Short description...
- Name: Thomas Bleyel
- Year of birth: 1964
- Marital status: married, 2 children
- Place of Residence: Walzbachtal near Karlsruhe
- Occupation: EDP-Support at a well-known fashion catalogue company in Karlsruhe
- Musical instruments: guitar, harmonica, mandolin
- Gig experience: since 1989
- Member of "Freie evangelische Gemeinde Karlsruhe"
- Worship leader at FeG Karlsruhe since 1997
... and here's the long version :-)
The roots for my love to music lay sometimes in the late 70th. I loved listening
to songs from Neil Young, Cat Stevens, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne
and others. From listening to covering some of these songs that wasn't a big step.
In the middle of the 80th I've become good friend to the musicians of the
"Next Blues Generation", a band that called themselves "ZEITPUNKTE" in these days.
We've spent a lot of time together listening to records by Eric Clapton, JJ Cale,
And we even spent more time in the practice room of the Backhaus family
playing some of the songs we loved the best.
In these years it felt like the Backhaus family accepted me as a son of their own.
For this I'll always be thankful. I've learned how good it might be when a father
passes his love and passion for music on to his children.
Also in the middle of the 80th I've met the British evangelist, singer and songwriter
Gus Eyre for the first time. His kind of making music with an acoustic guitar and
his voice, telling the audience some stories and bringing them the good news of
Jesus Christ, influenced me a lot. In one of his concerts I've got the vision
that this is the kind of work I'd like to be involved in.
And that vision became reality over the last 20 years.
I've made my first experience as a solo artist with acoustic guitar and harmonica at
a birthday party of "big daddy" Hans-Werner Backhaus in April 1989.
He and the other guys from "ZEITPUNKTE" had rent a sports-hall in their neighbourhood
and had invited their guests for a concert.
From that date on I was invited to several places like churches, music bars and
teahouses to play my music.
Thanks to Klaus and Frank Backhaus who'd travelled a lot in the early nineties
so that we could play some of the gigs together.
From 1990 to 1996 we've recorded six music tapes with songs from Klaus, Frank,
Gus Eyre, myself and a few others.
In 1997 my wife Birgit and I had moved to Karlsruhe/Germany. A new job, a new church,
making new friends and last but not least the birth of our two kids in 2000 and
2002 brought an eight years recording break into my vita.
Since 1997 I've got more and more involved into the music of a very evangelistic
and fast growing church.
Beneath the regular Sunday morning services I'm used to play in worship services,
services for children based on the promise land work by the willow creek community
church, alpha-course and other evangelistic outreaches.
Since 2001 my neighbour, friend and brother in Christ, Dirk Keller and I
are making music as a kind of "acoustic-guitar-country-folk-gospel-couple"
every now and then.
It's always a lot of fun play music together.
Together with my wife Birgit and Andy Faehrmann who both are vocalists in our
team we're serving together in our church as a worship-team.
Over the last two years I was involved nearly every second week in some kind of music work around our church.
In 2004 I've recorded together with Gus Eyre, Judith Weiss and Stefan Kohlbrenner
the CD "Thomas Bleyel and Gus Eyre - What I do".
In October 2007 Stefan Kohlbrenner and five others friends of mine had finished
the work on the CD "Thomas Bleyel and Friends - Grateful".
