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<point-form over the years> <a quick over-view>

Lionel was born in the early sixties in the Highlands of Scotland even though his family was living in the London England at the time. His father, Tom Lodge was soon to become one of the top DJs on the first pirate radio station, Radio Caroline, which introduced Lionel at a very early age to the exploding sixties British music scene. "My dad was interviewing the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, we always had the newest releases playing on the home stereo, dad would go off to gigs and come home with these great new band's latest recordings." When Lionel was four he re-wrote the words to the Stones` song Get Off My Cloud, turned it into a anthem to call his mother to get him out of bed. "Lionel was such a terror when he was young that we had to tell him he couldn't get out of bed until me or his father came to get him, left on his own he would destroy the house in minuets. At first he would wake up before us and start shouting from his room that he was awake, we had to tell him not to shout in the morning, that's when he re-wrote that song and started singing."

At five years old his parents moved Lionel and his two older brothers to Canada. "Dad was working for Radio Caroline and in `67 the British government passed the Marine Broadcasting Act, which stated that anyone working with or for pirate radio stations would be arrested if they entered England. Dad tried to work for the BBC then but it was too regimented for him, so off to Canada we went."

"In Canada we were very strange compared to the rest of the children at school, we had long hair and wore hippy-like clothes, plus we had English accents. I hated it for the first five years, didn't like Canada at all, got into a lot of fights. We moved around a fair bit and so we were always the new kids with funny accents."

Lionel's first instrument was the piano. " I had a piano teacher for a short while who taught me the basics to boogie-woogie piano. But he disappeared one day never to return. It was around this time I started getting seriously interested in girls and the girls thought that the piano was a sissy instrument, so I changed to the saxophone, far more sexy, but singing was my main passion, all I really wanted to do from as far back as I can remember."

After years of learning Glen Miller's Greatest Hits in the school orchestra, Lionel and his brother Brodie put together their first band. "I was living in a house with a London Ontario, weekend, Nazi punk band, they weren't Nazis and they certainly weren't street punks, most of them lived at home with mom and had good jobs and expensive cars but they were singing about tearing down the establishment, their serious fake ness would make me and Brodie laugh. We thought that if they can call themselves anarchist punks, then for all it means then we could be... fish rockers! So it was and so we were. Actually the fish rock wave of London Ontario started with a poster. Brodie made it out of an old encyclopaedia on fashion, it was a collarge of all these pictures of different fashions and hair styles and across this he painted in a kinda cartoon writing "Fish Rock!!". It was put it up in a party, on a night when the Nazi punk band was going to play for all their friends. Well, the poster was pulled down a bunch of times that night, it kept upsetting these renegade, ruthless adversaries to the status quo and the establishment. We laughed.

"I guess they thought we were laughing at them, we were. So it was that Fish Rock was born. The next day, after we cleared the house by playing Beethoven's 9th very loud, we went down in the cellar and pick up their instruments and started playing. Someone had to play Fish Rock and we guessed we were the most likely candidates. We wrote songs like "Follow Fish", "Living In A Fish Farm" and "Ban Can Tuna". It was a lot of fun but soon became a parody of it's original intentions and then it was over."

After that Brodie and Lionel had a few different bands until the final Corndog line-up with which they were signed to BMG Records Canada. The Corndogs released two recordings before BMG and two with BMG. They toured Canada from end to end many times with steady success.

"But there were some problems on the business side of things, problems with the record company and their perception of who we were. I was not so satisfied and wanted to get out of the deal and try to move to another company. I was loving the travelling and wanted to go farther a field, across the oceans I guess I was bored with being in Canada at that time."

The travel bug had bit and Lionel took exit to England. It was 1992, he originally thought he'd only stay that side of the Atlantic for a few months but, Lionel stayed longer, over a decade, longer and started travelling around Europe, meeting local players to record four of his now seven solo CD s.

"It was time for a change, personally and musically. After recording `She's No Game´ I was feeling the need to shake this life of mine up a bit. I was becoming too comfortable, too mellow. Time to take a jump into the unknown."

First stop in England he put together a loud electric band that was said to be a mixture of The Pixies and Stax Volt. With this four piece band his third CD, `Sister', was recorded.

"It was a band based on fun, we played for fun, I was writing for fun, nothing was taken seriously. The effect was very uplifting. We played all over England, pubs, clubs, a few small festivals, whatever came our way. We were loud but not proud."

"And then came the offers. We were talking to Chrysalis and Virgin, there were some pretty big amounts of money being discussed, they wanted to pick up "Sister" and release it as is. I didn't really believe it, I didn't feel it was for real and I wasn't at ease with who was offering the deal. We were doing showcases in London and working the situation when the band started to fall apart."

Instead of accepting offers from Chrysalis or Virgin Lionel continued travelling on his own, going around England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, meeting and working with local players. By the end of this period he recorded his fourth CD, Naked, with a six piece, mainly acoustic band. "The band on `Naked' is a mixture of Irish, Scottish and English players, I'm very proud of that CD. It worked so easily. We recorded it in one day, started at 9:00am and finished the mixing in time to make it to the pub before closing time."

But the need for more travelling and musical exploring was still calling, so he went to France then Spain, Greece and through a strange twist of events, after a couple years, ended up in Vienna. "I've met a lot of great players here, people like Rens Newland, Hans Theessink, Othmar Binder, Gajus Stappen, Peter Müller, Oliver Gattringer, Willie Lange, and the members of my new group, Valentin Oman, George Beck, Thomas Eder, Bernhard Osanna and Peter Schönbauer.

"Playing with these people has been a joy and an honour. Also the mixing of cultures has been both interesting and inspiring. I only planned on staying in Vienna for a couple months, but I met so many fine players here that leaving became a hard thought to entertain."

In 1999 Lionel signed an single deal with Turnaround Records and started working with Rens Newland in his studio in Vienna. Together they recorded the maxi-single `You're All I Want´, which was finished in May but released in October. By the middle of 1999 Lionel was mainly performing live in Vienna Rens, both on acoustic guitars. But when the opportunities arose they extended the live line up with some of the musicians they're working in the studio with. By the time the first recording was released, the maxi-single `You're All I Want´, Lionel and Rens had transferred the understanding they'd developed in the studio out to the live stages. They're managed to fuse Lionel's Americana/Folk/Rock writings with Rens' Jazz Funk sensibilities to an effect that was both international and down-home, sophisticated but still easily accessible.

In November 1999 Lionel and Brodie met in England to do a series of shows, just the two of them on guitars. "Our Grandmother had died earlier that year and this was to mark her first birthday since her death. She was very popular in the area and so it was a bit of a community event. We played in the local pub, set up in the corner. It worked with a haunting effect."

They started with the local pub and ended up in London. They realised that they still had the open natural way between them, their way of rolling through the songs together.

"People seemed to really react to the two of us playing together, we played a lot of the places I used to play with the group on "Naked". It was a lot of fun and the music was flowing."

In early 2000 they returned for another three weeks of playing in clubs and theatres around England and they recorded a whole slew of songs, some of which ended up on Lionel's next CD.

In September 2000, Lionel released his fifth CD, `Somewhere In Vienna And Doing Fine´ while he was continuing with numerous live shows in Europe and North America. This CD covers the three different musical settings Lionel was working with at the time. Mainly the two different duos, Lionel and Rens Newland (for most of European performances) and Lionel and Brother Bro (for British and American performances) but the CD also includes a couple tracks with the group Lionel had at the time in Vienna with Rens, Willi Langer and Oliver Gattringer.

But before that something else, a whole new musical direction, was bubbling up from under. During the summer of 2000, while playing at the Pepsi Donau Insel Fest in Budapest, Hungary, Lionel met Myroslav Levytsky, a Ukrainian composer and leader of the group Braty Bluzu. They talked and exchanged contact info with the thought being of Lionel, sometime, travelling to Ukraine to perform. A few months later the invitation came. On January 8th 2001 Lionel travelled to Kalush, Ukraine with Rens Newland as his stage partner. They performed in the city's concert hall as part of the city's Christmas festival.

"It really took my heart, being there, we drove through the mountains, though the small villages and found this indoor festival overflowing with their cultural dances and songs. It was an experience I will never forget and it was the start of many more shows and concerts in the Ukraine."

In June of 2001 Rens arranged a concert at the Linz City Music Festival for Lionel and Rens to perform with Braty Bluzu, all together, mixing their styles, their approaches and their songs together to give a very unique soundscape of cultural diversity. Since this date they have continued to perform what they call the "Music Without Boarders" project a few times a year. Twice they added a Swiss Chamber Orchestra to the line up and it is planned to take this full show out on the road in Europe.

In February and March of 2001 Lionel recorded his 6th CD, "Beautiful World", in Canada with his Brother Bro. They set up and recorded in an old church in the middle of tobacco country, South Western Ontario. Just the two of them and a pile of original songs. It's spooky kinda country rock with a bluesy edge to it. Just one acoustic guitar and one electric guitar and their voices. They recorded it then flew over to England to tour the British clubs and theatres for most of April.

Between October 2000 and May 2002 Lionel was also recording another new CD with Rens Newland. It started out to be a duo album but soon was redirected towards a more band/produced CD. Released by Jive Music in November 2002, "Sailing To The Sirens" shines with eleven of Lionel's new original songs. Produced by Lionel and Rens it has a very different sound to it then the CD with Brother Bro and to really show the difference in musical approaches between the two CDs Lionel recorded the song "Beautiful World" for both releases.

There's an old saying, `A rolling stone collects on moss´ , well you won't find any moss on Lionel. Late in 2002 Lionel started to do what he called Sessions at a little cafe/bar in Vienna. The core of this new group was Valentin Oman on piano, Bernhard Osanna on contra bass and Peter Müller on drums. Lionel invited other players to come and sit in with them, players Lionel had worked with in the past and others he had only heard about. They held the Sessions every Tuesday evening for a few weeks. They didn't perform as such, more like they just jammed, messing their way through Lionel's original songs, and some pieces that they made up on the spot. It was a very relaxed setting and so the music came out that way too.

But the Sessions had to come to a pause due to Christmas and Lionel had plans to head back to Canada for the season and record a new CD with Brother Bro and his son Durrie. So off he went, back to the cold country side where his family live, with a stack of new originals he had written while in Spain during the previous autumn.

This time they set up to record in a building on Brodie's property. A small, old wooden barn that they called The Shed. They recorded 15 songs, some Lionel's, some Brodie's, Lionel on acoustic guitar, Brodie on electric guitar and 17 year old Durrie on drums.

In January 2003 Lionel returned to Vienna from Canada with all the recordings ready to be mixed only to head off again with Rens to perform in Ukraine, again in the Kiev City Music Hall and again with the string orchestra and Braty Bluzu. While they were there they also did an hour performance for the Ukrainian MTV which is called M1.

In February 2003 Lionel started up the Sessions again and plans on continuing the weekly sessions until the early summer when the festival season starts. The core of the band has expanded to Valentin Oman, George Beck, Thomas Eder, with Bernhard Osanna and Peter Schönbauer trading off on the contra bass. Over the first half of 2003 this group developed into The Lionel Train with Rens Newland on guitar, Valentin Oman on piano/organ, George Beck on drums, Thomas Eder on guitar, and Bernhard Osanna on contra bass.

During this time Lionel and Rens were also developing the "tuba band", otherwise known as The Lionel & Rens Rock Quartet. With (Magic) Markus Weissenbach on tuba and Georg Beck on drums the group had a happy feel compared to the sometimes heavy sound of The Lionel Train. By the end of 2003 both of these groups were playing regularly.

In February 2004 The Lionel Train went into Rens' studio for two days and recorded Lionel's 8th CD, "It's Not My Fault", The CD was released in the autumn of 2004 to glowing reviews from press and fans.

For most of 2004 Lionel stayed in Austria performing with Rens as a duo and with the two groups. During this year he wrote lyrics for other producers and singers, headlined the 25th annual Bob Dylan Festival in Austria, and lent his vocals to a few other "friends" recordings.

In 2005 Lionel started working with Gernot Feldner, an Austrian singer/songwriter. They met at a small Bob Dylan evening in a café in Vienna. During the evening they both performed separately at first but ended the evening doing a few songs together. A friendship was struck. They decided to meet up once a week at a funky little café in the 7th district of the city for a loose musical play through favourite songs, others and their own. These sessions continued on for months, sometimes missing a few weeks due to other commitments, but generally, consistently rolled through letting the two develop a natural musical communication.

By the end of 2005 Lionel had a new collection of songs and was contemplating how the next CD should sound when Gernot proposed a co-production between the two of them, with production mainly focusing on their duo of Gernot mostly on piano and Lionel on guitar, both singing. A bit more of a spacey production with other instruments like accordion, violin, drums and percussion loosely arranged around the duo.

In the end of January 2006 Lionel and Gernot went for a week of playing in England. Initially Lionel was only going to visit with his uncle who had his 62nd birthday on the 26th of January. But Gernot was interested in joining Lionel, even if it was just for some time to sit out in the country side and play together. So with this Lionel contacted some of his favourite places to play in England and within ten days of being there secured three nights worth of gigs including a Friday night spot at the infamous 12 Bar Club n Soho, London. The day they arrived they were asked to play yet another gig the same evening at a friend's bar. They said sure and made the week's show count to be four. That first evening they played basically facing each other, playing through a random selection of songs. It was like a grounding evening.

The next night was in Swindon, at the Beehive. A famous music pub owned by lovely guy and music enthusiast, Andy Mercer. Not only did Andy move an existing show to accommodate Lionel and Gernot but he also suggested a local percussionist that, if we liked, would be into joining us for the second half of the show. Sometimes you have to take a chance. Andy was right, Brendan Hamley was a very sympathetic player. He sat in and naturally understood his place in the music. It was a great set with Brendan definitely being owed his share of the credit. Lionel and Gernot invited Brendan to join them in London two nights later. He happily accepted the offer.

But first was the Stroud show, Lionel's old home town. There was another pub just down the road from where we were to play and it was the landlord's birthday. He was having a big party with a live band that were local favourites. There was some concern as to how many might come to see Lionel and Gernot do their soft shoe through bunch of relatively unknown songs. No need to worry, Adam Horovitz ran a piece on us in the local paper and the place was nicely filled. It was a very comfortable evening with some very good old friends and others who had come to listen.

The next day it was off to London. The London show had a crazy wildness to it but at the same time felt like it was securely nailed down. The show was supposed to be recorded but unfortunately, due to equipment problems, was not. So now it's just out there in the memories of the 60 or so people who were in the club. The three of us drove back to the country side that night feeling well purged.

The final night was supposed to be evening relaxing chatting with friends but again Lionel and Gernot were asked to play. This time in the magical little pub in the Slad valley called the Woolpack. This is the Village Of Stone pub. They couldn't say no. Unplugged they played for hours soaking up the merriment of the ancient pub. With closing time came an invitation from friend/keyboardist/studio owner Andy Butler to go do to his studio and do some more playing. The night ended with approaching dawn. The flight was in twelve hours, time to sleep, pack, drive and fly.

In 2006 Lionel and Gernot started their pre-production work, putting together basic demos of 18 new songs. With the Café Schräg weekly sessions they had a home base to casually meet up with other players and work through possible arrangements. Hard to say how long this will go on for but hopefully by the summer time they will in the studio and recording Lionel's 10th CD, tentatively called "Definitely Schräged".

In August 2006 Lionel and Rens Newland released "The Lionel Lodge and Rens Newland Rock Quartet, Live In Vienna, The Covers CD" Recorded live in The Family Eckert Heuriger, out on the garden patio, with Markus Weissenbach on tuba and Georg Beck on drums. Recorded in July 2005 this CD was a collection of some of the cover songs Lionel and Rens had played together over the years.

In December 2006 the group informally known as "Schrgged Out" (players from the Cafe Schräg sessions) spent one day in the studio and recorded Lionel's 10th, now offically called "Definitely Schrägged" The CD will be released on March 24th. “Definitely Schrägged” was born out of weekly sessions held at the infamous Café Schräg in Vienna. The sessions started with just Gernot Feldner and Lionel wanting to have a place to get together and bang through some songs, simply for the fun of it. Café Schräg had a piano, one that was pulled from a garbage pile but hey ...

After a few weeks of sessions with Gernot and Lionel schrägging about on their own, they started inviting other players to join in. All was done with casual atire, sitting around the piano, like cattle in the shade, mainly ignoring any audience that would gather, just playing though stuff they felt like playing through at the time. Some players came once and never again (usually due to an indiscretion on Lionel’s part), some came once and kept coming back to get a little more schrägged out. Over the weeks the group slowly gathered, kinda like dust under the bed. By the end of the first six months of Sessions they had accumulated the players that are on “Definitely Schrägged”, like minded, schrägged folks who enjoyed the distraction of ambling through the songs.

Lionel Lodge – lead vocals, guitars, percussion
Gernot Feldner – piano, backing vocals, harmonica
Dave “Da Poller” Koller – cajon, cymbals, udo, percussion
Stephan „Stoney“ Steiner – violin, nycke harpa
Franz Haselsteiner – accordion
Peter Beinhofer – accordion
Markus Weissenbach – tuba
Pedro Duarte – flute
soulHsistas – backing vocals
Meena Cryle, Mary Lamaro, Anja Wise

The sessions came to a floundering end by mid February 2007 when some music critic of a neighbour to Café Schräg started calling the police and complaining they were too loud (them? never!). They tired to be quieter but the piano didn’t have a volume knob on it (most acoustic pianos don’t) so they could only wallow so low (without getting morally damaged). The Cafe was fined a couple times, they tried playing without the tuba and without the cajon but the police still came. So they, sadly, had to end the sessions. All satisfying escapes must come to an end they say.

to be continued...