The Lettners Combo

"The Lettners Combo" The Lettners Combo roars, screeches, separates, rocks, and oozes through the joys and sorrows of love in the style of the 50s. With pathos and grit, strictly analog, and stylistically not so puristic, the founding fathers of the combo, Sweethard (vocals, guitar) and Honeyboy (harmonica) Lettner, are driven by the pumping tuba of H-G. Gutternigg and the pointed drumming of Mr. Luger through overheated Southern days.

The sound, consistently unpretentious, with a strong focus on authenticity, is created specifically for each number and moves between New Orleans and Tennessee, country and western, even rock and roll, with bluegrass also making an appearance.

Since 2014, the duo The Lettners has been successfully navigating the cultural scene in Austria and has recently been joined by their sound studio recording manager Mr. Luger on essential drums and the media-present H-G. Gutternigg. Thus, the four now present their first joint record "Dirty Roots." Line-up: Tom Sweethard Lettner; Vocals, Guitar | Jörg Honeyboy Lettner; Harmonica, Vocals | H-G Gutternigg – Tuba, Sousaphone | Andreas "Luigi" Luger - Bass Drum, Snare.

The origin of The Lettners Combo: Their mother had long since run off to Twickenham to escape the cultural wasteland of Pabneukirchen. Through their grandfather Hannibal, the Lettner brothers Jörg "Honeyboy" and Tom "Sweethard" came into contact with country blues and rock 'n' roll at an early age. Hannibal Lettner, himself a charismatic enfant terrible of the Mühlviertel butcher scene, was indeed an Elvis fan from the very beginning. After Hannibal invented the "Motiv-Wurscht" - initially just "Tannenbaum-Extra" during Advent - he gained dubious fame through a legal dispute with Colonel Parker, Elvis's manager, who claimed that H. Lettner was producing and distributing unlicensed Elvis-themed sausages. This was true.

In this environment, in the tiled, UV-light-filled, cold, echoing rooms of the Lettner butcher shop in Pabneukirchen, the sausage was stuffed from which the Lettner brothers would later press the "dirty sound." After the still not completely clarified death of Master Hannibal - which had to do with a meat grinder - they grew up separately, Sweethard with the merciful Oblate sisters and Honeyboy with the Red Falcons. It was only in middle adulthood that they met again at the Ansfelden rest stop.

In Sweethard's car radio, Hank Williams was playing while he enjoyed his liver cheese sandwich. Honeyboy, who had so far only succumbed to the blues, was magically drawn to this music - and to the liver cheese. From the rather dingy pedestrian underpass connecting the Ansfelden South and North rest areas, Mr. Luger with his drums and Hans-Georg Gutternigg, dragging a tuba from the last gig of a drum and bass project, were just trying to get home. Following the casual request of a truck driver to "play something," the first notes of "dirty roots" were born.