The orphanage where I lived gave the children the opportunity between learning to play an instrument or pursue a sport. I somehow ended up taking drum lessons.
Living in Amsterdam, I played in many local bands. I wasn\u2019t particularly talented, but sins I didn\u2019t know what else I wanted I kept at it.\u00a0 \u00a0
Stuck in a job but moving up the lather I ended up a supermarket manager. After a summer vacation I decided to quit and pursue drumming.
I got the opportunity to go on the road with a Blues rock band playing Rory Gallagher influenced Blues. The band played at a club called the Last Waterhole and the drummer felt homesick. In between the show they let me play a song. They told me to pack my drums, and if I had a sleeping bag? The next morning they picked me up. On and off the tour lasted 4 years, and it was far from glamorous.
Back in Amsterdam, I got to play with John Tanner, a great Harmonica player from Tempe Arizona. He gave me a cassette tape and a 4-page instruction letter on how to approach the various American Blues stiles.
Play dumb, use dynamics and keep listening, were some of the many tips. Those tips were tremendously helpful. Many years later he invited me to come to Arizona to start a band playing 60s number one hits. With the same line-up we also played Elvis repertoire from the Sun period.
If it wasn\u2019t for the guitar player, who thought it was a good idea to grab the Manager’s breasts while sitting next to her in her car, we would have signed a residency contract at a Casino.\u00a0
Back In Amsterdam I joined the Bluesfactory. With this band we went on a short USA tour backing up Boyd Small, a singer, drummer, songwriter from Portland, Oregon.
I played with many artists, most of them Americans. To bring a bunch of American Musicians to Europe was costly, so they looked for a decent European based backing band. Guns for hire. I got invited several times to the states to play with some musicians that I got to know touring the continent. Being the house drummer at the Big Easy in Houston was a great experience. Through this I got a few side gigs.
I played in The Clemens van de Ven band , T-99, Memo Gonzalez and the Bluescasters and Tinez Roots Club. \u00a0
Paul Orta, Mitch Woods, Lazy Lester, Lynwood Slim, Jan Akkerman, Monti Amundson, Lachy Doley, Sax Gordon, Little Joe Washington, Preston Shannon and many others.
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The orphanage where I lived gave the children the opportunity between learning to play an instrument or pursue a sport. I somehow ended up taking drum lessons.Living in Amsterdam, I played in many local bands. I wasn\u2019t particularly talented, but sins I didn\u2019t know what Read More …<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-28","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesdrummer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesdrummer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesdrummer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesdrummer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesdrummer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":56,"href":"https:\/\/bluesdrummer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":506,"href":"https:\/\/bluesdrummer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28\/revisions\/506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesdrummer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}