Freiburg Blues Festival European Blues Night - The See See Riders & Wild Flame

On Thursday evening, the European blues elite will meet in the Wodanhalle. With Wild Flame and the See See Riders, the second and third place winners of the European Blues Awards 2025 will do the honors.

The See See Riders are a young quartet dedicated to American roots music. With violin, double bass and resonator guitars, they will take you on a musical expedition. This will not only take you through the muddy wastelands of the Mississippi River, where musicians like Charley Patton once formed the blues, but also to New Orleans, South Carolina and Louisville, Kentucky, where ragtime, swing and the jug bands shaped roots music. The young musicians thus embody a great diversity which, embedded in modern arrangements, nevertheless does justice to the roots. Armano Persau's distinctive voice and swinging guitar are complemented by Stephan Goldbach's groovy bass lines that get every foot moving, Bekki Wagner's virtuoso Clifford Hayes-style fiddling and Benjamin Lojak's singing slide playing, similar to Tampa Red's style, to create an extraordinary sound. Polyphonic vocals round off the pieces and give them a warm folk character.
The quality, virtuosity and uniqueness of the quartet not only impressed the European jury. The German Blues Award 2024 for the best band also went to the See See Riders, which qualified them to take part in the International Blues Challenge in Memphis, where they sensationally entered the final round at the Orpheum Theatre.

The second representative of the European blues top this evening is Wild Flame from Poland.
The band began their journey together after a jam session during the Jimiway Blues Festival 2020, when everyone involved - Adeama Walkowiak, Oskar Kunicki, Bartosz "Mr. Shuffle" Niebielecki and Tomasz Szukalski - immediately felt that they were riding the same musical wave and decided to form a band. Since the beginning, they have been writing blues songs together with a touch of soul, funk and rock. Their debut album "Steel and Fire" was released in November 2022, the second album is in the works. They gained their stage experience, which they present in a great live show, not only in the Polish music scene, but also at many international blues festivals, including Blues Express, Jesie'n z Bluesem, Zorski Blues Festival, RnB Festival in Latvia, Dresden Blues Festival and Blues Baltica Festival in Eutin as well as at festivals in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The band was not only awarded 2nd place at the European Blues Challenge in Split 2025, they also won the Grand Prix of the Polish Blues Challenge. In addition, Adeama Walkowiak was named best female vocalist and Oskar Kunicki best guitarist in various competitions.