THE STORY SO FAR
In 1997 a couple of kids decided that they were tired of hanging around on the boring streets of a little Belgian town called Noorderwijk. 'So, why not start a punk-band' is what someone must have said... and so the story begins!!
First thing that had to be decided: Who's gonna play which istrument? Philip and Bossie had both some guitar skills so they ended up pickin' up the bass and guitar. Jef who always wanted to become a drummer decided to go and buy a second hand drum-kit (although he had never played drums before). So, Jim had to fill in the only space left by becoming the singer of the band. After a few rehearsals we decided to let Rik join in with his Saxophone (he was always hangin' around anyway).
After half a year of rehearsals, making songs, and drinking beers in our basement the first gig rolled in. Nervous as hell, we did our first gig on a Friday evening at the opening of the JAC ('youth advice center') in Herentals. The place was packet and although you couldn't get any beer in the place and we didn't play all that well, we all knew that this was what we wanted to do.
So we carried on making new songs and doing gigs as an opening act for other bands like Unite against Society, and Unknown (rip). The kids seemed to like our combination of punk with a saxophonen so we kept on writing new songs. In 1999 we recorded a cassette-demo in our basement called 'Something in the streets tonight'. We sold the thing for only 60 old Belgian francs (+/- 1,50 EUR nowadays) and although the quality was ratter poor we sold quite a lot of them. By releasing this demo we ended up getting more and better gigs around Belgium. In 2002 we decided it was time for a full-CD and we finally ended up at the High Lake Hill Studio from Bart (The Agitators) where we recorded 'Small Town Stories' in just one weekend. Before we released the album we first decided to release 500 CD singles with two songs from the album on it ('Tonight the bar is ours' and 'Primitive man'). We gave all 500 singles away (for free) at our gigs. The single also got picked up by 'De Bom', a punk-, HC-, metal-show on national radio station Studio Brussel, where we got some airplay. In 2004 three songs from our debut-album were featured on the double CD 'Punk in Sunderland v2 / Punk in Belgium' (Stretch Records). Other Bands on this compilation-CD are Angelic Upstarts, Red Alert, Red London, Crashed Out, Funeral Dress,... and many other great bands.
Due to the compilation CD the people of Sunderland started to like us so we went up there to do a 3-gig-tour together with Holy Racket, Rigit Digits, and Crashed Out. In 2005 we were on the third edition of the Punk in Sunderland compilations. This time it was fearured 'Punk in Europe'. We kept in contact with Holy Racket and we went back to England. This time with our friends from United against Society. We had great times over there so the people of Sunderland may expect some other Jesters-gigs in their neighbourhood. At the end of 2005 Jan Van der Heyden (VDH) joined us to handle the second guitar to make our new songs a bit more powerfull. At the moment we're working hard to make some new songs for a brand new CD.
By releasing our debut CD and giving away the 500 free singles we got lots more gigs. And that's what we're still aiming for: doing as much gigs as possible in as much different places as possible. So if you're interested in a night with The Jesters in a club or pub ... we're waiting to hear from you!
Cheers 'n' Beers
The Jesters |
