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About


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About


About Old Salt

Old Salt is an Americana band based out of Europe, performing original and traditional music since 2015.  The current international members have influenced Old Salt with sounds from the USA, Belgium, France, Sweden, Scotland and Chile. They’ve toured through Europe and are invited on many stages, from culture centers to big festivals and showcase festivals like Freiburger Kulturbörse. In 2017, Old Salt received the “European World of Bluegrass” award. 

Old Salt pulls its influences from the streets of New Orleans up through Appalachia to the folk revival of the North Eastern states and jumps the pond to find sounds from old Europe, where the band currently resides. They successfully mix stage and street to bring a folk sound with grit, dynamism, spontaneity, tight arrangements, and a ton of fun. 

Currently Old Salt performs as a quartet featuring:

Dan Wall (USA): Lead Vocals - Banjo - Violin 

Lotte Remmen (Belgium): Violin - Vocals

Johannes Wannyn (Belgium): Guitar - Vocals

Toby Kuhn (France): Cello or Tomás Peralta (Chile): Double Bass, Mandolin, Squareneck, Charango
 

Biography

The band met back In the summer of 2013 when Dan Wall, a then carpenter and street musician from New York, found his way to the world music conference ‘Etno HistEria’ and to the ‘Floating Castle Festival’ in the Istria region of Slovenia. During this two week period he met and collaborated with talented and inspiring musicians from around the globe, some of whom backed him up on his first festival show.  Among them were later-to-be Old Salt members Anton Teljebäck, Dave Barfoot, Lotte Remmen and Johannes Wannyn. 

Not long after their adventures in Slovenia, they were met again in February 2014 when invited to a music festival in Umeå, Sweden.  This road led finally to Ghent (Belgium), where bass player Lara Rosseel joined the group. In 2016 Old Salt released their first album Up River Overseas’ , which was recorded in Umeå.

In 2017, French cellist Toby Kuhn entered the band during the selfsame ‘Floating Castle Festival’ in Slovenia, where the band was formed. The same year the band won the ‘European World of Bluegrass Award’ in Voorthuizen (NL) with an overwhelming live performance.  In the summer of 2018 they recorded their second album Commons as a septet with former band members Anton Teljebäck and Dave Barfoot. The album was released in June 2019 and took off with two singles, Grow and Shades, that got picked up right away in the Apple playlist of the week. In 2020, Berlin-based double bass player Tomás Peralta joined the Old Salt family. Ready to cross new borders the band members were excited to start touring Europe in 2020, when they saw their Commons release tour fall flat as the pandemic hit. Old Salt went back to studio in 2021 and recorded a live EP as a quartet, Live in Room 13. Currently Old Salt is working on their third full album, which will be released in the fall of 2024.

Old Salt has performed as a septet on several occasions, but today they perform as a quartet featuring the core trio with Dan, Johannes and Lotte, joined by Toby or Tomás.  Between street performing, numerous festival stages and folk venues the momentum has naturally grown to bring them to the fore as a band that pushes the limits of folk music.

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Band Members


Band Members


Dan Wall 

Banjo, Violin and Lead Vocals

Dan Wall found his passion for music back in 2008 when he stumbled upon a street band in New Orleans.  Riveted by the positive vibe, the social interaction, and a rootsy Americana sound, he quickly picked up the Banjo and found travel, street performance, songwriting and musical collaboration to be his new mission. 

He initially divided his time between working at home in Hudson, New York as a carpenter and traveling through Europe as a street musician.  He's now is based in Berlin and focuses his time on building a musical career.  Together with his wife, Magdalena Kriss, he forms the award winning duo Tante Friedl.


Lotte Remmen 

Violin and Vocals

Lotte Remmen was born in 1986 in Belgium. She started her musical career at the age of 8 years old and immediately chose the violin as her favorite instrument. From the age of 12 Lotte started to play with several youth orchestras (Euregio Jeugdorkest, Kempisch Jeugdorkest) and became section leader. At that age she also started to develop in other genres like folk and jazz music.

Lotte graduated as a Master of Music for violin (classical department) at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, but soon after this she decided to focus on improvisation, jazz violin and different kinds of world violin workshops with international teachers. In meanwhile she worked as a classical violin player in ‘Amos String Quartet’, ‘Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra’, ‘DeFilharmonie’ and ‘Banshee Duo’. Lotte plays as a freelance musician in many folk, world music and cross over projects. Based in Gent, today she is the violin player of Old Salt, the Brazilian band Euforró and Ghent Folk Violin Project and forms the award winning duo Bipolar Bows with cellist Toby Kuhn. 


Johannes Wannyn 

Guitar and Vocals

Johannes Wannyn started his musical career at the age of 16 as an autodidact by playing in the band Stro, which was later called Strograss. The band was a crossover americana - oldtime - singersongwriter project in which originals of both Johannes and his brother Joachim can be heard. 

Johannes always had a passion for music in the Dutch language, called 'kleinkunst'. He has his own soloproject in which his originals are arranged into beautiful acoustic songs. Johannes regularly performs with 'Kleinkunstkollektief', in which they cover Flemish and Dutch song. Johannes is one of the three members of People in Houses and the banjo player of Bearfeet.

After Etno Histeria in 2013, he met Dan Wall, and is one of the founders and core members of Old Salt. 


Toby Kuhn 

Cello

French cellist Toby Kuhn is a post-classical musician with a taste for improvisation and folk music of all persuasions. Always on the lookout for new ways to play his instrument, his unorthodox approach wins admiration and acclaim from a variety of music-lovers, from the concert stage to the pub, from Japan to Slovenia via Sweden and Canada, bringing the full potential of the cello with him on his journey across style and invention.

Toby has several international bands, like the award winning duo Bipolar Bows with Old Salt violinist Lotte Remmen, a duo with the English singer, accordeonist and clog dancer Hannah James, and the Balkan inspired Wild Strings Trio.


Tomás Peralta

Double Bass, Mandolin, Squareneck, Charango