Francois Spannenburg

About Francois Spannenburg

I started working as a professional HARMONICA player in 1995 after winning the French harmonica championship, 2 years in a row.
The first time in 1994 in the category amateur and then twice in 1995 in the categories professional solo and duet.
I started working with diverse bands in diverse music styles and touring within France.

Quickly I felt the desire to create my own band (The Naughty Harps) in 1994 while still severely lacking experience. From 1996 on I started touring outside France and regularly in Germany.

From 1999 I welcomed in my band Frederic Yonnet for 2 years (as a second Harmonica player) who has played later on with Prince, Stevie Wonder, Quincy Jones to name a few.

His showmanship was highly impressive and I have learned the passion for stage performance itself together with him.
A few years later, after a lot of digging into the art of performing and stagecraft, i started to work as a stage performance coach for a few artist and imported my knowledge to some of the bands I was touring with.

From that period on I have been hired by different bands and artists as a live performance coach and session/touring musician and was touring in over a dozen countries while fine tuning my skills at arousing all kinds of audiences.
This amazing adventure brought me to play alongside various artists such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Screaming Jay Hawkins, Chris Farlow & Clem Clempson, Focus, Ted Oberg and many others... I have performed and toured all over Europe, as well as Indonesia and Russia with Livin' Blues Xperience (previously called Livin' Blues) who shared stage with pop giants such as Steve Lukather (Toto), Peter Green (Fleetwood Mac), Desmond Dekker, Canned Heat, Adje van den Berg (white Snake), only to name a few, for 7 years.

I was so blessed to be winning, together with the band Livin' Blues Xperience in 2008, the "Dutch National Blues Award” for the “Best Live Performance of the year" and we have been voted by the main Blues magazine in Poland“Two Blues” as “Best International Blues Band”.

I now keep working as a session/ touring musician and involve even more time in my consultancy/coaching for live performances and teach stagecraft.

I recently have started a joined venture with British producer and music business expert Tom Pearce (Elton John, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Georges Harrison etc) where he teaches music business and I teach stage performance to independent artists.