
Sheep for Poesco
(2004) (Caron/Kimman)


Sandor Caron: electronics
Maarten Visser: soprano sax
Jeroen Kimman: guitars, rhodes

Until a few years ago (although nothing dramatic happened), almost all of my music wouldn't take audible life until the point that my lifelong/hometown friend Sandor Caron would mix it. And extract it from my rather archaic machine, something i couldn't do myself anyway.
I would like to be able to say that i learned a lot from all those many many hours i sat next to him trying to be of any constructive help apart from occasionally belting out volume level commands. But i doubt i was ever of much help, and indeed since a few years my music seems to never sound that good no more. Sandor has special ears.
Not only for sound, also for music. He took a little indefinite break from making music himself, many years ago, which is slightly heartbreaking a thing, since he's one of the few people that made me believe mixing live players with electronics can actually work.

Where the dedication for this blog-post might go to Sandor, the dedication for this track does not.
Poesco was the border-collie puppy we tried to adopt back in 2004. For mysteriously emotional and intuitive reasons it didn't work out. Let me not really get into it.
But, dog-lovers that we are in this household, we made sure it got re-adopted by a German family that was said to own sheep, and a place in the countryside. That concept worked for me.

I tried to translate my guilt and melancholy into this song. Eh.. Sandor made beats and stuff; not sure he shared all those deep feelings...
Ah yes, Poesco was actually named after Sandor ('s nickname), so ze circle is round.



Sheep for Poesco

Brown vs Brown:

Viljam Nybacka: bass, vocals 
Gerri Jaeger: drums 
Dirk Bruinsma: alto and baritone sax 
Jeroen Kimman: guitar, banjo, vocals, recorders, thumb piano, harmonium

It's been around a year ago now since Brown vs Brown broke up, and 2 years since this track got released on the Cuneiform label, so i guess it's ok to let this track go public: this 'blog' is kind of a private thing anyway... 
The last show we played with this band was in the south of France; it took us about 3 days to get there, hang out, play a show, and drive home. The whole experience was great fun, and we did a good job at suppressing all the possible melancholy and nostalgia that would come with the notion of it being the last time on the road together. In a way it was so much fun that i think we would expect some reunion to happen in the future. Nowadays i doubt that it will ever happen: it's quite amazing how everyone started focusing on quite completely different kinds of music, and it seems there's no real need to go back to the macho-kind of ballsy complexity we were into once. Apart from the music, i do sometimes miss the togetherness we used to have as a band, and the brilliantly good times when we went on tour a few times a year.

This track is pretty crazy... It was inspired by a new year's eve party that i spent in Atlanta, Georgia in 2007. My girlfriend's friends Jason, Mark and Joe had a band called the Danny Family and most of that night was spent in their brilliantly set up garage (2 fridges full of booze!) where we played country covers for many hours. It was very refreshing to be playing for fun without too many pretentions, although i did get my soloing ass slapped hard by another friend who joined in, some guy who was born into a 3 generations bluegrass family, playing with an unbelievable twang and feel. But that was allright. Since then i've been practising what i think to remember of that guy's chops (it's blurry though).

Of course this song has little to do with country music apart from me playing some contrived banjo. Nowadays i also find it way too long, i would try to make the same point in 3 minutes instead of 9. Sorry, 10. The label asked us to make the track go over the 10 minute mark so they could ask more money for selling the downloadable album (never quite understood the workings of that). It's the only reason why i play all those instruments; i had a few days to come up with a 1-minute intro and i grabbed everything i could find to make it.

The lyrics were actually inspired by the whole trip to the USA. Since they're pretty inaudible, i'll include them:

here 
fly 
there 
drive 
sis 
mom 
dad 
wine 
drive 
friends 
jam 
nice 
cold 
drive 
warm 
gramps 
drive 
cler- 
mont 
best 
fly 
home 
nice

For Jason, Mark, and Joe (Brown vs Brown)

Mark Morse: vocals & lyrics
Jeroen Kimman: guitars, mpc, percussion

My music doesn't get more 'demo' than this one. Still i felt like sharing it. It's one of the songs that i've been writing this year, hopefully soon it can culminate in a new band, one that doesn't play instrumental complexity epics of 8 minutes, but good old songs (with singing and stuff) that might finally attract some female audience and bring lots of fortune.

I'll record a better version soon (where i'll give up the unholy-and-way-too-busy idea to write for 3 guitars), but still i like this one for it's melancholic mood, which is largely to Mark's credit. I really like his singing experiment, even if he surprisingly sounds like Sting.

And thank you to Mara for helping out with the lyrics.

Feels (2011)

Set Camp (2011)

Rosa Ensemble:
Stephanie Pan: vocals
Esther Mugambi: vocals, lyrics
Daniel Cross: percussion
Peter Jessen: double bass
Laurens de Boer: wurlitzer
Jeroen Kimman: guitar, sneaky overdubs

Set Camp

Seamus Cater - Harmonica
Morten J. Olsen - Drums
Jeroen Kimman - banjo

2006-ish

Flashback

The smurf

Hillyrock (Twitch & Shout)

HillyRock 2002

Hennies

Organ Grinder

Afternoon

Heupbreuk (2008)

Roomtone:

Jasper Stadhouders: guitar
Gerri Jaeger: drums
Sandor Caron: electronics
Jelte van Andel: double bass
Jeroen Kimman: guitar


This comes from a demo for a band that never even played a single show. I find it hard providing my usual brilliant context, since i don't remember what i was trying to do with this song, nor what might have inspired it.
Although i think to remember having a dream about a full football-stadium singing the last melody...


HeupBreuk

Lift (2002)


Aardvarck: beats
Jeroen Kimman: bass, guitars, synth, melodica


Indeed feeling some self-inflicted pressure to decently record some new music i'm making, meanwhile i'm putting another golden-oldie if you don't mind.

I'm pretty aware of which of my tunes are generally liked and disliked by my friends. Since my personal involvement with a tune is personal, often there's a difference between my own favorites and those of 'the others'.

This track is a typical example of a tune that most people don't care for much, whilst i'm quite attached to it myself.
Ok, i understand the sound isn't very hip. Slap-bass ain't my favorite either, and the synth/melodica unison could be described as 'annoying'. Not sure if this was already intended as a slight humorous note, or that actually my long-ago jazz-rock love played a part here. (hey, i quit that before people started calling it 'fusion')

Nostalgia surely has a role in my attachment: happy times when i made it. But also i liked the particular process of making this: i think it took me a day, and the thing grew step-by-step, without having a real plan. If i remember correctly, the process went a little bit like this:

1) pick one of Aardvarck's beats, and import it in the ol' 8-track recorder.
2) drink about 1 bottle of wine, and be sure to keep smoking cigarettes all the way through 'the session'.
3) press record and sing some vague diatonal melody on top of the rhythm without taking stuff like form or meter into account.
4) now double that melody on a cheap melodica.
5) get rid of the singing track: it sounds horrible.
6) now double the melodica-melody again on a synth you borrowed, try to use the LFO-little joystick as much as possible, only because it's fun to do. (note: since that synth was sort of broken, it was impossible to store any sounds, so every time you would put the thing on, you'd spend at least half an hour getting any kind of sound out. So: any sound will do)
7) still without taking meter or form into account, find some chord changes that go with the melody. To do this proper, try using every trick you ever came across in 'the real book'.
8) then -and this one is tricky- start recording your bass-track, phrase by phrase, and try to connect the harmonic frame of the melody with the sync-points of the beat. ('how you say?')
9) finally, play a guitar-track that makes sure people don't miss the brilliant changes you made up..

Only 9 steps! Now YOU can make a song no one likes!!

Lift

Rosa Ensemble:

Peter Jessen: double bass
Koen Kaptijn: trombone
Ainhoa Miranda: clarinet
Jeroen Kimman: guitar

Oeteldonk

	The other day, i was going through all the music that i recorded over the last 10 years, and realized that most of it is leading a pretty anonymous life in the backstreets of my hard-disc. Perhaps naturally more inclined to dwell in a hermit-like music-bubble, i still decided to join the rest of humanity in its virtual venting, and occasionally spill some of my handy-work on the web. Reasons for recording all this may vary from coming up with material for bands to play, to finishing commission-deadlines when desperately in need of some money, and from collaborating with stubborn theater-makers, to just being bored, drunk, or simply inspired to make a small difference. Unable to ever really specialize genre-wise, there seems to be something consistent in my 'oeuvre', no matter how hard i try to re-invent myself. To get a bit auto-analytical: I like my melodies whistlable, my harmonies ambiguous, my rhythms unfit to dance to, and my general mood slightly infused with the notion we have to die one day. And i like things kept simple. Although the more i try to follow a straight road to whatever goal, the more i seem to get lost in all kinds of unneccesary detours...

roomtone

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