Born in southern Germany at the 13th of 1961 he grew up in a small village close to Nuernberg. When hereached the age of eleven, his best friends gift was the first album of Bob Dylan “Studio” which he produced in 1965. Doc asked his father for allowness to use his “Plattenspieler” , it was a DUAL with speaker in the cover, a saphir-needle, and three bodies for volume, treble and bass. He handed the holy-record to his father, he put it on the turntable and started it to play. Doc was sitting in front of the speaker and listend to every tone comming out like god would send a personal message to him. Afterwards he said to his father:”Daddy, that`s what Iwant to do”.

One year later he bought his first guitar for about 20 deutschmark, it was a used Lindberg, and a little book with cords and started to play, without even knowing how to tune the instrument. From now on he was infected to play and sing everyday.

He grew up, and got into the spirit of blues, listened to Muddy Waters, Lightnin Hopkins, Dave van Ronk, Memphis Slim and all the other guys of the szene and met up on christmas 1986 with “Thommy” Thomas Kasseckert, who was a very creative metal-lead-guitar player, and Matthias Hertlein, journalist for rock music at te regonal newspaper. At that evening Thommy and Doc had a blues-session together and while they been playing Matthias said the following words:”This has to be shown on stage!”. Two months later “Thommy & Knotz” had their first gig in an overfilled pub.

In 1989 they founded the band “ Okay Babe “ with Peter Heid on bass, Trevor Sidney at the piano, the drummer Wolfgang Heckel, on sax Georg Strauss and for the technic Barny Kreupl. They stand for powerful, creative bluesrock an produced one CD in 1989 “ practice of rehearsal”. The formation ended in 1991. After a lot of concerts the spirit of the band was gone and it was about time to set up a new way.

The new way was to proof himself as a solo artist, the platform for that experience was the street and small pubs. With his carrismatic and powerful voice added on the sound of a grooving rhythmguitar he was able to set a sign at the listening people, which stands for authentic blues out of his soul. After that time of finding himself and his place in music he said” You have to be on the street and show up what you are to know who you are and what it is all about.”

In 1998 he opened up the “Blues Haus” in Schwabach, it was an old house in a backyard of schwabach, the mainroom was about 36 squaremeters an 3.60 meters high and sounded sensational with its wooden floor. This place was made for being permanent creative and rised immediatly up to the hot spot of the regional music-scene. Workshops and sessions, practice and experiments had a place to develop, which ended in a new band “Doc Knotz 5”. The debut of the band was the cd “Kappadocia-Session” with Patrick Wirschnitzer on drums, Thomas Schönweiss on trompet,Christian Klos on bass and Jochen Pfister on piano. The following production was the cd “Soulkiss” in this formation with one change instead of the piano the Doc interdruced the famous lead guitar player Peter Ermer. This project was recorded on a beautiful place in the woods and is in its sound influenced by the spirit of this very magic place. The next project of “Doc Knotz 5” was not under a good star, during the recording the band split and very sad things happened during this three days. So far all the songs for this cd been written by the doc it was quiet important for him to get that thing on the road. It was the thick blood between the drummer Patrick Wirschnitzer and the doctor, which finally founded in the cd “freemind flavoured”, in a duo version, on drum/percussion Patrick and the doc guitar /vocals.

In 2005 he met up with Keili Keilhofer, who is an sologitarist with an experience of more than 40 years, he plays a very individual psychodelic bluesguitar style. He played the last ten years leadguitar on the side of Kevin Coyne, was on tour with Jack Bruce and member of the NC Brown Bluesband. Patrick, Doc and Keili were ready to creat a new form, a new sound of blues what they are doing is avantgarde with muscles and also untouched like a virgin. This works now since 9 years and get more and more exciting by inviting guests like Robert Stefan akkordeon, Achim Goettert Sax or Budde Thiem on piano.

If you want to get into that feeling watch the movie “B-flat” by Ina and Fabian Spang.