“As you get older, you realize how precious time is,” said rock musician Ron Evans a year ago. The times in the recording studio were particularly valuable for Evans, whether in his own in Percha or in the various others, in which the guitarist recorded and played songs. Evans was still thinking about his future last year and about how retirement and rockers actually go together, conclusion: not. So he continued to play, as he had for so many decades before.
Evans, who had a German and English passport, grew up in England and Australia. He then moved through Europe as a DJ in the 1970s, DJed in Scandinavia for a long time, ran a record shop and his own studio in Starnberg for ten years. He has worked with musicians such as Maffay guitarist Frank Diez and Albie Donnelly from Supercharge. With the Polt director, co-author and musician Hanns-Christian Müller, he opened “Radio Ikebana”, a digital label.
Evans, the guitarist with the gray hair pulled back in a distinctive ponytail, had a dark, distinctive voice and would be starting in a new line-up in 2022 and the Ron Evans Group including drums, piano and saxophone. His repertoire ranged from earthy rock songs to cover versions of the Spencer Davis Group or door. During his music career he has written hundreds of songs. In 2015 he won the “Big Blues Award” in the “Contemporary” category, at which time more than 40 radio stations around the world were playing his songs, for example in Australia, Canada and England. Most specialize in blues rock. And Evans made it into the streaming charts of iTunes as well as into the charts of Kazakhstan.
Evans judged his own work early on, the double album “Retrospective” was released in 2015 and was a distillation of the nine albums he had produced up to that point. The compact and uncomplicated blues rock with simple lyrics, which takes up elements of jazz and country and sometimes tends towards pleasing ballads, is old-fashioned in the best sense of the word: there is hardly a song that gets along without the guitarist going it alone. Sometimes it can be two solos or more. If there were fewer, fellow musicians such as harmonica specialist Hubert Hofherr or saxophonist Steve Hooks stepped in.
In 2022 he said about the plans for further tours and live performances with towing and long journeys: “And then at 80 you fell over?” Unfortunately much earlier. Evans died of cancer in his adopted home of Starnberg at the end of June at the age of 75.