DAY 327

Saturday 2 June 2012

“Oh the days dwindle down to a precious few…” Yes, the adventurers had 10 more days and that morning and part of the afternoon were spent catching up on the blog. At 5 PM we followed Roos and Henri to Roos’ sister and brother in law’s in Geldrop – the same small town our friend, Hook Herrera was performing in at a blues festival. When we arrived at Ans and Peter’s beautiful home with a traditional thatched roof and large backyard we got to know them briefly but they were heading out to dinner and so we followed all of them to the site of the Blues Open then said goodbye.

Those thatched roofs are really very thick

Catharina "rocking out."
Photo by Dian

As we entered the community auditorium the strains of blues could be heard but Hook wasn’t in the area yet. The promoter kindly got him on the phone so he could talk to Charles and when it was all said and done we had 3 passes to the concert. Thank you Hook and promoters! A mother and daughter were standing outside the hall waiting for Ian Siegal to go on and we offered to buy them a wine. After a chance to chat we all headed in and thoroughly enjoyed the blues guitar stylings and story telling nature of Ian’s act. He cracked us up with his demonizing of Eric Clapton.

Charles went on a beer run and while he was outside he ran into Hook who was just arriving. Charles hadn’t seen the harmonica/guitarist/singerbut once since he’d had him on his cable TV show years earlier but they hugged each other like old friends. When he started his set, expertly backed by Coup de Grace – a local trio, our new friends Catharina and Ingrid were favorably impressed.  Unfortunately they had a train to catch so they left before Hook and the band were done. We were treated to another hour of rockin’ blues that had the whole joint jumpin’ and Nicole Liebowitz running around for close-ups. (Hook especially with his long black hair and sunglasses  was terrific but the drummer and guitar player were also fascinating to watch).

Ian Siegal

When the show ended about 11 PM we’d been on our feet for almost 5 hours but the pain in our feet didn’t matter compared to the treat of seeing a really good concert only 15 minutes from where we were staying in Neerkant. Since we hadn’t eaten at the show we came home and Dian whipped up a big bowl of guacamole which we ate then with visions of slide guitars in our heads, fell asleep.

Autographing