In March 2001 Spencer Bohren came to Mettmann, Germany from New Orleans forthe first time to take part in the annual "Blues Week" Festival, an event with a noteworthy history reaching back more than a decade. He left behind the kind of footprints which will not be easy for other artists to fill in the future. The week's final concert with Spencer as one of the headliners is generally said to be in the very best of all the previous years--no small accomplishment considering the festival's reputation for excellence. It is no wonder that he was invited back for the following festival, and then again in December 2001 for a number of concerts. This time, as it happened, cancellations left Spencer with some unexpected days off, so he accepted an invitation by Reinhard Finke, owner of Valve Records in Solingen, to record an album containing solo acoustic versions of familiar original and traditional songs from his live performance repertoire. The result was Solitaire. The disc features the extraordinary Witch Doctor, a powerful piece of music that few listeners will ever forget. The same lapsteel guitar was used for a superb version of the Stones' chestnut No Expectations. Spencer's oversize Guild guitar whispers in compositions like Down the Road and Dirt Road Blues and rings loud and clear through the exceptional In-Between Friends and Skip James' Hard Time Killin' Floor. He polished old Blues gems like Hank Williams' Long Gone Lonesome Blues and Broke Down Engine by Willie McTell. The Mississippi Delta bottleneck style rules the slippery Been 'Round the World, and acoustic lapsteel fuels the auto-biographical Born in a Biscayne. And then there's C'mon Down: this New Orleans street chant impressively proves that one doesn't need a guitar to make a good song. It is just voice and rhythm. These songs lay bare a wide range of musical experience reaching back to Spencer's childhood in Casper,Wyoming, where he learned to sing and play in a family circle. Gospel and Blues have deep roots in the soul of today's Spencer Bohren, and he ishighly appreciated in musician's circles.