Holy Blues (music-album & book)
Order version CD & german book edition: 
Album digital (streaming & download): 
Order the English book edition (Softcover, Hardcover, e-Book, Large Print Book, incl. mp3 download) ...
--> order directly from the publisher (delivered worldwide) 
The 400-year trip of a musical soul
«A trip through the unvarnished history of that music we love - can only help us to understand it even better, to feel it even more intensely.» (Richard Koechli)
Two wonderful videos (for the songs "Feel Like Going Home" and "Schacher Sepp") were produced by "Relaxing Blues Music" (USA)!
--> "Holy Blues" wins the PrixPlus 2022 (Swiss art and culture award)
What do blues, jazz, soul, R&B, rock'n'roll, folk, country, rock, pop and hip hop have in common? Their origin, their fire! Holy Blues was the source of fire. Holy Blues, also called Gospel, is the source of all the roots music we love. The history of gospel music is 400 years old; its spirit even much older, and without it we simply would not be able to be enchanted by soulful music today. Reason enough to trace this good spirit. Award-winning blues musician and author Richard Koechli (Swiss Blues Award, Swiss Film Music Award, German Music Edition Award) sets out on an adventurous trip through American cultural history and shows with countless concrete examples how high the influence of faith on the music and its producers has been throughout the centuries, how decisive and mysterious the divine dimension shapes the music at every moment. Koechli does this in a double package: as a blues artist with idiosyncratic interpretations of timeless Holy Blues songs, and as a book author with an inspiring, 150-page history trip.
--> Video-Trailer --> Book Cover (print/web)
Both offer surprises: The book takes a passionate, precise and sometimes new look at the 400-year journey of our music, and the album shows how independently gospel music can be interpreted without betraying tradition. Koechli relies on mostly acoustic slide guitar sounds - and contrasts! Sometimes meditative and without words as in the title track «Holy Blues» or in «Nishlam» (together with the blind musician friend Gerd Bingemann), then again as a laidback and blues singer as in «Feel Like Going Home» (in a duet with the renowned jazz singer Bruno Amstad) or even as a courageous acapella singer of little-known spiritual hymns - and last but not least even with an idiosyncratic, touching version of perhaps the only Swiss Holy Blues song, the legendary «Schacher Seppli».
«Holy Blues» is available in music stores (as CD & german book) and simultaneously in bookstores (as english book & mp3 download link).
Music Stores (CD & german book): Fontastix 324227, EAN-Code: 7640149284508, Distributed by: www.cede.com
Book Stores (english book & free mp3-Download):
ISBN Softcover: 978-3-347-62750-5
ISBN Hardcover: 978-3-347-62751-2
ISBN E-Book: 978-3-347-62752-9
ISBN Large Print Book: 978-3-347-62753-6
Digital Music Retail (Streaming, Download): on all platforms
Bonustracks: In addition to the 10 album songs, there are 3 bonus tracks for download (songs by Richard Koechli):
You never lie to me, Lord (2018)
Deep Water, Vers. 2 (2020)
Lamentation (2021)
(to the song «Lamentation» there is a dreamlike mystical Video by Bruno Amstad!)
