When I was some 15 years old I got involved already in American Country music.
My preference lay with country-rock and bluegrass.
I listened a lot to The Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers, Dillards and others.
Through a Dillards record I got to know real Bluegrass.
I wanted to learn how to play that music, so I bought a banjo.
Playing the banjo turned out to be rather difficult.
Not until many years later I began playing with a fellow teacher and I felt I was making some progress.
Later I also began playing the Dobro and I went also back to playing the accordion just like I did in my early years.

For a number of years I played in a band called Country Stuff.
As with so many other bands this band also dissolved in good harmony.
During a Byron Berline concert in Noordwijkerhout I walked into Jaap Spijk.
Because of this the band Except2 was created.
In Except2 we play akoestic country and bluegrass.
After a couple of years the father of our violin player dropped a tape with Cajun-music played by Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys.
Nearly all the band was wildly enthousiastic for this kind of music.
At first I played a piano-accordion and later on a two-row button accordion, but it just wasn''t it.
Such a trekzak (in Dutch), it had became a one row (ten button) accordion in the mean time, in quite a different cook from playing an accordion, but I got better and better gradually.
At the Cajun en Zydeco festival in Raamsdonksveer (2000) I got into contact with Wim Nagtegaal.
I was told that he taught playing Cajun on the melodeon.
Wim''s lessons are a tremendous support for me in mastering this swinging music.
On a given moment Will Pieters came to teach us how to play Cajun music as a band.
Meanwhile I have been seriously contaminated by the Cajun-en pullback-virus and I now also play in this band.