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Michael
Kaeshammer
Hitting His Stride
Michael Kaeshammer grew up harboring a
musical secret. To his friends, he was a
decent garage-band drummer and a card-carrying
member of the AC/DC fan club. But
he had a nimble-fingered alter ego, spending
hours a day at the piano emulating his musician
father, who owned a substantial collection of
boogie-woogie records. Young Kaeshammer
was a piano prodigy and no one knew it.
That all changed at age 16, when one of his
school teachers caught wind of his hidden talent
and blew his cover in class. “I felt so embarrassed,
just because I didn’t think it was cool,”
Kaeshammer recalled.
These days, Kaeshammer wears his early
influences proudly on his sleeve. His pop-tinted
2011 release, Kaeshammer, and 2009’s Lovelight
(both on Alert Music) are laced with spirited
stride solos and New Orleans-style grooves à la
Art Tatum and James Booker. “That’s just home
to me, musically speaking,” he said.
Kaeshammer, who is currently based in
Toronto, has built a reputation across North
America as a gifted pianist and a stylish singer,
not to mention an affable showman. His formidable
chops and accessible tunes draw large
crowds at jazz festivals and garner comparisons
to crossover stars like Harry Connick Jr. and
Jamie Cullum. His joy on stage is palpable.
But Kaeshammer’s upbeat music belies a
period of personal reckoning during which selfdoubt,
loneliness and a feeling of ostracism from
jazz peers almost led him to give up his career
entirely. Take “Rendezvous,” the foot-stomping
opener on his latest album. In the song,
Kaeshammer coolly offers a helping hand to
a friend in need. He said the friend he had in
mind when he penned the lyrics was Michael
Kaeshammer, circa 2006.
“I felt it was very personal for me to go, ‘I’m
going through some stuff in my life and I’m
gonna let you know’—to say it in the third person
felt a lot easier,” Kaeshammer explained. “That
song was a little bit of therapy for me.”
Kaeshammer, 34, began his career as a teen
sensation, traveling with his father on weekends
to play solo gigs around his native Germany. He
moved to Vancouver Island, Canada, at age 18
and cut his teeth playing blues and boogie-woogie
standards at clubs.
There, Kaeshammer began to explore bebop
and other styles but became preoccupied with
others’ opinions of his playing. “When you’re
younger on the jazz scene starting out, there’s a
lot of judgment,” he said. Kaeshammer also suffered
from a growing sense of listlessness about
performing. “It just became a gig, a job—like
going to the bank and being a teller.”
If there was a silver lining, though, it’s that
Kaeshammer’s solution to his doldrums did
more than merely ward off thoughts of early
retirement—it transformed him as an artist. He
began to write stream-of-consciousness journal
entries every morning, later turning his thoughts
into lyrics. Composing his own songs became a
way to deal with his personal blues. It also added
another arrow to his musical quiver: vocal talent.
Kaeshammer found further artistic inspiration
in New Orleans, where he lived prior to
Hurricane Katrina. “I remember the first time
I went, just reading the street names gave me
chills,” he said. “I started having memories of all
these songs I used to listen to.”
During what was supposed to be a two-week
visit, he fell into a weekly five-hour gig on
Bourbon Street with singer Marva Wright. He
ended up staying nine months. The weekly sessions
sharpened his sense of groove, but perhaps
more importantly, they reinforced the need to
express himself emotionally in his playing.
“At the time, I liked to show off with stuff
that I was doing on the piano,” Kaeshammer
said. “I remember Marva saying, ‘I see you can
play. Why are you playing what you play Is
there a deeper meaning to what you do’”
For Kaeshammer, that musical raison d’être
was a desire to make worthwhile connections
with audiences. It led him to embrace the
unabashed playfulness of his favorite musicians.
“You look at Louis Armstrong stuff, and that
guy’s putting on a show,” he said. “When I go see
shows, I don’t have to be entertained, but I like
feeling a connection with what’s going on.”
Drummer Johnny Vidacovich, a New
Orleans player who’s appeared on several albums
with Kaeshammer over the years, praised the
pianist’s magnetism in performance settings.
“He totally hypnotizes the crowd in every possible
way without sacrificing integrity, without
sacrificing musicality,” Vidacovich said. “He
has a great sense of humor in his playing, and
he plays the piano like I would like to play the
drums.”
—Eric Bishop
20 DOWNBEAT DECEMBER 2011