On Wednesday 22 April, The Derek Trucks band will hit London for what will probably be the most spectaculair performance of the year(At least in my mind)!
The concert will take place at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire located a few minutes walk from Hyde Park. Just like last time I’ll be hopping over to London for a day to be sure I’m not missing out on the action… Stay tuned for a review of the concert next week!
Seems we’ve ran into the stuff that happens to every band sooner or later: Personality clashes …
After some discussion our bass player decided to pursue a carreer outside the Band. No replacement has been found yet so our drummer decided to pick up the bass and will try to fill the big ol’ empty shoes of our former bass player. It will be an immense task and I wish him all the best in his new role.
A summary of the first practice session of the reduced band lineup is available on the music page..
Cheers,
The Band
P.S.
We brought in some ‘technology’ to provide the “FatBack Drums”.
I went through some of my old pictures and came across some from the Derek Trucks Band concert I went to on October 11, 2007. Ever since I got introduced to their music through Eric Clapton’s 2006 tour i’ve been a big fan of him. When I noticed they planned a gig in London I immediately bought a ticket and booked a flight! The night cost me about 400,- euro’s in total but was worth every penny!
When I was waiting outside the club before the show I started to talk to some other Derek fans over there. A lot of them where surpisingly young but of course almost all of them where guitar players :). Suddenly we saw two regular looking guys walking by… took us a while to realise it where Derek and Mike looking for the entrance! So naturally we went after them and got a few pictures. I mentioned to him that I came all the way from the Netherlands to see him and he even replied back to me ” That’s great man!!” 🙂 Felt a bit embarrassed acting like a crazy fan but what can you do?!
I’ve put together a gallery of the pictures I took, along with a scan of one of Yonico’s hand drawn setlists that I found on the internet. I’ll convert a few of the video clips I made to flash and upload them here later on..
My girlfriend wanted to go shopping for shoes so we went over to Amersfoort on saturday September 27th. I heard that there was a big guitar store in Amersfoort called KeesDee so naturally I couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to have a quick look. I needed a proper holder suitable for multiple guitars so that gave me a good excuse to go.
The second we walked into the store Astrid noticed this Pink Statocaster model guitar, glitters included……….. She told me with a guitar like that she’d definitely would learn to play. I half-jokingly told her that I would buy it right now for her if she would indeed pick up the guitar. I browsed around a bit and looked at some beautiful custom made R. Taylor accoustic guitars. The salesguy was very friendly and could tell a lot about them. Even let me play on a 6500,- Euro guitar which was giving me GAS (Guitar Acquisition Syndrome) already. 
Anyway, I paid for the guitar standard and left the store. We headed for home but started talking about the Pink guitar again in the car. We agreed that I would give the guitar as a gift but she would pay me back if she wouldn’t try to learn how to play. So we went back to the store and when we entered I think I saw a VERY big smile on the saleguys face, he probably thought I was going for the Taylor… 🙂 He was a good sport though and even threw in some pink picks and snares for free!!
Astrid’s already able to play ‘Michelle’ from Anouk and ‘A horse with no name’….
Went to see John Mayall at the Vereeniging in Nijmegen yesterday with a few collegues and it was great! We were standing in the lobby prior to the show and suddenly we noticed a short fella selling CD’s, turned out to be the man himself!! Went over there to shake his hand and bought an autographed CD. The guy was very humble and even looked a bit shy..
The show started around 20:15 and after the second song Mr. Mayall joined the bluesbreakers on stage. They were really rocking although the first couple of songs were a bit rusty.
The guitarist is one BIG badass player called Buddy Whittington. I’ve seen him before on the John Mayall’s 70th birthday DVD and he definitely could keep up with Clapton and Mick Taylor. He has great technique without losing any feeling.
On stage John was nothing like the shy guy we saw standing in the lobby. He communicated with the audience and was very energetic. You can see that the guitar isn’t John’s main instrument but the moment he picked up the harmonica the people went wild… Well as wild as 60 year old people get, cause that was about the average age! Anyway, I’ve enjoyed the concert a lot and will definitely go and see him if he comes through Holland again.
Update: Found a clip of the concert and uploaded it for your viewing pleasure!!
[flashvideo filename=wp-content/uploads/2008/10/johnmayall.flv /]
This video was made on our sailing trips to Corsica in 2006. We played Risk that afternoon until Fokko couldn’t handle it anymore and tipped the board over!! Had a few wodka’s during the game so maybe that explains it a bit 🙂
I’ve been burning cash lately…
My first purchase was a Car since I recently had to return my lease car. It’s an Opel Astra Club 1.6 from 2000 and it drives great!!
Second purchase was a Line 6 PodX3. I already had the previous model but was looking for something similar for recording my bass guitar. Turned out the new model was also capable to handle bass guitars. Since the previous model was one of my best purchases I decided to go for it… I used it on my guitar already but haven’t found the time yet to play my bass guitar through it.
After this I stil had some cash left over so I succumbed to my greatest flaw, that is buying guitars!! I decided that it was time to go for a ‘real’ one so after a lot of research my eye fell on the Heritage H535 Translucent Wine Red!! Heritage guitars are made by old Gibson employees in the original factory of Gibson. They’re 90% hand build and the guys still use the original machines that where used on the old Gibson guitars. Went over to Amsterdam to play on a few and immediately fell in love with them. I haven’t got a picture or audio file yet but it’s very similar to the photo on the right…
