drumming secrets

"Life's Been Good" is the title of a song that Joe Walsh wrote in the late 70ies. Stef Burns chose to play that song live in 2009 on a tour we did in Italy. This song is a typical choice and I think it fits totally with Stef's attitude towards life... I feel honoured to be working with him on a very high professional level and to be a serious member of his band!

"Who is Stef Burns?"...I can hear you ask that question, on which I am going to give you a brief introduction; Stef Burns is one of those professional musicians that has been working (and still is) with big artists that EVERYBODY knows: Prince, Sheila -E, Y&T, Alice Cooper, Huey Lewis & The News just to name a few.

"How did I run into this guy and how come I am playing in his band?" As an active young musician, I have chosen to work on my international career many years ago. Once I made that desicion, I found out that travelling is the nr.1  thing you got to do. In fact it was on a 3 weeks tour in California with acoustic master guitar player Peppino Agostino, when I met Stef in person at a Starbucks coffee shop; I kid you not! I didn't realize that 2 years later I would end up with this guy on stage.

And you know what is even more amazing? When I was a 17 year old dude, I went to see Sheila-E in Amsterdam at the "Paradiso". It was an awesome gig and me and my buddy Michiel Eilbracht (a great bass player and later a talented producer) became absolutely fan of the guitar player who played kick ass stuff on stage...... Later on tour, talking with Stef Burns, I found out accidently that it was him at the Paradiso back then, ha,ha,ha,...isn't that a great story?!

Anyway, after talking to him on the phone yesterday I found out that at this moment he's hangin'g out in Italy, doing the preparations of a new Vasco Rossi tour (Vasco is a very famous Italian artist).

Like I wrote in a previous blog, Stef and I had a week of writing / jammin' and recording at our place and it worked very good; we started from scratch and came up with 4 new songs in 3 days. My studio is a small place, stacked with recording gear and instruments that I earned through out my years on the road. It's a very special place where I always get a lot of inspiration to do things: composing, recording, mixing, editing and jammin' till late, it all happens there!!

Once we had our composition demo ready, we had a serious 'blue print' of which direction we were aiming for and in big lines, how we wanted to sound.

The last 2 days we went to the Excess studios in Rotterdam (NL) and laid some kick ass drums and guitars down for 5 tracks. Stef, me and Hans Pieters (manager and main engineer at Excess Studios) worked hard on creating a big "live" sound on the drums. We used the live room in all aspects of acoustic treatment, using all kind of tricks that Hans knew. We also worked hard to get killer guitar tracks. The distributer of the brand Laney loaned us two amps to experiment with during these days and that too worked out great!

The last day we've spent time to put some guide bass parts down at my place and finally we did a rough mix! Turns out that these tracks are real "killers"; our energy captured on 'tape' (funny,I love to still use that old-scool word) and outstanding tunes that really ROCK is the result! Even listening back to these tracks after almost half a year, they still give us the kicks....

And therefor it's obvious: Stef and me have to get together again to continue writing the way we did it before!.....sit in together, jam and record while playing! We are definately organize it this year and hope to get a few more out for the next album! It probably is gonna be November or December this year, and I can't tell you how much we are looking forward to be working  together again and play....

OK....'Rock on' everybody and always try to find something to look forward to.....