Jeizinen is a charming Valaisan alpine village perched above Gampel-Steg. I can imagine that it hasn’t changed much in the recent years, no big ugly tourist apartment “chalets” to be seen nor are cars allowed; it’s not even clear they would make it through the village’s pathways. Although the lack of snow would have made it easy for us to drive up there, we had been warned that the parking lot was a lot farther away from the Restaurant Bielti than the top of the village’s teleferic (cable car), so we drove to the bottom of that as planned.
Having checked out the timetables we expected a 45 min. wait, but once the guy there found out we where the musicians he had us move all are gear directly into the cable car, a small box for maybe 10 people, and up we went.
The Restaurant Bielti , far right of the picture, was just around the corner and we were immediately invited to feel at home by the restaurant owners: Therese & Edwin.
By the time we had chatted through a beer or two, move the pool and baby foot table out of the way – with the help of a few strong armed locals fortunately – and set up our gear: at home was exactly how we felt.
The big unknown as usual: would folks show up? Because of this January's lack of snow the village was a lot emptier than normal for the season and this was case for some worry. Fortunately one of the canton's newspaper had printed our whole press release and picture, which was kind of amusing since Dominik having found translating into Germain the bio blurb I had dreamed up for the band too difficult, had written up a tall tale of his own. Shortly before playing he told us of our chance meeting while searching for the Blues in Mississippi and the metaphorical encounter of Blind Roberts which led to Blaise’ receiving of an ancient cigar box guitar…
Later in the evening I overheard a couple mentioning that they came because of the newspaper article and we all received questions about it since in the end the place was packed! Folks were dancing, clapping, cheering and a good time was had by everyone! We played until exhaustion set in, sometime around 2am, but people kept on asking for just one more song please and sometime after 3am we ended up jamming with whoever wanted… Thank you Bacchus!
On a personal note, my bone playing has been receiving a growing amount of acclaim during our gigs this winter and Saturday we actually weren’t allowed to end the night’s concert without a song where I played with them again.
A big thank you to everyone at the Restaurant Bielti!