roll with Zeke, The Dwarves, Kadavar, Death Alley and Greenleaf. So first I went to the merch and there was the last cat shirt left. In XL. So I told the guy behind the merch the story behind the shirt. He told me that he´s Kimmo, Tommi´s cousin. So we said good-bye and finally I own this shirt, which I wore and still wear it on many occasions.

Since 2016, as the project Greenleaf stopped and the band Greenleaf was installed, this band is always a pillar for each festival where they were invited. No matter if they play among Punk bands or Stoner bands or Progrock bands. Their musical basement is blues and actually they put the roots of all modern music in their songs. So you can´t can´t love them. And they always have lucky fingers for a well chosen setlist throughout their musical career. Briefly said: as always a fantastic concert with a lot of Greenleaf moments like forgotten riffs, a lot of ironic in-a-between the band members. Fantastic.

Dozer has to play shows and more shows to bring themselves into this unstoppable machine mode they owned before 2009 and during their reunion shows in 2014 and 2015. The good chemistry between the members was perceptible so it didn´t matter that Freddy lost his voice and sometimes the timing wasn´t that tight. Anyway: it´s a long way back to regain the confidence on stage: By the way: the new songs were pure killer tracks.

I wrote about Tommi in "The story behind the picture" and it´s a constant repeat when we meet us; and I observed him before and after the recent gig at the Feierwerk in Munich: he is the same guy to everybody he knows. 

Tommi is one of the most down to earth people I know in music business. After our warm welcome, I found out why that is. He is a wood formwork technician like Marky von Zeke. Which we also talked about. Also about the value of friendship within bands, how differently bands work, about school and education systems in Sweden and Germany. Without the festival we would still be sitting in front of the Columbiahalle today and talking about many more topics.

Even though Greenleaf delivered the same setlist as at Desertfest in Berlin, this concert was something truly special because the band, especially frontman Arvid, clearly had a lot of fun. Hans on bass and Sebastian on drums are a tight machine, and Sebastian's drumming style is actually a better fit for Greenleaf than for Dozer. Greenleaf rolled, bluesed, and stomped their way through the music, and Arvid perfectly seasoned these elements with his fantastic voice.

Demolition is something else entirely; compare it to Dozer live in 2014, also shortly after their breakup. And this band is still a long way from that level of quality in 2023.

A bit disappointing concert by Dozer and long and intense chats with Tommi and Arvid. 

The picture on the left looks like a usual meet and greet at a festival with Greenleaf. The markings on the right one make it special: there are three Fröhlichs on the picture; the blue one is Richard, my son´s Lukas - yellow - half-brother and the red one is Hans.

Kimmo and me, my wife and Tommi and Fabian with Hans

In my opinion, the idea behind this song is far more serious than his announcement. Just read Arvid´s thoughts about the motivation to write this song. And no, it has nothing to do with his father, who is chairman of the Dalarnas Trotting Society in Sweden

Greenleaf have and will have a champagne problem; they have such a lot of good songs and not that much time to play them all. Okay, A Million Fireflies, Sweet Is the Sound, Breathe, Breathe Out, Ocean Deep, Avalanche, Good Ol' Goat, Let It Out!, Different Horses, Trails and Passes weren´t a bad choice for a good concert.

We love Dozer because they were one of the first bands to introduce us to stoner rock around 2006. However, it seems to me that the band's best days are behind them, at least live. It's a shame that neither Fredrik's voice nor his stage presence have improved since Desertfest 2023 or Rock im Wald 2023. There's no question that the band, with Johan and Basse (Greenleaf), has one of the tightest rhythm sections and presents a coherent setlist spanning 25 years. It was fitting. When you compare them to 2007, 2014, and 2015, it's a shame that one of our favorite bands is constantly fighting for its future.

I also wonder, of course, why things are the way they are with Greenleaf. Actually, interpersonal relationships can be traced back to the "law of resonance". The “law of resonance” between people is a concept that describes how human beings influence each other through emotions, thoughts, and behavior. It comes from the idea that people, like musical instruments, react to certain “frequencies.” When two people have similar feelings, values, or states of mind, they “resonate” with each other. This resonance creates a feeling of connection, understanding, and trust.

In the case of Greenleaf and our immediate family, several factors and people resonate together: the surname "Fröhlich" (Happy), the Leo zodiac sign, the professions (Fabian is a metalworker, Tommi works as a timber formwork carpenter, Sebastian – drums – cuts scrap metal in a steel mill, Arvid is a social worker, I worked as a social pedagogue for four years and am a high school teacher, Richard and I are musicians, Lukas is a singer, Arvid is also a painter and artist like my wife, Hans studied chemistry like me). These are the obvious aspects known so far, and time will reveal what other commonalities we share.