Wednesday, August 27, 2006, six o’clock in the morning, we are rough and ready. This is early, even for our standards. Granted, we are not the hardened “party till’dawn – rock&roll style touranimals” you would expect at first glance, . Still, this was early! The prospect of getting on the road with Kofy Brown, however, motivated us all greatly. At this point all the rehearsing and planning was going to pay off. We were off to Switzerland!

How it all started
We met Kofy Brown at a gig about a year and a half earlier in our hometown, The Hague. Playing the small room at the Paard van Troje every last Friday of the month, we found out she played the large room with her US band on one the same date we were playing. With her being a recording soul artist (with the coolest artist name possible, we must add) we gathered up our nerve and wrote her an email, asking her to jump up on stage with us for a few tunes. She replied that she would and for sure she did enter the stage during the end of our last set. By the end of that night, both Kofy and us were impressed with what had happened on stage that faithful night and were hungry for more.

A few months prior to our six o’clock wake up call, Kofy contacted us. Our soul star friend had planned a few gigs in Switzerland, and she remembered those cats in The Hague. This time she was the one writing us an email, asking us if we wanted to be her backing band. Obviously we were honoured and jumped at the chance of doing an ‘international’ tour. Yeeha, we’s gonna tour now!! Months of intense rehearsals (without Kofy) followed.

As the miles flew past us on the German tarmac on our way towards Basel, we were still enjoying the buzz from a gig in Delft we did with Kofy a few days earlier on Saturday, August the 19th. We were booked for the Delft Jazz Festival just a few days before the gigs in Switzerland and we proposed bringing Kofy along. We swiftly came to an agreement with the festival organisation and had ourselves a third gig in Delft (which is near The Hague). The tour was now officially… multinational!

We started the gig in Delft with a set of RGO classics. After our own set, we quickly changed outfits, completely focussed and walked out on stage to play Kofy’s tunes with her for the first time. Unrehearsed, the five of us did a great gig. The public loved it, the Delft Jazz festival loved it, Kofy loved it, we loved it and we knew that the Switzerland gigs were going to be all right!

No rock tour is without at least a few jinxes. Our little three-day hike seemed to have its humble share as well. The first gig in Basel was plagued by an ill guitar player (we mention no names, as we respect privacy) and the fact that our gig was the first gig of the season at that particular club, meaning the place was not as packed as it could have been. Still, (with some aspirin) we did a fairly good gig and got a good response. However, we all felt Delft was better and knew we had something to proof on the last gig of our tour.

We got a good night’s rest at the hostel (which, by the way, had the slowest check in employee west of the Wolga) and went on our way the next morning. Nothing could have prepared us for what we witnessed in in the beautiful town of Zug. We were one of the headliners of the Zug Jazz Night and Zuggians were hungry for a funk-soul-rock party. I do not think any of us had ever played for such a large (and enthusiastic) crowd. We pulled out all the stops (and rock-clichés) and played our asses of as we never did before. There was real chemistry going on and the public felt it and acted upon it and so did we.

Overwhelmed with the success of the performance and the click with the audience we slipped into our comfortable Swiss hotel beds. After a solid breakfast, we went on our way back to The Hague the next morning. After a full day of driving (I swear, Germany seemed to be twice the size it had on the way over to Switzerland) we arrived home safely and with that our little rock & roll adventure was over.

We had a great time and a perfect musical experience! We enjoyed it very much and would like to thank Kofy again for this opportunity and experience.