Band Biography
In times of falling CD sales, due mainly to 'free' downloads of digital music, you've got to have a better excuse then being a dumb blond to make your debut album. Well, initially singer songwriter Aggie de Kruijf wasn't thinking of a CD at all. She just wanted to record her first songs ever.
As a singer of The Very Girls she was touring the USA in 2002. Spending a lot of time on the road listening to the radio in the tour van, the band criticized songs they heard on the car radio. Guitar player Stephan Jankowski challenged Aggie to write some lyrics herself. She accepted, providing he'd come up with a melody for it. To make a long story short: she wrote one song after the other and started working together with Stephan. The recording plan soon turned into a more complicated process of co-writing songs, playing live music, recording their creations and enjoying fantastic contributions of guest musicians. One result of this process was the launch of their debut-CD, with the first 12 songs. The album title was seen on a water-tower in Texas: Welcome to Aggieland!
Band members' biography
Stephan Jankowski:
Composer, acoustic and electric guitar player, backing vocalist, sound engineer, producer, keyboard player, drum programmer
Here's a guy who is at his best as long as he can talk, or even better still: let his guitar speak for him. You can't miss the groove when he is playing. He produced 'Welcome to Aggieland' in 2005, contributed some songs to that album and played several other instruments in addition to the acoustic and electric guitars. In his melodic compositions you'll discover quite a bit of blues, funk, as well as soul music. Not strange considering he's been playing that funky stuff for some decades now.
Prior to Aggieland and his stint as the acoustic guitarist in The Watchman and The Very Girls since 2001, Stephan played the electric guitar. You may have heard him during his ten year career in Upside Down, saxophone player Rosa King's band. He also did concerts or productions with many other musicians. Among them the likes of Georgie Fame, Hans Zilver, Hans Dulfer, Fronk, Rick de Vito, P.B.& The Nighttrain, Sofie & Sofour, Skymasters, Hot Bolshevik, Arthur Umbgrove, Double Brown and Sister Sledge. Still, he's got time left to run his NOPO recording studio in Amsterdam.
Aggie de Kruijf:
Singer, songwriter, composer
Aggie sings, something she's been doing for as long as she can remember. She bought her first guitar when she was 14 to accompany her voice. Maybe she was too shy, more likely a little too stubborn but she never asked anyone how to play that instrument. She kept focusing on singing and sometimes even simply forgot she had a guitar.
It wasn't until 2002, quite some years and a few guitars later that she started using the 6-string to compose melodies to go along with lyrics she had written. To her own surprise creating songs and especially writing lyrics proved to be perfect ways for her to tell a story, or express what's on her mind. On stage, her voice is accompanied by Stephan or her entire band.
Oh, by the way, she's finally taking guitar lessons.
Before Aggieland took off in 2005, in 1989 Aggie started singing with The Very Girls, an American Folk style band from The Netherlands that toured the USA several times. Their second album Elsewhere Bound (2001) with songs by Ad van Meurs a.k.a. The Watchman, still gets airplay coast to coast on radio stations in the USA and Canada.
Aggie has sung in folk- and bluegrass bands and appeared on CD's or live shows with Dutch and foreign musicians like The Watchman, Gerard van Maasakkers, Marjan Cornille and Ad Vanderveen.
Aggieland, what's in a name?
When my parents gave me the not so common first name Aggie they also provided me with the lifelong task of spelling it, every time I met someone new. At least, that's what I thought until one fine day I was touring in the USA as the singer of a band. You all know that Walt D. has got his own World, and there's a Wood belonging entirely to Dolly. So I figured one had to have other qualities then being a songwriter-of-seven-months in order to become a landowner. I was proved wrong by something I read in the USA.
Let me explain. No matter how varied the US landscape, we saw several signs of human presence like water towers pop up in almost the same shape everywhere. Drive-in restaurants all look alike and the only differences between shopping malls is their size: huge or gigantic. There's no gas station without obscure merchandise like pickled pig snouts, or cassette tapes of musical heroes from sepia colored era who never had their breakthrough. And the name of even the tiniest town is announced from far by giant letters on the local water tower.
Approaching one of those colossus with our band-mobile one day, I was astonished to see the words which seemed to announce to the world that I was some sort of land baron: "Welcome to Aggieland". That's how and where my musical landscape got the name Aggieland.
For his drive and enthusiasm to team up and explore Aggieland I'm indebted to Stephan Jankowski!
