From the V.I.P. Seats... (White Sands & Barbara, Sept. 21st 2006)

Tonight was supposed to be one of the most disastrous ones ever since we’ve started. When I got there, I was about to take a short walk to the coffee shop around the corner to get some stuff for somebody else. (hash) At that point, Roger, one of the waiters (coincidentally a kiwi too, just like my girlfriend) ran outside after me with a phone in his hands. It was just a regular wireless landline phone, so the reception was totally shit and I couldn’t hear a single thing on the line. So I walked back, all over the square to Savanna. When I got back inside, I found out that it was Barbara, who was going to be late. Okay, when you hear such news, it stresses you, for a few minutes, until you realise that it’s no problem at all.

Okay, so I got the shit, rolled a joint for the person who asked me to get it, and after a few minutes Barbara arrived. At the moment Kat and I noticed her fantastic outfit, we realised that we have forgot to bring the photo camera. So I went back home to pick it up. Racing off course, on my bike. Racing for two reasons, the first one was that I didn’t want to miss a second of White Sands. The second, and much more important, was that it was almost getting dark and I haven’t got any light on my bike. On my way back, you can guess, I got held over by one of those penguins. For some reason he was in a good mood (or I looked so poor), so after a warning, he let me go. As soon as he was around the corner, I jumped back on my bike and turned my bike into flight mode.

When I got back to Savanna, it turned out that I’ve just missed the first verse of their first song of their first set. Damnit, all that stress for basically nothing. White Sands, as appearing tonight, is a fantastic musical duo, with great skills and great songs. Shame that there were way too many instruments for the minimalist stage in Savanna. Neither for the PA set there. I haven’t seen that many channels used on Savanna’s mixing desk before. All together, it was really hard to get a good sound out of it, but we managed to make it acceptable. Even though we had a lot of feedback on the microphones, nobody seemed to complain. We decided to play the sets in an ABAB order, what works best for both the audience and the artists.

I was really surprised about the amount of people that turned up tonight. We are used to have about 20-30 people inside, but tonight this amount suddenly doubled. I guess it had something to do with the extreme mailing I’ve sent out this week. HannekeLaura, another songwriter I’ve met a few weeks ago in Savanna was there tonight as well. I introduced her to Kat, talked a bit about the ideas for our possible compilation CD.

When White Sands finished their set, and moved their dozens of instruments a bit out of the way, it was Barbara’s turn to play a set. Barbara is working pretty hard on her musical career, and it's showing. A year ago, I saw her play in De Maatschappij. There she managed to get the audience’s attention, but tonight, people instantly started dancing. After quite a short run, because time was running out, she got White Sands back on stage again. Maybe they should have adjusted their set a little bit, because people were paying attention, but not actively listening actively. It was definitely another great set, but it wasn’t amazingly better than the first one.

In her second set, Barbara got even more people to dance during some of her songs. Additionally, she borrowed the double bass of White Sands; I hope I was just in time to take a picture of that rare occasion. In the end, it was definitely the most successful Songwriting and Dining session so far in Savanna.

Be sure that you don’t miss next week’s session, with Katbite (Kat Leese) solo with Martijn Aleksander. Besides that, we will have a open mike session, where, depending on the amount of songwriters that show up, every songwriter will have a little bit of time to play some live material out of their repertoire. HannekeLaura is the first one who has confirmed so far. If you want to be sure of a space on that night, let us know in advance, so we can reserve some time in the schedule.