Summer 2005
On June 24th we played at the Donauinselfestival in Vienna, on an island in the Danube, and apparently the biggest free open air festival in Europe with more than 2 million visitors over the weekend. I enjoyed meeting Jimmy Cliff, whom I gave my "Johnny & The Devil" album whith my version of his song "Sitting In Limbo", one of my alltime favourite songs. The same evening we drove to Mank (also in Austria) to play at the Stadtfest. We had nice weather and both gigs were great. In Mank we had a powercut but just continued playing acoustically in front of the stage (ACDC wouldn't do that) - good fun!
The next day we flew to England to play at the Crawley Folk Festival in a beautiful auditorium at "The Hawth". The day after we were picked up for the "Blues On The Farm" festival in Chichester. A wonderful location on a cider farm - still lots of sunshine and an energetic gig. We met lots of musical friends and Insingizi teamed up with Zimbabwean friends and relatives who are now based around London. Good cider too! (pretty potent).
Before taking off to Denmark we spent some time in London around King's Cross where the appalling underground bombings took place one week later. We used the same tube lines and the July 7th news came as a big shock - let's hope there's a way to stop these maniacs.
Milica and I flew to Esbjerg to spend a day with Maria, Flemming and our grandchildren Emma and Jacob - great! The band joined us on wednesday for a concert in the park in Esbjerg. A capacity crowd of 2000 came to enjoy the music in the beautiful amphitheatre. Our next stop was the Nibe Festival where we played a gig at a stage in the middle of the woods - actually the stage was built around a tree. Next came the Skagen Festival. Skagen is Jutlands northernmost town and it's known for it's beaches, fishing harbour and great natural light, a big attraction for painters now and in the past. If you leave Skagen to the North you'll get to Grenen, the place where 2 seas meet. The band was surprised to find lots of second world war leftovers in the form of massive concrete German bunkers that used to be part of the North Atlantic Wall. It set off a few discussions and historical discourses in the bandbus during the next few days.
The Skagen Festival books lots of Scandinavian artists and the audience mainly comes from Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The musical scene up there is booming - Scandinavians support their own artists in a big way. So does the press and radio. We had a great gig in the Badminton Hall, recorded by Danmarks Radio for broadcast later in the year. The day after I played the same hall with our trio Theessink, Nalle & Möller - also a big success. The band, minus bass and drums, played a session on the harbour stage. Afterwards we enjoyed a great fish lunch at the harbour. Maria and kids came to visit us in Skagen too and Emma kept the whole HT Band occupied!
On July 4th we played the Fredericia Jazz Festival. The organiser Dan Dorschel is an American who likes to celebrate July 4th with a band of his choice. (not a very american choice this time with a Dutchman, 3 Africans and a bunch of Austrians). We sang "Walking The Dog" by Rufus Thomas - the only song that I know that has 4th of July in it's lyrics.The next day we flew from Hamburg back to Vienna. It had been a great little tour. The next weekend I played some solo gigs at Brücke, Graz and Creativ Center, Lienz - both great places, but I usually don't take a camera along on sologigs. July 10th the HT Band met up again for Summertime Blues in Gamlitz, Austria, near the Slowenian boarder. The festival took place at a beautiful wine castle. The atmosphere was fantastic and everybody had a good time.
We took lots of pictures: --> click here