A Day at the Office

When you work as a performer, you find yourself in some wacky-ass situations, a lot. It almost becomes 'normal' until you recall it later and think, 'Dang y'all, that was one wacky-ass situation!'. Today was no exception...

Marko and i were hired by our pal Paul Posse of Posse Espressobar to do a little gig this afternoon. (BTW, his place kicks ass. It's in an old warehouse in Katendrecht. Trust me, it's really cool...Go visit it.)

So, the gig is that Marko and i are to be performing in a Bakfiets (bakers' bicycle as shown below) which will guide a group of folks from the NHOW hotel over the walking bridge to the bar). So, we're in this bakfiets with two ukuleles a singing saw and our washtub bass. we play a little bit at the hotel and then our driver starts cycling. There is a group of about 100 folks walking along with us. At a certain point i stand up and i'm playing the bass. I've got my back to the road because that is pretty much the only way i am able to stand. It's a tight fit in this sucker. A bit wobbly too but, it's going well until...

we ride over this tiny little curb which throws me backwards over the front of the bike. Marko makes a dive for me and can just catch my legs which he has pressed against the inside of the wooden car. This leaves me dangling by my knees over the front of this Baker's Bicycle for what feels like an eternity till about 5 guys coming rushing over to help me out of the tangle. Yep, that happened. I didn't hear anybody laugh out loud, which is a credit to the international IT TEAM of the Nike coorporation whom we were guiding through the streets but honestly,... if i would have seen this i would have had a hard time not rolling around in laughter. It had to look absolutely hilarious, i must admit. There were folks filming when it happened and i can imagine this footage has major viral video potential. And if that happens... i'll be in South America somewhere donning a fake moustache and changing my name to Pepé.

Sunday Jam at Café de Bel

Small Time Crooks are goin' Big Time

We've got a Barber Shop here in Rotterdam that i dare say is pretty much world famous for people in the 'Barber-Shop' know. It's called Schorem and it's pretty damn Bad Ass. They only do about 12 classic cuts and there are no women allowed, as it should be in a Barber Shop. The national and international media has picked up on this Schorem and it's been an absolute sensation. There's a 3 hour line outside of their shop nearly everyday just to prove it.
Please click on the image and ZOOM, both their cuts and the poster are amazing.

Our dear friends, The Small Time Crooks, who are pretty bad-ass themselves hooked up with the fella's at Schorem and made this fantastic video of their song, 'Never Argue With Your Barber'. Since then, they too are making a pretty big smash on the nets and such. I couldn't wish it for a cooler group of fella's. I hope they go on to have great succes. (Oh, And i also hope that they write a hit song with a singing saw  in it...Hell Yeah!) So, here they are... Take it away, Boys!

Mmmmm, the Candy Ma'am!

My Girlfriend, Uh...Miss 'X', made me some Candy! These are all sweets. The Marijuana and Hashish look dangerously convincing. Photograph below shows the real thing on the left and the confection on the right. Pretty damn good ain't it?!

Excellent combination by the way:
DOPE, SWEETS AND... THE 'BIG O', BABY!

Wednesday Night,

At Café de Bel with (from Left to Right) Norbert Bos (Percussion), Julian Primeaux (Guitar - Lafayette, Louisiana), Marko van der Horst (Mandolin), Arjan van Bommel (Guitar) and Chad Hawkins (Bass - Baton Rouge, Lousiana)

Bluegrasshopper Night!

Whooooo Doggy, y'all. The Pijnackerplein Bluegrass Festival last weekend was the Big Damn Bluegrass Business. I honestly haven't recovered yet. It was brilliant... every single bit of it. I've been collecting photographs that are slowly coming in online to post here at a later date but in the meantime,...

From the same folks that brought you the Bluegrass Festival, Kito Events presents: Bluegrasshopper Night starring The Mountain Agnostic Gospel Choir. And, to start the evening off, the film documentary 'You See Me Laughin'. See You There!

Click Here to go to the Facebook Event Page

Flyer design by Shelley Rickey

The Most Kick-Ass Festival in Rotterdam!

The Pijnackerplein Bluegrass Festival is a two-festival organized by Kito Events which takes place just around the corner from our shopon the beautiful Pijnackerplein. There are some absolutely In-cred-i-ble musicians performing and there is lots to do and see besides... art, cool market stands, comic strip expo and workshop by none other than J.D. Wilkes, good food and cold beer and much much MUCH MORE!

This is going to be one hell of a good time y'all. My good lookin' and highly-entertaining dude, Marko will be performing with the Bommelband on Friday and we have a market stand full of Jumping Flea Goodness on Saturday. See you there!

Flyer design by: Me!, Illustration by Kito Cartoons!

*The making of this flyer nearly resulted in Guido 'Kito Cartoons' de Groot and myself having a cage fight. Instead, it resulted in this poster which i think turned out pretty damn well. Still want that cage fight with Guido though. Ashame to put all of that perfectly good chicken wire to waste. 

No Beard, No King!

The biggest national celebration in Holland is Queen's Day and it is right around the corner. This year is an extra special celebration.

Queen Beatrix is to abdicate the throne and thus her son, Prince Willem-Alexander will become King. But, there is one hitch...

The people have spoken and they are happy to have a King, on one condition... He has to have a beard. There's been a campaign going on strong for a couple of months now proclaiming, 'Zonder Baard, Geen Koning' or 'No Beard, No King'. I think they are right. Prins-Willem has a bit of a baby face. If he came out on the 30th of April sporting a fetching beard he'd definitely be EVER RULING!

Prince Willem-Alexander                  KING WILLEM-ALEXANDER

Further investigation proves that a King really must have a beard. Take a look at this gallery of mighty impressive Royal Facial Hair.

If you agree, you can support this people's movement by 'Like'-ing the 'Zonder Baard, Geen Koning' Facebook Page.

When the Dutch say 'Cheese' Cake....

We performed at a wedding this evening in Scheveningen and the wedding cake was made out of cheeses. I'm thinking this sucker was at least 50 kilos worth of the most delicious cheeses to be found on the planet. They served it with delicious sweets, savories, fruits and cognac . Wow, I loved this. And, as they say here in Holland, LEKKER*!

Much Love & Many Happy Years To Coen & Janine!!! 



Lekker' means delicious or tasty. When the dutch taste something they really like they say, 'Mmmm, Lekker' while making a particular gesture which goes like this...

'

A Symphony played on Water Instruments

To be presented by Marko and I this Saturday 

in Rotterdam during Museum Night.

See You There!

Want to know more about this project? Click Here.

A Symphony for Waterlanders

Museum Night in Rotterdam is THE night that the City's Museums pull out all the stops in creating wow-ing exhibits, spectacular shows, join-in-the-fun happenings, blow-the-roof-off parties... It's a big damn Cultural Fandango, a Wild Evening of Fantabulous Art and all the Essential Fantastically Wonderfully Weird People and Things that goes with it.

Tear Bottle
(ca. 1870)

The theme for the coming edition of Rotterdam's Museum Night on the 9th of March is Waterlanders. We've been commissioned by Museum Rotterdam to create an interactive musical composition using 'water' instruments.  For this we are composing a symphony which we are calling 'A Bottle of Tears'.

The name was inspired by the ancient ritual of collecting ones tears, usually a womans, in small tear bottles or lachrymatory. There are stories of hired mourners who were given little bottles to collect their tears. At the end of the funeral for which they were hired to grieve, their bottles would be measured and so the mourner would be paid accordingly. It is also said that a widow would start collecting her tears in a bottle directly after the death of her husband till after his burial at midnight. The bottle would be left upon her husbands altar perhaps on her mantel. The moment the tears had all evaporated signaled the end of her first phase of grieving. In Victorian days these bottles of tears were corked and saved as a momento to their departed loved one. On a more joyful note, upon the birth of a child, the mother's tears would be saved in a small bottle as a keepsake. 

The theme of 'tears' takes on yet an extra poignant meaning for Museum Rotterdam. Due to drastic and idiotic cut-backs in the funding of Arts and Culture the museum is being forced out of their original location in the beautiful Schielands huis. Tears of grief, thus. On the otherhand, there are tears of joy for the fact that the Museum will be opening it's doors at a new location unlike countless other cultural organizations that have been forced to close their doors for good. Museum Night is the last event that Museum Rotterdam will be holding in the Schielandshuis.

So far in preparation we've constructed such hydrophones as a Glass Harp, A Bottle Xylophone, A Human Bottle 'Organ' and we've also used the sounds of Drops of Water into various receptacles. We've been collecting glasses and bottles for a couple of weeks now and there have been bottles and long stemmed glasses and measuring cups and water all over the place for days. The tuning of these various intruments is the 'cussing' part of the creative process. I'm now teaching myself to play a glass harp and that ain't easy, y'all. All respect to this smart ass. DANG.

We still have LOTS of work to do. After we get the piece written and a demo recorded we have to figure how to make it interactive so that the audience can participate plus there is the staging, technical aspects of sound, lighting and extra curiosities which we want to add to enrich the experience. We have lots of nifty ideas. A tearful update is bound to follow in the coming weeks, hopefully joyful tears rather than tears full of 'what-the-f*ck-were-we-thinking-of' woe.

If you would like to know more about the interesting history of Tear Bottles, get your hanky ready and click here for an interesting article on the subject. 

'The Queen's Tear Bottle', illustrated by Norman Price for
'The Golden Apple Tree' written by Virna Sheard, 1920

Rotterdam's Harvest

Rotterdamse Oogst (Rotterdam's Harvest) is one of my favorite initiatives here in the city. It's a market comprised solely of farmers and makers from the region who make honest products. Today on the Noordplein, which is a city square in my neighborhood, they started a monthly market which will appear every first Saturday of the month. This same square is where the farmer's market had been run for many generations and now they are bringing it back. 

I'm thrilled about this. Even though the products are more expensive than in the grocery store and i am on an artists' budget, i went down and supported them. This is something that i find incredibly important and i'll tell you why... 

Family farms are disappearing at an alarming rate. They are being bought up and/or regulated by huge corporations. These gigantic companies don't give a damn about anything else than profit. The animals are treated only as a commodity and the food is being manipulated and is full of horrible fillers Besides that, the distance that this food has to travel to get to the supermarkets is an ecological nightmare. If we don't start to support our local, independent farmers pretty soon we won't even have a choice but to buy our food from these huge CRAP companies. I don't need to tell you how dangerous it would be to let our world food source be run by just a handfull of awful, irresponsible companies like Unilever. So with this in mind i urge you to please, whenever you have the chance, please support your farmer's markets and buy honest, local products. Good for you, good for your community and good for the earth. WIN WIN WIN!

Images from top to bottom: Bread from the Vlaamsche Broodhuys, A fella serving up crawfish from South Holland cooked on his frontier stove, Cheeses made by Au Bain Marie, Dutch Tooters and lastly, my purchases...Sour Dough Bread, Spicy Cheese from Rotterdam & New Orleans's Style Sausage from the Worst Maker. SCORE!

Jamsession at Cafe de Bel in Cartoon!

Awesome piece from cartoonist Bas de Ruiter. That's me sitting at the end of the table with the Banjo(lele)!

Knitted Awesomeness in Rotterdam!

This is brilliant. Loes Veenstra from Rotterdam has knitted 500 sweaters since 1955 which she has kept, unworn, in her house. ...till now. Roll 'em...

One Hell of a Hoedown

Holy Grass of Blue!... The Pijnackerplein Bluegrass Festival was INCREDIBLE, Y'all! I mean it was two weeks ago and i swear i've just recovered from it. Not sure about our neighbors though. YIKES. But, getting back to the fest... such amazing bands, wonderful musicians and fun people both playing and attending the fest. It was an all day, all night, and all day again musical throw down.

The Pijnackerplein is this amazing little square in Rotterdam North with this beautiful old fashioned band stand. Our store, "The Jumping Flea", is right around the corner and served as the backstage for the festival. We had about 80 people through the door. One of our awesome buddies, Nor, was in the kitchen whoopin' up some amazing chow for everyone all day and all night long. After the festival we came back to The Flea for a jamsession that lasted until 7AM in the damn morning. This party was OFF THE HOOK! Man, what a DAY. We had our hands full leading the jamsession in the morning, performing with our other band 'The Fournicators', running a market stand, hosting all the musicians and crew in 'The Flea' and we also had a handfull of musicians sleeping at our place. Whooodoggy. What a beautiful mess it all was. So what was the high point of the day? Dang, hard to tell. The whole damn day kicked ass. I guess i would have to say musically it was when it started raining and the whole audience joined Morgan O'Kane on the bandstand. Freakin' ROCKED! Besides that, just hanging out and jammin' with everyone. AMAZING. To get an idea of what a beautiful day it was, there are tons of photographs for your viewing on the PBGF Facebook Event Page and video is coming up soon too. So, if you're interested you can take a look here. To the right i've chosen a few of my own favorite photographs of the day. All of these images are from the fabulous Paul van der Blom except the last one which i took myself.

Open image in a new tab to ZOOM!


From left to right: 1. My good lookin' dude, Marko playin' the longneck during our set as 'The Fournicators', 2. Morgan O'Kane backstage with The Jolenes. 3. Morgan O'Kane with his crew Ferd Moyse (fiddle) from Meridan, Ms. and Liam Crill (spoons - check out the spoons on his shirt! I liked spoon dude.) 4. Zeke Healy, Morgan's guitarist, relaxing backstage with a bit of uke at the Flea. 4.Elma Plaisir & Rikke Korswagen of Halfway Station. 5. The gorgeous bandstand on the Pijnackerplein and if you look real close, i'm on stage with The Fournicators. 6. Rocco punchin' the ever-lovin' hell of a high score out of the punching ball BAM! And lastly 7. Guido de Groot, the super organiser of the festival and Edith Vijfwinkel the kick-ass stage manager.

Night in the North!

This weekend we will be opening the doors of our Parlour at The Jumping Flea for the first time during the 'Nacht in Noord' or 'Night in the North'. The 'Nacht in Noord' is an initiative by Powerboat and is an evening filled with amazing sights, sounds and mysteries. Tickets are just 12.50 for the whole evening. We have just 10 tickets left at The Jumping Flea Market so make haste! It promises to be an absolutely unforgettable evening. This from the organization...

"In the night from April 28th to April 29th we will Celebrate the Night in the North of Rotterdam. From 20:00h in the evening until 08:00am the next morning.


A unique night with meetings, places and things, performances and installations that nobody ever saw before. Listening, dancing, building, learning, meeting, eating and sleeping!

We present 3 special Night routes along clandestine locations with exclusive musical acts, (light) installations, rituals and guerilla actions on and around the Hofbogen. For the night owls among us Station Bergweg is the place to be, offering a nightcinema, Caffeinebar, Midnight sjoelen, soup-lab, Wohlwollen (mega Bender), Bed time storytelling and DJ’s. For anyone who wants to do a blind eye hostel Ani & Haakien will open her doors specially for this one night.We conclude the night together with a ritual at sunrise and breakfast."

See You There!

Noorderlingen

A series of group portraits are being taken in each district of Rotterdam. 'Noorderlingen' or 'Northerners', photographed by Joop Reijngoud and Linda Malherbe, portrays the citizens living and working in Rotterdam North. Here's the photograph which was taken at our local hangout right around the corner from our house, Café de Bel. It was taken during the weekly Sunday evening jamsession.

I wish i had a portret like this of more of the magical people in those certain special café's where i've hung out. That would be an amazing keepsake to have. Photographs which would trigger a thousand and one stories. But, alas, i will just have to hope my memory does not fail me. Although, come to think of it, all those late nights 'hanging out' probably didn't do my memory much good. DRATS. Anyway, i love this one. The series is being shown now at Rotabs StyleCenter and will eventually be bound together in a book for the Rotterdam City Archive.

'The Jumping Flea Market' In the Metro!

The Metro is a free newspaper in Holland which is mainly distributed at the Bus, Street Car & Subway stations. Today there was an awesome article in it about our shop, 'The Jumping Flea Market'....
Click on the image to ZOOM!

Swingin' Christmas Sounds from Rotterdam

This city is bursting with talent. Plenty of great music. Here's a really cool band called the Kik with 'A Christmas Song For You'. You'll love the video. There are lots of well known characters from Rotterdam in it including the multi-talented and oh-so-much-fun Marly In Space! She's the cute one sittin' on the couch.

So, here's to the insanity of the holiday season. Let's Rumble!