To choose a favorite LP when you are alone is already very difficult. To do it with 2 people seemed even more difficult at first, but in our case it actually wasn’t too bad. ‘Recorded Live’ by Ten Years After we both had in our record collection when we were youngsters. Although we are both a little less into blues rock now, this album made a big impression at the time. Especially for me (Frank) as a guitarist. Alvin Lee was (and still is) a hero to me.
With “I’m Going Home” being the absolute highlight on this album, we both definitely think back to the song “Help Me” with a smile. So soft and fragile in the beginning, but then, like thunderclap that harsh accent in the 2nd verse that had us scaring like scared dogs. Especially when we had headphones on late at night and almost fell asleep. The dynamics Ten Years After applies in many songs is still unprecedented and an inspiration to us.
In the early years when Joep and I were in a band together (beginning in 1978), we didn’t play blues. We tried to make our own songs and that was more towards (symphonic) rock. Well, a moderate infusion of that.
In retrospect, we both actually don’t understand why we didn’t make Blues at the beginning of our musical journey. We thought Blues music was really cool, but didn’t actually know it was Blues. Only much later did we realize that the songs we both used to like best were actually Blues songs. For a long time we were in a band together, but we also went our separate ways musically. However, we always visited each other as friends. We talked more and more about Blues together and finally in 2007 we got back together musically and started our first blues band (Mojo Hand) and quit the other bands we were in.
Now we go to America every few years to dive deep into Blues history and now we have 3 blues bands together (Mojo Hand, Ramblin’ Dog and Reemers & de Greef), which allows us to express our musical passions. In all the bands we play a mix of our own songs and existing songs that we edit ourselves.