Crucchi Gang – Ombrelloni & Gru Live 2026

CRUCCHI GANG - Album No. 3: "Ombrelloni & Gru"

Okay, so here it is: La nuova onda italotedesca, the new Italian-German wave, but the Crucchi Gang don't care about short-term> hypes and trends, the Crucchi Gang think far and wide! That is in the nature of things. After all, the "slow food movement" was born in Italy, which is all about concentrating on one thing and giving it all the respect and affection it deserves for as long as it lasts. La cucina richiede presenza - the kitchen requires presence, as they say in Italy. But presence alone is not enough, it also needs time and love - Amore!

"Amore is ancient, but amore is also a beautiful new thing. Amore can be called hairdressing salons and printed on socks. But amore is not always there when we need it. That's why we have art, and above all the music of the Crucchi Gang." Francesco Wilking is texting this from the night train to Rome. He will meet Clavdio there to fer>g the last song for the 3rd Crucchi Gang album.

Clavdio from Rome is a big name in the Italian indie scene, he was already a guest at the big Crucchi Gang Gala in December 2024 at the Columbiahallle. He felt like contributing a song to the new Crucchi album and chose "Heute hier morgen dort" by Hannes Wader, one of the German songs of longing from our parents' generation, and the Crucchi effect immediately kicked in: "Oggi qui, domani la, appena arrivo parto gia...." You think the Italian version is the original and the German the cover.

We discovered another Italian supporter quite by chance in the course of last year: Massimo Vitali.

The artist, who lives in Viareggio and Lucca, studied photography in London, worked as a fashion photographer for Vogue and other magazines and later turned to artistic photography. His works have been exhibited in Arles, Paris, London and at the Hasselblad Founda>on in Gothenburg. The photo volumes "Beach and Disco" and "Landscape and Figures" were published by Steidl Verlag. With endless patience and generosity, he has provided us with photos for the artwork of the Crucchi Gang. And what pictures they are! Beaches in front of oil refineries, beaches with fire, police and motorcycles. Massimo Vitali has been photographing discos and supermarkets with the same empathy for 30 years - and above all beaches! He depicts them as spaces for everything: relaxation, stress, loneliness, family, love, work... - just life. The cover photo of the album shows a beach full of people, with industry lurking in the background, containers and cranes beckoning. This contrast also interests

the Crucchi Gang, which is why the pla^e is called "Ombrelloni & Gru", umbrellas and cranes, vacations and the opposite, love and work.

So: our Italy!

For the third album, we were able to work with a number of Austrian and German artists who have a strong connection to Italy. Some of them have an Italian father, which is like many Crucchi Gang fans, because many of them are "guest worker" children who grew up with a father who came to West Germany at a young age to work in the factory and a mother who spent a lot of time at home, because it was the 70s, 80s and 90s and that's how it usually was. And so they sing along enthusiastically at the concerts and make up and it's not about the perfect Italian accent, but about attitude, love and romance and about the fact that we all want a common Europe and a lively German-Italian friendship.

The recruitment agreement between Germany and Italy was concluded in the 1950s. Many people came from the >efen south to work in Germany - "guest workers". They brought their coffee, pasta, olive oil and Parmesan cheese, which did not yet exist in post-war West Germany. In the tabloid press, they were oo and again "the foreigners", "the savages", "the knifemen", - attributions that people from Turkey, Syria and Afghanistan also received after them. They sang their songs at the kitchen table and on the assembly line, about Adriano Celentano and his 24,000 kisses, about Mina who breaks up on the phone and Gino Paoli, for whom the taste of sea salt reminds him of a past love. They were guest workers and should / wanted to leave soon. But many stayed.

Francesco Wilking grew up with a Roman mother and a father from Bremen in the Black Forest, in Lörrach, where the cityscape was and is largely shaped by people from Calabria, Apulia and Sicily. Many of them worked in the fabric, toothpaste and chocolate factories, where all the signs and descriptions were in German and Italian and there were huge bowls of pasta in the canteen on Wednesdays. At elementary school, Francesco had just as many Italian as German classmates. He had two groups of friends, swapped football pictures of the Bundesliga and Serie A, listened to Angelo Branduardi and Die Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung.

Patrick Reising also grew up in Lörrach, he and Francsco went to scouts and school together and played together in the church band/first band... quickly everything revolved around music. They listened to Francesco's records and formed their first band. Back then, they played street music in Lörrach and Basel and traveled around the world together on the Trans-Siberian Railway with their guitars.

They recorded a record in a garage in Lörrach and went to Berlin, started and abandoned several studies and set up the Mila Studio, where they compose music for films and the Crucchi Gang, among many other things.

Charlo^e Goltermann's best friend had a Sicilian father in whose cellar there was a barrel of red wine, which he always brought to Munich himself. They spent high school in his house after school, secretly tapping the red wine and listening to Lucio Dalla and Umberto Tozzi, Toto Cotugno and Dire Straits.

Charlo^e, as a music consultant, discovered Francesco and Patrick for a Leander Haußman film; - the budget was all gone and she needed an Italian hit - the rest is the Crucchi Gang story that likes to be told over and over again.

With the Crucchi Gang, these three then turned their fearless love of Italian music into the big time. Here they seek out great German songs and wrap them in Loro Piana cashmere or even silk from Comound and drape them in Rimini lame^a.

The songs on the dri^en album include those by Buntspecht, Fe^es Brot, Dilla or Salo, Ideal, Hildegard Knef, Hannes Wader, Blumengarten and David Bowie (yes, that's right! Raggazzo Solo Raggazza Sola, the long-forgotten Italian version of Space Oddity from 1969).

Have fun: Charlo^e, Francesco, Patrick

Tracklist:

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RAGAZZO SOLO RAGAZZA SOLA - FRANCESCO WILKING TI STA BENE - PAULA CAROLINA
EMANUELA (GIU LE MANI) - FAT BREAD
OCCHI BLU - FIL BO RIVA AND ALLI NEUMANN
FILTRO - ANDA MORTS
MILLE ROSE - SVEN REGENER

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