CRY LAUGH CONTINUE

CRY LAUGH CONTINUE

Here is how it al started and what you can expect.

Between March and June 2025, I transformed our guest room into a home recording studio. Using guitar, piano, and vocals – supported by an iPad, GarageBand, and an audio interface – I recorded twelve songs. Three of them are original compositions, while the others are cover versions. Not chart-toppers, but carefully selected songs that I personally love (and hopefully you will too), by artists such as Neil Young, Gerry Rafferty, Leonard Cohen, Mark Knopfler, James Taylor – to name just a few.

I arranged the songs, played the guitars and piano, and recorded the vocals, some of which are multi-layered. On one track, my dear friend Harald played the guitars, and on two others I received heartwarming vocal support from Anna and Christine. The remaining instruments – mainly drums, percussion, and bass – were added digitally.

Using GarageBand, I mixed the tracks, adjusted volumes, and removed occasional background noise – as far as my limited technical skills allowed. During the recording process, the idea of creating a full album began to take shape. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and having decided not to postpone achievable dreams any longer, I reached out to my dear friend and music professional Andreas.

Andreas Kuhlmann, owner of Silversonic Sound in Dortmund, is a musician, composer, producer, mixer, and mastering engineer. He significantly enhanced the arrangements and brought my recordings to life. Thanks to his professional expertise and finely tuned musical ear, CRY LAUGH CONTINUE became what it is today.

CRY LAUGH CONTINUE is a collection of twelve musical pieces – an album with a total runtime of around 40 minutes. The album broadly reflects its title: CRY LAUGH CONTINUE. The genre is best described as Singer-Songwriter, and the cover versions remain faithful to the original melodies and lyrics. Two of the songs are performed in a classic style – just guitar and vocals. Look forward to my interpretations of Keb’ Mo’s Lullaby Baby Blues and You Can Close Your Eyes by James Taylor.
Other tracks are “enriched” with drums, percussion, and bass, giving them a slightly rockier feel – like unplugged versions.

CRY LAUGH CONTINUE is dedicated to Hanny for his strength and endurance.

The album opens with a song by Albin Lee Meldau, a Swedish musician who was completely unknown to me until a sleepless night at Kiel University Hospital in August 2024. That night, I stumbled upon a repeat of the late night show Inas Nacht (Ina's Night), where Albin Lee Meldau performed his song Forget About Us. I was instantly captivated and couldn’t wait to play the song myself. In the original, the vocals are solo, but anyone familiar with Inas Nacht knows that Ina Müller often adds a beautiful second voice. My recording of the song is enriched by Anna's wonderful vocals. The song deals with the end of a relationship – as does the second track:

Calm After the Storm by Ilse DeLange and The Common Linnets. My dear friend Harald, with whom I’ve been making music in our Unplugged Band since many years, kindly played both rhythm and lead guitar, allowing me to focus on the layered vocals.

The next song on the album is the previously mentioned original composition Black and White Picture. This one also explores the end of love – in this case, my first. Composed in the early 1980s, never recorded, and thus unreleased… until now, more than 40 years later – voilà :)

The final track of the first part of the album is by an American singer-songwriter from the 1960s, Jackson C. Frank, who was completely unknown to me for a long time. I discovered his most famous song through the 2018 film The Old Man and the Gun and wondered how I had never come across him before. Blues Run the Game was released in 1965 on Frank’s debut album, produced by Paul Simon. After the album’s release, Frank was plagued by a series of personal struggles and was diagnosed with schizophrenia and chronic depression, which prevented him from continuing his career. He spent his later years homeless and destitute, passing away in 1999 from a combination of pneumonia and cardiac arrest.
Rolling Stone journalist David Fricke called Frank “one of the best forgotten songwriters of the 1960s.” While the original version consists solely of guitar and vocals, I’ve tried to give the song a bit of momentum with percussion and lead guitar – while still honouring the deeply melancholic and depressive lyrics.

Ovation 96 is the title of a small instrumental piece I composed myself. 1996 was a remarkable year in many ways… a lot of crying, learning to smile, even to laugh again – and yes, finding ways to carry on.
It was the year I joined the a cappella show choir badboys, and the year I received my Ovation Standard Balladeer 1711 – I’ve been in love with both ever since!

Track 6 is written by Neil Young, and compared to the original, my version of Pocahontas feels very unplugged – intentionally so. Perhaps not one of Neil Young’s most famous songs, and I didn’t discover it through the original, but rather through a German version by the left-wing folk-rock band Cochise from Dortmund, titled Die Indianer sind noch fern. Neil Young’s Pocahontas is a brilliant song with clever lyrics, and I love the image of sitting around a campfire with Pocahontas and Marlon Brando, having a chat.

Not only because of Baker Street, the album City to City might be Gerry Rafferty’s best album – it’s consistently strong, with very melodic songs. For my album, I chose The Ark. The instrumentation is much simpler than the original, but the layered vocals aim to make up for that.

I first came across Leonard Cohen’s music in the early 1980s. When I was fifteen or sixteen, our town had a public library where you could not only borrow books but also listen to records and (state-of-the-art at the time) record them onto cassette tapes! The music selection was about 80% classical, 15% jazz, and the rest carefully curated singer-songwriters. There it was: Leonard Cohen’s famous album Songs From a Room, which includes Story of Isaac. I hope you enjoy the special arrangement.

The birdsong at the beginning of Baron von Gelting Breeze was recorded one morning in May 2025 around 5:00 a.m. in the meadow along Holmweg in Langenhorn, North Frisia. The instrumental piece also comes from there – a place where the breeze is always blowing.

Mark Knopfler’s True Love Will Never Fade is told through the voice, heart, and eyes of a tattoo artist and his distant, unrequited love for a client – giving the word “fade” a whole new meaning and perspective. To highlight the subtle irony of the song, I took the liberty of letting the music fade out at the end ;) Still, I do like the admittedly romantic idea that true love never fades.

The penultimate track on the album is the beautiful lullaby Lullaby Baby Blues by Keb’ Mo’ – for all newborn babies, and especially for “little Herr Müller” :)

James Taylor – one of my absolute favourites. There are so many songs I could have chosen to play and record, but none fits better as the finale of CRY LAUGH CONTINUE than You Can Close Your Eyes, especially sung with love together with Christine.

So, the single Black and White Picture has been released 18th of August 2025 on music stream platforms like Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, Deezer, Soundcloud uand others. 

The complete album is planned to be released by the 28th of August as CD and per download code through indipendent distribution. 

Orders can be placed immediately by using the contacts here or simply by sending an email to me info@juergen-bergenthal.de.
 

The CD edition, including a 16-page booklet, is strictly limited. Each copy is numbered and personally signed. 
A donation of at least* 20% of the proceeds to Doctors Without Borders is guaranteed.
Price: €30, including packaging and postage within Germany**.

The 16-page booklet with a unique download code, allowing you to download the music files in MP3 format from a professional music download site to your device. 
At least* 20% of the proceeds from this version will also be donated to Doctors Without Borders.
Price: €25, including packaging and postage within Germany**.

I hope I’ve sparked your interest to the music and by that to support the invaluable work of Doctors Without Borders through this project, and I’m quite excited to see how the album will be received. I’d love to hear your feedback!

Warm regards, jürgen

*) What does “at least 20% of the proceeds” mean? It guarantees that 20% of the revenue will be donated. If the revenue (after deducting the donation) exceeds the costs, every additional euro will also be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières. Put simply: for me, the proceeds can only cover costs at most, and regardless of the final amount, 20% of all money made by this project is guaranteed as a donation.
**) Additional shipping costs may apply for deliveries outside Germany.