About Us
We are Hanne and Finn Fahl, and we started playing together as a duo in 2014, but music has played a vital role in our lives for many, many years....
Hanne
I grew up in a medium-sized Danish town in the middle of Jutland, and all through my childhood, I was exposed to and part of communal singing and soon learnt most of the traditional songs about the countryside, seasons, people... anything! In "Højskolesangbogen" there is a song for every occasion. Apart from the love of singing in the family, I also enjoyed singing in the local choir.
Recorder and piano lessons were on the agenda for a while, but frustration over practice resulted in a broken recorder and chipped piano keys, so it stopped. Luckily, the singing continued as no instruments could be harmed, and I was part of various choirs.
The quite dramatic change from singing along with others in a choir or at family gatherings to singing solo into a microphone did not take place until 2009 in the UK when I joined the band to perform on the last day of school. Something about this appealed to me, so I carried on as singer and soon started writing songs as well.
Since then, it has been a fascinating journey from simply singing notes and words to interpreting the songs.
The harmonica was tried out tentatively at first, but the affair with this little instrument and its possibilities of expressing diverse emotions has grown into a true love relationship, and it contributes to the characteristic sound of Waterfahl.
Finn
I grew up in a small town on the west coast of Jutland, Denmark, to the accompaniment of the North Sea's majestic rhythmical roars. As my teen-age years set in, I got myself a guitar and started strumming. I soon got together with a group of other young and still to become trained musicians, and for a while I was busy collecting egg trays in the attempt to sound proof my room for the sake of the rest of the family. The band Willie & the Workers managed to become quite famous in the hometown, and as we all went on to study in Aarhus, we carried on playing for a number of years.
But, alas, then came marriage, children and family life, and the guitar led a dormant life in a cupboard, only aired and played at the odd occasion until the family relocated to England in 2008.
This move gave me the chance to become a full-time musician, also taking on guitar tutoring, and after a trip to the hairdresser, I joined the rock covers band Nameless and learnt my classic rock. Shortly afterwards, I joined another covers band Back2Back. But two bands were not enough, so the band Class Dismissed was formed and became a platform for creating and performing the original songs that had started to emerge.
With Waterfahl I explore and enjoy the musical expression that comes with minimal instrumentation.