Static Roots 2025 is approaching fast, and for the growing cluster of return attendees the drill for the second weekend of July is almost instinctive. Arrive in Dusseldorf or Cologne on the Thursday, train hop to Oberhausen, chill in a bar on Thursday night, tourist stuff (or Static Ruhr Tour) in the day on Friday. Then come late afternoon gather outside the Zentrum Altenberg – the repurposed zinc factory that’s been home to the festival since its inception – and away we go; five acts on Friday night, seven on Saturday.

Festival main-man Dietmar Leibecke is too canny to mess with the winning formula that’s made Static Roots Germany’s premier Americana music festival, though he’s equally loath to let things become too safe and predictable. This year, putting tickets up for sale well in advance, he found the festival almost sold out before a single act had been named. That’s a pleasing vote of confidence but it’s also an invitation to complacency, and who needs a complacent festival. So a bit of innovation: he doesn’t want to change the venue but Zentrum Altenberg has a larger room so let’s move into that and put more tickets on sale, and could we enlarge the line-up?

The Friday/Saturday split works well so no change there, but plenty of people are already hanging around in town on Thursday so let’s formalise their hang. Hey presto: Static Roots Welcome Night, and two more bands in a separate venue: looks like it’s time to get acquainted with the Restaurant Gdanska; a vibrant Polish bar/restaurant with beer garden and event space located in the Altmarket in central Oberhausen.

The two bands playing are Dom Glynn & His Sunday Best and Savannah Gardner & The Recovering Good Girls. Both London-based, though Savannah is originally from California, and examples of a brash, young, new generation of country performers playing different venues to a fresh younger crowd. Dom Glynn, who’s thus far recorded four singles straight to tape in an analogue studio with vintage mikes, plays honky-tonk music at an immensely popular, monthly residency at The Dukes Of Highgate which is gradually but inexorably establishing itself as London’s premier honky-tonk bar.

Meanwhile Savannah has already gleaned a UK Americana Live Act of the Year nomination playing kick-ass outlaw country while promoting a monthly ‘Ladies Night’ at The Sir Richard Steele – just up the hill from Chalk Farm Roundhouse – featuring upcoming and outstanding female talent. Already spotted at a bunch of festivals her debut album Recovering Good Girl is produced by Dale Davis former musical director for Amy Winehouse.

Static Roots 2024 had been the year of the heavy hitters; The Sadies and The Delines headlining their respective nights, plus Paisley Underground legend Chris Cacavas, and the rising star of UK Americana Hannah White. So this year it was time for a bit of a shake; few would have predicted the headliners but knowing Dietmar’s history it’s unsurprising he couldn’t resist grabbing them, then it’s a mix of the top-notch, on the form of their lives, tried and trusted, some road-hardened warriors, some fresh faces, a touch of Scandicana, and an Irish representative for the Willie Meighan spot. Something for everyone to look forward to, and something for everyone to discover.

The headliners are The Godfathers: originally emerging in the mid-80s as a seriously exciting live band reaching back into the basics of R’n’B and rock’n’roll after the myriad diversions and experiments of the immediate post-punk period. They came out of The Sid Presley Experience, a four-piece heavily featured on John Peel’s show, whose singles ‘Cold Turkey’ and ‘Public Enemy Number One’ had been co-produced by Sex Pistols’ associate Dave Goodman. Making waves in late 1985 with BBC radio sessions circulating on mixtapes, and small gigs – a brief residency in the Kentish Town bar of North London Polytechnic in early ‘86 – playing Larry Williams’ ‘Bad Boy’, their own ‘This Damn Nation’ and ‘John Barry’, and Rolf Harris’ ‘Sun Arise’; C86 they definitely weren’t. Debut album Hit By Hit compiled their initial independently-released singles before they were picked up by Epic Records, and well and truly hit their stride with 1988’s Birth, School, Work, Death. These early years sealed a reputation, and while the line-up has been something of a revolving door, Peter Coyne being the sole constant, they reached their fortieth anniversary in fine fettle. 2022 Alpha Beta Gamma Delta was, stated Classic Rock’s Julian Marszalek: “their best album since 1991’s Unreal World; through a combination of hard riffing, melodicism and… cranked-up production, The Godfathers deliver with a sincerity that’s utterly palpable throughout.”

LA native Pearl Charles is one of the festival’s most intriguing prospects; her music melds 60s pop and 70s cosmic country often through a patina of 70s glam with an ABBA-like shimmer. The recent Desert Queen follows 2021’s Mirror Mirror and 2018’s Sleepless Dreamer, and while her records often exude an enchanting mellifluousness she can also do the stripped-down stiff. For two years in her late teens she was half of The Driftwood Singers, a country duo with Christian Lee Hutson, singing and playing guitar and autoharp, then at twenty-two, she joined garage rock band The Blank Tapes as drummer. Now in thrall to hooks and choruses her work is simply infectious; genuine country-pop with recurrent hints of psychedelia; “a modern June Carter meets Lana Del Rey” as Buzzfeed had it.

Michele Stoddart is a genuine all-rounder; she first came to prominence in the four-piece Magic Numbers with her brother Romeo, and Angie and Sean Gannon. Five albums later and established favourites the band continues to tour and record. On top of that, over the last decade, she’s released three solo albums much in the tradition of the classic women singer-songwriters, the most recent of which, Invitation, has received great acclaim. A confessional, melodic album with an orchestral, cinematic feel it was deemed UK Album of the Year at the UK Americana Awards 2024, where Michele also picked up the coveted UK Artist of the Year award. Further to this she produced and played on Hannah White’s Sweet Revolution which won the same Album of the Year award this year. She puts together an annual International Women’s Day celebration, mentors, and teaches masterclasses. As musical director at the UK Americana Awards in 2023 she put together an all-female house band. All in all someone who’s definitely put back as much as she’s ever taken out of music.

Where do you begin with Peter Bruntnell? Briefly an uneasy bedfellow of Britpop, now the Nick Lowe nobody knows and yet loads of people do, but somehow Uncut and Shindig have never deigned to put him on their covers. In three decades he’s yet to make a bad record and his catalogue is so rich and varied, and with songs about flying monks, prospectors blowing up mountains, and cryogenically-preserved heads how could it be otherwise. 1999’s Normal For Bridgwater was often viewed as the highlight of highlights but last year’s Houdini And The Sucker Punch arguably trumped it. Massively respected by fellow musicians; Eric Heywood, Jay Farrar, and James Walbourne contribute to Houdini. The current live line-up features Dave Little, Peter Noone, and Mick Clews, and Pete’s always stage-sharp because he never stops gigging.

These days Pert Near Sandstone and Uncle Lucius can be considered a brace of veterans of the US roots scene. The former hail from Minneapolis–Saint Paul and come out of a scene boasting contemporaries such as Charlie Parr, Trampled By Turtles, and The Cactus Blossoms. With eight studio albums, and a couple of live sets, plus their annual Blue Ox Festival in Eau Claire, on top of relentless touring, they’re seen as pillars of Minnesota’s progressive bluegrass cohort. Americana Highways said of most recent release Waiting Days: “It’s traditional in tradition but it has an edgy exposition that makes this old music quite renewed… a Grateful Dead essence at times, a Hot Tuna mesquite flavour, and Bill Monroe smile over it all”.

Uncle Lucius meanwhile are based in Austin, originally forming around guitarist Kevin Galloway back in 2002. They liberally cocktailed Texas country, blues, and rock, and presented lithe and soulful with the instincts of a jam band. Four acclaimed albums and a lot of touring followed but road weariness saw them split in 2017. Ironically their biggest success came after when ‘Keep The Wolves Away’ became an unexpected viral hit after its inclusion in the TV series Yellowstone. It prompted reconsideration and fresh perspective, so adding a couple of new members they’d return with 2023’s Like It’s The Last One Left; it seemed like they’d never been gone but more so.

The sole Canadian representatives this year are Bywater Call. Out of Toronto they’re a seven-piece Southern soul meets roots rock ensemble fronted by the powerful vocalist Meghan Parnell who’s abetted by the excellent slide guitarist Dave Barnes plus keys, tenor sax, and trumpet. Citing Tedeschi-Trucks as an influence and gleaning comparisons to The Wood Brothers, their recent and third album Shepherd – the first entirely recorded, produced, and put together by the band – features notable tunes like ‘Holler’, ‘Everybody Knows’, and ‘Colours’. Someone suggested “Janis Joplin fronting The Black Crowes”, and that sounds about right.

Dietmar is a regular visitor to High Wycombe’s Ramblin Roots Revue and two acts spotted there recently are The Southern Fold and Bobbie. The former are playing the Willie Meighan spot; the annual honouring of the late proprietor of Rollercoaster Records in Kilkenny who greatly encouraged and advised Dietmar in the early days of Static Roots. The Southern Fold play a mix of alt.folk and gothic country blues, having founded back in 2014 around frontman and songwriter Emlyn Holden. These days he’s the sole remnant of the original line-up who’d released the impressive, haunted Bible Fear in 2019. The new six-piece ensemble has been together little more than a year and so far have released a couple of singles, and a live set 5 Live With The Southern Fold. Holden gives the band their head and they prove excellent players while second vocalist Madeleine Leclezio is a real find.

Bobbie is an emerging country-folk singer from the suburbs of Paris. Growing up listening to the American classics – early Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Emmylou – she’s set out to emulate them. She sings in English but draws inspiration from French poetry and New Wave film; her debut album The Sacred In The Ordinary has drawn high praise both at home and beyond, the title alone gives an indication of its seriousness, and songs like ‘Muddy Waters’ and ‘They Don’t Show It In The Movies’ soon latch on and won’t let go. It’s as well to catch her soon as she’s surely set to be going much bigger places fast.

The globe-trotting Hayley Reardon grew up on the coast of Massachusetts then headed to Nashville for three years honing her songwriting and fragile folk-pop sound. Seemingly unhurried, after a debut album Good in 2016 there was a flutter of songs, then travel, including a a six-month artist-in-residency stint at Dachau, and shows across Europe.

2023 found her in Barcelona where the dam broke. Hooking up with guitarist Pau Figueres who produced and collaborated on the aptly-named Changes EP whose title track features a bilingual duet with the Catalan singer Judit Neddermann. The following year bought Live At Starseed Studios; thirteen tracks from Reardon’s songbook with special acoustic arrangements by Figueres on flamenco guitar and his brother Arnau on bass plus a concert video. She then recorded new music with the Figueres brothers for After Everything released in September 2024 and bringing a more organic approach being tracked live with a five-piece band.

Scandicana representatives this year are Embla & The Karidotters fronted by the former drummer of the notable Norwegian indie four-piece Razika. Always a great country fan she launched the band five or so years back. They met with immediate success; the debut album Hello, I’m Embla won a Spellemann Award in 2022. An initial EP Howling had been quite noir, even Lynchian, but then she perhaps draw back from that embracing a more raucous honky tonk vibe. 2024’s Off Leash returns to that sound but leavens it with contrasts in mood, and a considered variety that keeps the listener on their toes. It all indicates a slightly detached relationship with the genre while still drawing inspiration from its classic tropes.

Todd Day Wait is a Nashville-based, Missouri-born troubadour; a previously restless soul who’s also spent time in California and New Orleans. A pal of Ags Connolly playing a similarly personal style of traditional country music. He invokes Jimmie Rodgers, Willie Nelson, Wynn Stewart and Kris Kristofferson and claims kin with early American folk, country, and blues music from the 1920s through the 1960s. Paul Kerr of Blabber’n’Smoke placed his sound “in the vein of a down home Leon Redbone or a pared back Pokey LaFarge with its roots in the pantheon of American roots legends”. He busked a lot, travelled around in a vegetable oil-powered, diesel shuttle bus with a band he named Pigpen. The German label Blind Lemon got him to record Folk-Country-Blues at Bookholzberg near Bremen in 2016, and he just released the appropriately titled Letters From The Road produced by Mark Neill (Charley Crockett, The Black Keys, and Los Straitjackets) who chanced upon him busking in a San Diego farmers’ market.

Also on the Saturday lunchtime, prior to the music beginning, and following on from the sell-out book event with Willy Vlautin (The Delines) in 2024, there’s another session in the Kino Walzenlager – Zentrum Altenberg’s cozy cinema space. This year it’s a panel discussion around the topic of Women of Americana exploring a range of topics, from songwriting inspirations and creative processes to navigating the music industry, and the evolving role and perspectives of creative women inside and around Americana.

Hosted by Christine Heise of Berlin’s Radioeins (RBB) whose HappySad is Germany’s forecast Americana/Alt-Country radio show. She brings knowledge, passion, and an insightful interviewing style to a conversation where she’ll be joined by festival performers Pearl Charles, Hayley Reardon, and Michele Stodart for what should be a fascinating hour.

Further information and ticket links can be found on the ever-informative, ever-evolving festival website. Static Roots 2025 runs from Thursday 10th to Saturday 12th July.