TRAIN SONGS: Paul Wallfisch feat. Tony Buck & Martin Siewert

TONSPUR_live_open_air_2025
TRAIN SONGS
Paul Wallfisch feat. Tony Buck & Martin Siewert

Sun 15.06., 19h l MQ Summer Stage, Main Courtyard l free entry

Paul Wallfisch from New York, former music director at the Volkstheater Wien, the Australian drummer Tony Buck from Berlin, member of the legendary band “The Necks”, and the German guitarist Martin Siewert based in Vienna bring the groove of the rails to the Museumsquartier.

Trains are the most romantic and most fraught means of transport. Of people, prisoners and prospectors. And of the freight and goods that fuel our world. The rhythm of the rails conjures seduction and anticipation. Paul Wallfisch’s parents left Romania by train not even 80 years ago and he’s been headed back that way almost since the day he was born.
On the same day of the performance, the TONSPUR_passage in the MQ will become the “Tunnel of Love”, imported from Ukraine, but as a universal artifact of our collective desire to find and conspire with the endless instances of accidental natural beauty that surround us.
Wallfisch’s grandfather studied moss, among the tiniest manifestations of our world’s wonders. He never left Romania. He was too scared. He studied moss and wrote a book. He got really close to the ground and never truly saw the forest for the trees. But most of the people around him were killed trying to leave. Or even trying to stay.
Paul Wallfisch went to Ukraine, via Wroclaw—Breslau—where all the Wallfisches are from; all the Jews. He doesn’t really consider himself Jewish in the religious sense, but he certainly is a Jew.

“In Breslau and Lviv—Lemberg—the active feeling of the death of all the Jews presses on you from all sides. Like a drill press slowly turning. All dead. But some took the trains and made it out. Train songs. The engine has an energy. We’re coming for you! We’ll play some Johnny Cash, of course—our way; but there are literally thousands of possibilities. Not to mention the field recordings of the trains in Ukraine that I just made. And beats still to be discovered by the iconic Austrialian musical Tony Buck, my Viennese kindred spirit Martin Siewert, a wonderful musician and Mensch, and Me. Train kept a rollin’… See you in June!”
– Paul Wallfisch

photo: Tunnel of Love, Ukraine © Paul Wallfisch
 

Biographies

TONY BUCK

Best known around the world as a member of the trio “The Necks”. Tony Buck is regarded as one of Australia’s most creative and adventurous exports, with vast experience across the globe. As a drummer, percussionist, improviser, guitarist, video maker and producer.
He has played, toured or recorded with Jon Rose, Otomo Yoshihide, John Zorn, T. Cora, Phil Minton, Haino, Even Parker, The Machine for Making Sense, Lee Ranaldo, Ne Zhdall, The EX, Clifford Jordan, Ground Zero…
tony-buck.com

MARTIN SIEWERT

Martin Siewert is the heart and soul of electric music in Austria, experimental and otherwise. Active as a guitarist, engineer and producer, Martin has been featured on countless recordings including a 20 year catalogue on Thrill Jockey Records as a member of the internationally distinguished bands “Radian” and “Trapist”. He has toured extensively all over Europe and North & South America and contributed to soundtracks for numerous award-winning films, theatre projects and dance pieces.
siewert.klingt.org

PAUL WALLFISCH

Paul Wallfisch’s music can be heard on countless American TV shows and several feature films, including Dummy starring Adrian Brody and Milla Jovovich, which he scored and also appears in.
Entering New York's East-Village demimonde as an eighteen-year-old keyboardist in the pioneering gay comic Frank Maya's New Wave band, Paul has also lived in Europe and Los Angeles, (where he started Botanica), “…acquiring decades of world-weary insights to fill his exquisitely crafted rock songs and Tom Waits-tinged ballads.” (The New Yorker).
Paul has contributed to dozens of albums and toured North & South America, Europe and Asia performing and/or recording with Firewater, Love & Rockets, Congo Norvell, Angela McCluskey, Syl Sylvain, Stiv Bators, Anne Pigalle, Johnny Haliday, Marissa Nadler, Rose McGowan, Joey Arias and many more. He is the long-standing writing and performing partner of underground tortured soul legend Little Annie, Joining Swans in 2016, Paul toured with the band for two years, appearing on the 2017 live album Deliquescence and 2019’s Leaving Meaning (Young God/Mute Records).
Republic of Wolves, a musical theater spectacle co-created by Paul and Claudia Bauer and based on Ann Sexton's adaptations of Grimm's Fairy Tales, premiered in 2014, with the score performed live by The Ministry of Wolves: Paul, Alexander Hacke, Mick Harvey and Danielle DePicciotto. (Album available on Mute Records).
Paul has worked with acclaimed director Kay Voges on large scale multi-media productions at Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, Volksbühne Berlin and many more. Paul and Voges’ production Dies Irae: An Endtimes Opera opened at the Burgtheater, Vienna in December 2019 with the score performed live by Paul and multi-instrumentalists Larry Mullins and Simon Goff. From 2020 to 2025, Paul was music Director at the Volkstheater Wien, where Anna-Sophie Mahler’s production of Tennessee Williams’ Camino Real with music written and performed by Calexico and Paul Wallfisch was on the program. May ’25 saw the Trost Records release of Paul’s duo album with Dana Schechter TheHeart of a Whale.
paulwallfisch.com

TRAINS SONGS – the music: Georg Weckwerth in conversation with Paul Wallfisch

GW: Paul, you say that Tony Buck, Martin Siewert and you – this constellation is a world premiere, by the way – will be playing a series of railroad songs at the MQ on June 15. What do you mean by that?

PW: It's deliberately broad and vague. Although, really--anybody can imagine what a train song is. And there are literally thousands! By the way, I just read that the first train in Austria, was actually the first in Europe. Maybe we'll write about it. You never know…

GW: Is there a definition for “train songs”? Or what is yours?

PW: Train Songs is a genre generally considered a country-folk inspired sub culture of Americana. But actually “train songs” have been written in virtually every style of music from folk to jazz to classical to avant-garde.

GW: What will we get to hear from the three of you, especially as this is your first time playing together?

PW: We’ll definitely play some Johnny Cash, who’s written at least a dozen in the genre, not to mention the iconic first lines of Folsom Prison Blues: “I hear the train a coming’ / it’s rollin’ ‘round the bend…” Elvis’ “Mystery Train”, both Presley & Costello, come to mind. As well as The Clash’s “Train in Vain”; “Midnight Train to Georgia”, by Gladys Knight…and a hundred more!

GW: Is there also an Austrian train song?

PW: The only Austrian train song I know is by an artist called Glimpse. Here’s a link for “Train In Austria”. We’ll cover it!
I hope this gives you something of an idea of the music we plan to play.

GW: I'm really looking forward to hearing this set, which also has a connection to your upcoming piece for TONSPUR, which will be dedicated to Ukraine and will open on Sunday, June 15.
Anything else you would like to add?

PW: Let me add the Wikipedia entry on the train song here: A train song is a song referencing passenger or freight railroads, often using a syncopated beat resembling the sound of train wheels over train tracks. Trains have been a theme in both traditional and popular music since the first half of the 19th century (…). While the prominence of railroads in the United States has faded in recent decades, the train endures as a common image in popular song. The earliest known train songs date to two years before the first public railway began operating in the United States. “The Carrollton March”, copyrighted July 1, 1828, was composed by Arthur Clifton to commemorate the groundbreaking of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

GW: Dear Paul, thank you for this short conversation in which you gave us an impression of what can be expected from you and the musicians you have selected under the title “Train Songs” on June 15 as part of the TONSPUR_live_open_airs_2025 on the MQ Summer Stage.