Der Name QIO steht für eine Band, die gekonnt ehrliches und ausdruckstarkes Songwriting deutscher Sprache mit modernem elektronischen Sound verknüpft.

Filmcomposer from Hamburg. www.soundport.de

Growing up west of Sydney in the artistic melting pot of the Blue Mountains, Leigh Marks has anchored much of his material to his grunge and blues roots and the environment of his upbringing. In his formative years he’d spend hours listening to vocalists such as Garry Stringer (Reef) and Paul Rogers (Free/Bad Company) developing his own vocal and songwriting that has grown to primarily serve the song and utilize landscapes and textures to present his style of delivery. This approach and capacity was echoed by award winning producer Syd Green who said ‘it was inspiring to work with an artist so open to ideas.’ This searching for free expression and honesty is the characteristic focus of his songwriting.  

Marks started singing gospel at the Fathers House Blue Mountains in 2007, where freestyle singing and harmonizing with acoustic instruments and percussion would develop his ear and understanding of music. Already a regular fronting various acts across Sydney’s live scene, this experience would help him develop his craft and find opportunities abroad. 

In 2009 Marks moved to Hamburg Germany and quickly discovered its vibrant music scene. After songwriting with a variety of musicians, Marks joined heavy rockers Joe Phone which then became Crow of the Cloud in 2010. The band released their self- titled EP (mixed and mastered by Roman Rossbach) in 2010 with enthusiastic reviews from publications such as German Metal Hammer who likened their musicianship, riffs and Marks’ melodies to Disturbed. Uncle Sally’s .com stated that (translated from German) ‘With their Australian singer Leigh COTC grow a monster, which deep-rooted stage-stars couldn't have done any better. The singer with the distinctive voice, who thanks to his versatility could be compared to Ed Kowalczyk from Live, joins the band since spring 2010 and is a welcomed crown on top of the “tight” rocker's head.’ The band in their time together would play numerous international festivals including Reload in 2010 performing alongside Sepulture, Everlast, Billy Idol, Taylor Hawkins, Selig and Ten Years After.  

Marks, with COTC, played at festivals such as Rockspectakle and the Siegelei Festival with Saint Lu, the Brew and Ingo Pohlmann in 2011 also appearing on live NRJ Radio, Hamburg. The band opened for Blind, One Fine Day, Kings and Killers and supported Daniel Wirtz on the Northern German leg of his 2012 tour. 

After Crow of the Cloud wound up in 2012 Marks returned to his native Australia playing at the New Town Festival with old songwriting companion Daniel Kopp in 2013. 2014 brought session vocals and a collaboration that involved working with producer James Englund (Michael Bolton, John Butler). 2015 would see him play at the Iconic Metro Theatre which has hosted such acts as Muse and Jeff Buckley with the band Dime. In 2016 he recorded a solo EP with Syd Green at the Mono Nest, Nowra featuring the tracks Tightrope and Unknown (available on 
iTunes) taking an Americana/blues/folk direction honing in on the songwriting process. 2016 has also seen the release of material from his early days in Hamburg with singles Where Rivers Meet and Drowning. 

When he is not making music, he is playing basketball, reading or enjoying walking his staffy in the mountains. 

Sounds like Leigh Marks: Amos Lee, Chris Cornell, Ben Harper

In 2004, Marc Broussard, then a precocious 22-year-old singer/songwriter, released his major-label debut; he called it Carencro, after the Louisiana town where he was born and raised, and its thematic centerpiece was a hickory-smoked slab of Bayou soul called “Home.” That album and the three that followed revealed Broussard as an old-school Southern soul singer blessed with a rarefied gift and innate stylistic and emotional authenticity, causing the L.A. Times to rave, “The guy can really sing, with power, nuance and class. Anybody got a phone book? I’d listen to him hum a few pages.” Those records also evidenced Broussard’s maturation into a songwriter of uncommon eloquence, fashioning the indigenous idioms of his native region into compelling personal testimony.   

Now, a decade after his critical breakthrough, Broussard has come full circle with A LIFE WORTH LIVING his sixth studio album, a celebration of what home means to him, starting with his wife and kids, the street he’s lived on his entire life, surrounded by loved ones, and all the minutiae of everyday life that he has come to treasure. 

“Home definitely has a lot to do with this album,” he confirms. “But family has a lot to do with it as well, and those two go hand in hand. The infrastructure of family is really important, especially when you have four kids. Luckily I’ve got family that I’ve been able to lean on throughout all these years. Then,on top of it all, this place is just special. There’s a different way of living, a different way of communicating and a different way of celebrating life here that is infectious. And once you realize it, you never want to leave.”

Broussard signals his intentions with the cover portrait, which pictures him with his wife and kids sitting on the steps of a neighbor’s house, instruments in hand, persuasively conveying the notion that the family that plays together stays together. That touching photograph, which recalls Norman Rockwell’s heartwarming images of home and hearth, leads the listener into a song cycle that brings those traditional American values to vivid life, a linked series of ballads and deep-gut soul-rockers with revealing titles like “Edge of Heaven,” “Another Day,” “Weight of the World,” “Perfect to Me” and “Shine.” These songs, some intimate and others churning with intensity, like the kickass blues-rockers “Dyin’ Man” and “Man Ain’t Supposed to Cry,” chart the full range of concerns and emotions of a husband, father and provider as he experiences the joys and sorrows of existence. 

“Whether it’s because I’m older and a little more perceptive, or whether it was just the right time, I find myself with a set of songs that really means the world to me,” Broussard says with pride. “The lion’s share of the material on this record is extremely personal. There are decades of stories behind a single line in any of these songs. In that way alone, it’s vastly different than anything I’ve done before. There was much more attention to detail; I feel like I’ve become a more focused writer.”

From the charged metaphor of the opening track and lead single “Hurricane Heart” to the closing existential lament “I’ll never Know,” Broussard gets really close to the bone on this record—so close, in fact, that there seems to be no distance between himself and these songs, each of them drawn from the very fabric of his life; it’s as if they’re being transmitted from his heart and soul directly to the listener. That’s particularly true of the poignant title piece. 

“It was a rare occurrence to have a song that just kind of wrote itself,” Broussard says of “A Life Worth Living.” “It felt like I was the conduit more than the writer, that I received this thing. It happened right after the passing of my grandmother. She was sick, and she decided not to fight the cancer, which is indicative of her style—she lived by her own rules. My mother’s mother was the matriarch of this wonderful, massive family. Hurricane Isaac was bearing down on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana at the same time that she was passing away, and because it was such a sudden thing—we found out she had cancer and three weeks later she was gone—we were all left speechless. I felt like someone needed to say something and luckily the whole thing laid itself out in front of me. 

“That’s one of two songs on this record that came to me this way,” Broussard continues. “The other one is ‘Give ’Em Hell.’ It’s about a friend of mine, Squirrel we called him, who was the head of the English department at a Jesuit high school in New Orleans. This guy was a brilliant writer, and one of my favorite people of all time. Squirrel passed away suddenly from a heart condition last April, and that led to another song that just hit me. I sat right up in bed and heard the first line. 

“My grandmother passed away at the end of the summer of 2012, and Squirrel passed away in the spring of last year, so those two songs buttressed the entire writing process for this record,” he notes. “I felt both my grandmother and Squirrel’s presence coaxing me through every line, through every tear that rolled down my face as I wrote. Both were extremely emotional to write because I knew how gut-wrenching every line was going to be. So surrendering to the process was very difficult, but incredibly cathartic in the end.” 

The album’s other linchpin song is “Honesty,” which, like “A Life Worth Living” and “Give ’Em Hell,” began with an epiphany. “‘Honesty’ was born out of an experience I had listening to a song called ‘Don’t Tell All My Friends About Me,’ by a brilliant guy named Blake Mills,” Broussard recalls. “That song had a profound effect on me in that it was so brutally honest it couldn’t be denied. For a long, long time, I’ve avoided writing about the darker side of relationships and love for fear of offending my wife’s sensibilities. But after I heard that song, I said to myself, ‘I can’t do that anymore. I’m not gonna allow myself to be stifled; I need to be able to write whatever I’m feeling.” So I had a talk with my wife and let her know that none of this stuff was really that personal, and all she needed to do was focus on how we are to each other. Then I proceeded to open myself up. So ‘Honesty’ is really the quintessence of this new spirit in my writing. 

A LIFE WORTH LIVING marks Broussard’s return to Vanguard, which released 2007’s SOS: Save Our Soul, his scintillating album of covers of Southern soul classics.

“Luckily, I’m with a company that recognizes opportunities and is nimble and agile enough to make moves on it when they present themselves,” says Broussard. “All of the things that I needed to happen for me to feel confident about this project have come together. It’s put me in a really good head space. I’m really looking forward to the future, and there’s no end in sight, that’s the thing. We’ve got ideas that are fresh, and a team that’s really excited about implementing those ideas. I’m poised for some big things, hopefully, right here.”

With that, Broussard eases himself back into the unhurried rhythm of life in Carencro. The next order of business: dropping off a cookie cake baked by his wife to his daughter’s first-grade class at the neighborhood elementary school.

Zwischen Himmel und Erde passieren viele unterschiedliche Dinge, die niemand erklären kann. Unter anderem wie Robert Carl Blank es alleine, nur mit seiner Gitarre und Stimme schafft, eine Masse von mehr als 1000 Menschen genau so zu verzaubern, als würde er für jeden von ihnen einzeln singen.
Der Konzertbesucher vergisst einen Abend mit dem sympathischen Fallschirmspringer aus Hamburg nur schwer, nach seine Songs einmal den Weg in den Gehörgang gefunden haben.

Robert ist ein einziges lebendes Roadmovie, der in seinen Liedern seine Erfahrung wiedergibt und das Freiheitsgefühl mit jeder Pore ausstrahlt. Als Prototyp der neuen Generation von Songwritern, die ein aufregendes, spannendes und freies Leben führen, teilt er seine Erfahrungen mit seinen Zuhörern.

Sein erster musikalischer Reisebericht nach 10 Jahren worldwide travelling (das Debütalbum „SOUL CIRCUS“) wurde von der Presse mit Lobeshymnen überhäuft. Das „Intro Magazin“ lobte beispielsweise das liebevoll aufgenommene Album für seine „Radiotauglichkeit“ und ordnete ihn als „Hoffnung zwischen Jack Johnson und American Idol“ ein. Mit seinem zweiten Album „LAST TIME I SAW DAVE“ konnte er sich nicht nur musikalisch weiterentwickeln, sondern auch sein Debütalbum noch toppen. Robert Carl Blank gelang es zweifelsohne zu zeigen, dass er keine „Eintagsfliege“ ist, und gäbe es einen Soundtrack zum Leben, dann hätte Robert ihn geschrieben – eine Wahrheit in, und zwischen jedem Song, Ehrlichkeit und künstlerische Tiefe. Arne Schumacher (Radio Bremen) zählt ihn „ohne Zweifel zu den talentiertesten englisch textenden Singer/Songwritern in Deutschland“, und Heinz Rebellius (u.a. Gitarre & Bass) attestiert ihm „eine außerordentliche Stimme, die Ausdruck, Volumen, Einzigartigkeit und Natürlichkeit in sich zu vereinen scheint.“



Pressestimmen:


„Eine außerordentliche Stimme, die Ausdruck, Volumen, Einzigartigkeit und Natürlichkeit in sich zu vereinen scheint“ (Heinz Rebellius für Gitarre & Bass)

„fantastische Songs mit wunderbaren Chord-Folgen und intelligenten Texten“ (Merkur Online)

„…ein Lichtblick zwischen Jack Johnson und American Idol.“ (INTRO Magazin)

"ein echt hörenswertes Singer/Songwriter-Album mit viel Pop-Appeal" (amm Musik Magazin)

"die 12 Titel haben's in sich. Sowohl textlich als auch musikalisch ist jeder einzelne Song vollkommen" (Allgäu Live In)

"eine der besten CD´s des Frühjahres." (Bizarre Radio)

"Mit gezielter Raffinesse und Spaß klingen seine Songs frischer denn je" (Das Musikmagazin)

"trifft voll ins Schwarze für alle Singer/Songwriter Liebhaber … geht direkt unter die Haut" (Fast Forward Magazin)

"eine Souveränität, die man eigentlich eher nur von älteren Musikern erwartet" (Fuldaer Zeitung)

"Durch und durch Musiker, hat er ein natürliches Gespür für catchy Songs entwickelt, dabei aber seine Ecken und Kanten behalten." (Detlef Kinsler für Journal Frankfurt)

"an album written by the heart and the mind…There´s honestly no song that can not to be counted as a pearl on a necklace." (Reflections of Darkness)

"mit diesem Album gehört er zu der kleinen Gruppe von Sterne-Musikern in seinem Metier. Der Hörer wird für fünfundfünfzig Minuten zum Gourmet eines Gerichtes in elf Gängen und einem Überraschungsdessert." (Rocktimes)

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