To mark the opening of the season, there will once again be a free concert at the Parkfreibad swimming pool on May 1. Stadtwerke Gronau will provide free access throughout the day.

Treat yourself to a cool beer or a delicious piece of cake accompanied by top-class traditional jazz music in hopefully the best weather:

The washboard has a long tradition in the blues as a rhythm instrument. But what Greyhound’s Washboard Band does with it is probably quite unique in the music world.

Waschbrett Wolf, probably the only professional washboard player in Europe, has created a rhythm machine from a (self-fluted!) washboard, a giant bass drum over 100 years old and various repurposed household objects, which he operates either with thimbles or whisks. He uses these instruments to produce sounds that a “normal” drummer could not even imagine. This is entertaining enough in itself, but together with Greyhound George’s electric guitar and Andy Grünert’s sometimes acoustic, sometimes distorted blues harp, the result is the irresistible groove of a very special kind of blues band.

Based on traditional blues from Mississippi or Chicago, Greyhound’s Washboard Band has consistently developed its own musical style without losing sight of the roots of the old blues. Hookerboogie meets melodic ballads, Chicago shuffle meets stomping funky beats, original songs with often humorous and surprisingly topical lyrics meet well-known classics. All of this is brought to the stage in a very dynamic and honest manner. This is what modern blues could sound like in a parallel universe. Greyhound’s Washboard Band is the winner of the “German Blues Challenge 2017”. In January 2018, the band reached the final of the world’s biggest blues competition, the IBC in Memphis/Tennessee, and performed at the famous Orpheum Theatre. In the almost 40-year history of the IBC, only two German bands have ever achieved such success. In the following years, they performed all over Germany, Norway, Portugal, Luxembourg and Switzerland.

Greyhound’s Washboard Band was founded in 2015 by Washboard Wolf and Greyhound George as a duo. Andy Grünert has completed the trio with his blues harp since the beginning of 2017. An album with exclusively acoustic instruments was recorded at the beginning of October 2017 and is entitled “Street Corner Blues”. The album was nominated for the “German Blues Award” in 2018 Now, in 2024, the band has landed on the Timezone label and is now working on a new album that will do justice to the unheard-of, idiosyncratic sound of Greyhound’s Washboard Band. The journey in search of the magical blue note continues!