Me and Legba
I taught the hellhound to sit
Cheatin me and Legba playing cards
I taught the hellhound to sit
Cheatin me and Legba playing cards
I pulled a knife on the devil
When he damned my heart
Well, I tease the kitchen cobras
I dare them to bite
Well the lunge – they hiss
But, the serpent thinks twice
One look at my eyes
He recoils in fright
Rough and tumble stitches and scars
Whenever I rumble it’s no holds barred
And I ain’t
Afraid of midnight
Well, I ain’t afraid of midnight
I’ll dance in that graveyard
The bluesman from Austria – Childhood
I’m Chris“Legba“Haints, and was born in southern Texas, Austria on 12/30/65. From an early age I was rather withdrawn and interested in other things than the other children my age. My father made me learn an instrument and I chose the guitar. I was trained in classical guitar at a conservatory and hated playing that instrument and all the unnecessary minuets etc. But…it had to be, the boy had to learn to play the guitar.
My wild Youth
I had just turned 14 and escaped being forced to learn an instrument through stubbornness when a few of my then few friends decided to start a band. „Well boom,“ I thought, because I was supposed to be playing the guitar. It all started with an ancient electric guitar. I still remember clearly that the guitar had to be retuned after every two numbers. Was it the instrument or, as bad people claim, it was me. The only thing I still know for sure today is that I could play the three chords faster than anyone…. no more and no less.
One evening in the rehearsal cellar, I realized that the three moves couldn’t be everything. Solos were also played on the records. And…wait a minute…I knew my fingerboard really well from my classical training. So the band’s sound changed and we started covering hard rock of well known bands and I was soloing.
And then something came and hit me right in the heart
A film about a blues legend that I saw for the first time in the 80s was to change my life forever and fundamentally. What were those abnormally cool sounds, from such a metal tube, what kind of attack techniques were played there? And then the twisted story of Robert Johnson and his pact with the devil. I started absorbing everything to do with blues folklore and the bluesman. Without a doubt, I also wanted to be a bluesman. It totally got me.
As my knowledge progressed, the world of blues folklore, with all its stories, opened up to me at the same time.
Apprenticeship years
Back in the 80’s there were few blues guitar knowers in Europe. Almost nobody knew that you had to tune the guitar open in order to play slide. So I first began to teach myself the basic tools with painstaking detailed work. And then came the moment when I played the first note with the slider… nothing rattled, it sounded clear and pure and I was blissful.
But it was still a long way from the first slideton to the blues. I had just taken the first half step of a thousand steps. But I had found my music. What followed was that I started actively practicing voodoo, living blues folklore and visiting the sites and graves of my idols from the 30’s to the 60’s in America. In addition, I listened to every note, every lick, from records.
It was there in Mississippi and Louisiana that I first learned what the blues really is, and these experiences inspired me to continue and learn much more intensively.
Me and Legba
As the guardian of the Crossroads, Legba is responsible for establishing connections, i.e. contacts between the human world and the spirit world. That is, to pave the way for a spirit into the reality of people, or to allow a person’s spirit to see into the spirit world. Legba is involved in almost all voodoo rituals, being the first of the loa to be summoned and serving as a mediator.
In contrast to many other spirits and deities of Petro Voodoo, no living beings or blood are sacrificed to him, only grain and coffee, rum, tobacco or cigars.
Well, one night, in a place that is only my business, I performed the ritual. I sacrificed Legba and called him to please tune my guitar and help me get good. And I don’t know if it was the alcohol or other ingredients, but Legba and the Haints (spirits of the night) appeared to me and I made my pact. It was all a long time ago, but two things about the legend have come true… I learned to play the blues guitar, adopted the stage name „Legba“ Haints, and since that night, the hellhounds who have me pursue.
Chris „Legba“ Haints has only one goal… to follow in the footsteps of the ancestors, and that people would say… no matter what his personality was, he really could play the blues.