We had a great time again in the Netherlands last week.  Going to the pub and drinking like your in the UK may be prohibitively expensive but the weather was good, we had some cracking shows and saw some old friends and made some new ones too.  Before a brief pictorial montage of the tour, we would just like to thank the absolutely hammered businessman that we met on the first night in Amsterdam, who thought that the best use of his night out would be to come across and tell me how lucky I was to be out with Iona.  Now, no disputes on that one, but as he robustly reinforced his point for the 19th time in about 45 seconds, I drifted off and mused about how aggravation from drunk people in pubs makes me feel strangely at home.  Not really a good thing, but he did give us a laugh, which he didnt take too kindly too. 

Wednesday the 19th saw us play at the Onder Invloed show at Hedon in Zwolle which is a great venue.  We were on the bill with, Paulusuma, David Pino and Theo Sieben with Judith Kolen.  I were already familiar with the music of Paulusuma, both his solo stuff and with the band Daryll Anne, and of David Pino, having listened to El Pino and the Volunteers quite a bit last year, but I was really taken with Theo and Judiths set performed on guitar banjo and fiddle.  Theo also played guitar with headliner Paulusuma in a completely different style to his earlier set, so all in all pretty damn good.  What was also pretty damn good is that the dressing room that we all shared had its own beer tap, which doesn't really need explained 

Thursday night we played at Gemert on 'Tuney Thursday'.  Gemert is a small town near Eindhoven where we had played at Tuney Tuesday in 2007, and we enjoyed our hour long set, especially the chance to try out a few songs with Iona playing the guitar.  Matthijs van der Ven of Onder Invloed books our shows for us in the Netherlands and before we headed to Gemert, we had tea at his parents house, which was very nice, and I have to say that the Dutch do a great line in packaged custard based desserts.

Friday night saw us at the Red shoe Sessions in Nijmegan, a medieval town partially rebuilt after the second world war.  We had played at Cafe Camelot in Nijmegan last year, and the organisers of that night, Anne and Nick had invited us to play their Red Shoe Sessions in a tiny Chapel which held about 30 people (and it was sold out)  We played with Mathijs Leuwis accompanied by Alex Akela on very atmospheric mandolin and fiddle. 

Saturday night was free, so we went to see Utrecht play Herenveen in the Dutch League.  I used to go to Scottish games a lot, but now rarely even go and see Scotland play and there are a lot of reasons for this, in no particular order....the football is dire,  its really expensive, its usually freezing,over officious stewards, general hastle of getting there and back etc, and did I mention its really expensive.  It was 20 euros to get into this game at Utrecht, which was the cheapest seats, but we really enjoyed the whole thing, but in particular, although no order...the football was better than in the Scottish leagues (although not by a lot in Utrechts case..no offence intended as I know they've lost a lot of players and a couple of coaches recently), Nobody told us to sit down, stand up, move a step to your left etc,  you could have a beer in the ground and it took minutes to get to and from the ground on public transport.  It was still freezing, and as much as I would like to defend Scottish football which is very much on the ropes just now, it was an entirely different experience.  The only other time i've been to a game outside the UK, was the Faorese league decider of the 2002-2003 season in October, and the snow was coming in horizontally.  For the record I consumed a beer, a hot chocolate and some sort of marshmallow thing at that game in the Faroes.

 

 

Sunday was a house concert in Deventer in a beautiful flat owned by Rene and Inge and we played a split bill with Tom Gillam who was on tour from Austin with his tour manager Chris.  Earlier this year we went shopping in Deventer with our friend Erik, who knows his way around a nice shirt or two. On this trip, I found a really nice jacket, and as it was heavily reduced (were Scottish!) i bought it...Erik was so impressed he bought the same one, and it turns out that we both wore it to this house concert....not really the same as the the mother of the bride and groom wearing the same outfit, but still..

Here's a little bit of footage taken during the gig.  The CDs on the table in the foreground are Tom Gillam's album, "Rustic Beauty", which would make your day better if you were to seek this out

Thanks as always to Matthijs van der Ven, and Rachelle for booking and to our hosts Martin and Anne for letting us stay in their flat in Utrecht (check out their band minus the tiger), and to Ramses for the loan of a guitar for the week