Munich band of the week: Johnny Fab Kaufmann – Munich

The head cinema starts as soon as you listen to the music by Johnny Fab Kaufman closes eyes. The lyrics and the sound are full of images, emotions and nostalgia. “Your sound reminds me of the good 90s,” says a comment on the song “Wild Child” on the band’s Instagram page. No wonder: “We all listen to much older music,” says Sofia Lainovic, the band’s singer. The song “Wild Child” is inspired by a friend of Sofia’s attitude towards life. A young woman in her twenties who has everything happening spontaneously and lets life take her here and there. And it’s about the outside world, wondering where their path will lead them. Just a “wild child”.

If you look for the name Johnny Fab Kaufmann among the band members, you will look in vain: it is a fantasy name that singer and guitarist Sebastian Woodman came up with. “We didn’t want to take ourselves too seriously,” he says, laughing. Sebastian’s imagination – in terms of songwriting – also laid the foundation for the band: “I’ve always loved writing songs,” he says. “But I sometimes wrote lines that I couldn’t have sung myself.” However, Sofia can. The young singer is also active as a singer-songwriter. “I find it very impressive that you can write lyrics that you can’t even sing when you’re singing,” says Sofia. “It’s a counterintuitive concept for me, I couldn’t do it at all.”

Now they sing in pairs, accompanied by keyboard, bass and drums. Associations with Angus & Julia Stone are obvious here, the sound is similar. But there’s more: When writing songs, Sebastian sometimes lets himself be influenced by other genres such as jazz, soul, funk and folk. This creates a very own indie direction. All the musicians in the band, except Sofia, are studying jazz. So the component of improvisational music was added to the live performances. “I think it’s great to include improvisational aspects in a way that nobody expects, because you rarely see that in indie music,” says Sebastian.

The band is currently working on their first EP, “Wild Child” is to be released as a debut single in October. The fact that the first song has not been released so far is mainly due to Sebastian’s perfectionism, he says himself: “I have to let go of the idea that another interface could have been even better and so on. After all, we have more than 26 There are songs waiting for release.”

Johnny Fab Kaufman