Hans Theesink, the Dutch blues guitarist (now living in Vienna) was good. In between songs he told us how he came to play the blues. He is now sixty-six years old, and was born as far east in The Netherlands as you can get before you run into Germany, so the Delta blues was not an obvious career choice, but he heard Big Bill Broonzy on Radio Luxembourg and was hooked. He didn't give us the date of his epiphany, but I'd guess it was the late 1950s or early 1960s, given that by now he claims to have been on the road for fifty years. And your early teenage years are when musical ideas tend to grab you most violently.
It wasn't easy learning the blues guitar in the provincial eastern Netherlands fifty years ago. There was no teacher, he couldn't get hold of any books, and neither of the two record shops in Enschede stocked any relevant vinyl (though one did sell him some blues and ballads that turned out to be more Dixieland, the first album he ever bought with his own money. A good album, in its way, but not what he was looking for). How quickly we have got used to the idea of the on line tutorial, and the ability to access infinite amounts of music or buy almost any book from practically anywhere in the world. Hans Theesink (pronounced tea-sink, at least if you're English) taught himself the old fashioned way, listening hard to whatever he could get hold of and sitting in the front row on the rare times he could get to a gig so that he could watch the fingering.
Anybody who can insert Greensleeves as an instrumental break in the middle of St James Infirmary and make it sound entirely reasonable gets my vote. Apparently, this jeu d'esprit came about when, back in the 1970s, he had a gig to play on a cruise plying between Sweden and Denmark (a booze cruise, possibly? He didn't say). It was a good three hours each way, and his contract was to play for the entire crossing, taking five minutes' break in every hour. The sea was pretty lively, and after the first twenty minutes he had no audience, and a great deal of time left to fill. He knew a lot of verses to St James Infirmary, and set out to sing them all, and to bulk it out still further and break the tedium he included blues versions between verses of any tune that came into his head. Most of them didn't stick, like the Dutch national anthem, but Greensleeves worked so well that he left it in.
He is a very fine guitarist. For all the saying about how white men can't play the blues, I would defy anybody to pick Hans Theesink up on his guitar playing if they were blindfolded, and say it was not proper blues but a pale imitation. The slight Dutch accent when he sings is a bit of a giveaway, but I'd rather that than a fake American accent. He has a fine, deep voice, and in the introduction to one song used a phrase I'd not heard before, 'next to the wood', meaning the lowest note on a piano. He can't sing that low, but has worked with someone who could. He has worked with all sorts of people, Ry Cooder, and the Dubliners, and Johnny Cash. When the banjo player of the Dubliners died he went to his funeral. The wake lasted for three days, and included a session with about forty banjos.
So my Dad and I got to see real international blues star. I was sufficiently enthusiastic to buy a CD at the gig, which I don't normally bother with. After Colchester he is off to Middelburg, then Spain, Austria, Poland, Denmark, Germany, back to the Netherlands, and off to Norway. You can just catch him first, tomorrow in Fyfield, 8.00 pm in the Queen's Head.
No comments:
Post a Comment