VI.BE

Real music is dying.

These days, a live gig is either cover songs everyone is tired of or spend too much money to stand in a crowded room staring at the back of someone's laptop.

Not with this band.

In late december 2018 four of them got together by chance at a jam session in the Crossroads Café in Antwerp, mixing smooth blues music with some hot funk. Jan Meijers, known mostly for being the bass player for early ‘90’s blunk-band Blue Blot, had brought along his friend Rober “Bear” Cogen, with whom he plays in The Providers, to play drums. They invited on stage Stefan Verbeek from the Slow Burners to play the Hammond organ, and he didn’t fail to provide some soul to the tight and funky rhythm section. On guitar they invited Joost de Lange, who came from a heavy background playing lead with Dutch metal band Yes You Did and the hard blues rocking Jack Daniel& the Hangovers, and has already released six solo albums under his own name.He provided the fret-burning blues guitar to this ensemble. They enjoyed it, and the audience loved it.

The four of them decided they had struck gold, but they needed a singer. Joost decided to call up his old friend Thomas Maenhout, with whom he had played in Jack Daniel & the Hangovers. They hit it off, and decided not to play the same old 12-bars everyone was already playing, but they went for the big game, tackling the most difficult and intricate songs they could find in their style to offer their audiences something fresh, something they hadn’t heard played live before. They started off playing these challenging cover songs, and are now slowly moving on to their own material, trying to keep the feel of hard hitting rock, powerful soul and smooth funk in each original song.

Real music is dying. These guys are here to save it.