The Overall Brigade

The trio is based in Cologne and Berlin, Germany.
Their sound is quite unique and so is their style and attitude. In fact, it is a kind of American folk music – hillibilly, roots, old time music – but sounds like acoustic punk with a touch of ska.

The band describes their attitude as "Punk with a human face" or "music with meanig played by red blooded bindlestiffs".

"We interpret folk and traditional music in the spirit of Joe Hill, Shane McGowan and Loretta Lynn."

They do not have an ordinary guitar and they do not use any effects. As a hobo band The Overall Brigade ride trains with a very small equipment.

They almost never sing about love and happiness but about hobos, work, strikes, exploitation, fighting the law.

The Overall Brigade entered the history books of world music with the first German translations of Joe Hill songs in October 2022.
This is no coincidence: the band's origins lie in a local group of the legendary Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in Cologne, which in 2007 appropriated Wobbly songs for May Day, the working class' day of struggle, and performed them at the legendary Connection in Cologne-Ehrenfeld.

The band name is borrowed from an IWW agitation posse that traveled on trains around 1908 around Spokane, Portland, Oregon, Seattle, sometimes as far away as Chicago, promoting membership in the IWW and its goals. These were no less than the abolition of wage slavery and the emancipation of the working class. There was no way this was going to end well. It was in the historic Overall Brigade that Joe Hill got his start, and it was here that Haywire Mac played who became famous for the hobo anthem The Big Rock Candy Mountains. The Overall Brigade translated the tune into German as "In den Kandiszuckerbergen".

Their signature instruments are accordion and banjolele. The former is generally considered cute. But here it becomes a weapon. Elmore Why plays the banjolele hard and driving. The bass comes from the black keys of the accordion of Jessi Landlos, who doesn't miss any double bass. The drummer Mark can do much more than the formal hillbilly framework allows, but (mostly) doesn't let it hang out.

The band initially started without drums, but with the tea box bass player Fritz Habegger, later Chad Hawkins took over the double bass for a short time. Drummer Mark joined the band in 2021.

Jessi Landlos was the singer of the legendary Rhineland punk band Now or Never in the 80s, which unfortunately broke up much too early.

Elmore Why played distorted electric bass with the Cologne hardcore punk band Ministry of Good Vibrations and the punk crossover formation Tecbilek, both from the environment of the squatter, autonomous, Antifa and trailer camp movement of the late 80s and early 90s.

Bass player Howie What was member of the famous German Klezmer Band "Aufwind" that was founded 1984 in East Berlin. After the wall came down they toured the USA...