Highlights of the Lowlands: Racoon Part 1

Part one: Racoon (part1)

July 5, 2009, 11:49 AM

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The holiday season is coming up and lots of people go out for a short visit to Holland. Especially Amsterdam is, due to the possibility to broaden one’s education in the medical sector quite popular. But you don't really need drugs to get high in Holland. Despite the lack of global exposure in the media, the lowlands contain a couple of extremely talented bands; bands who signed with international labels, did small clubs tours throughout Europe, the UK and the US or were once support act of bands who later turned larger than life.

In part 1 of ‘Highlights of the Lowlands’ guitarist Dennis Huige tells the story of his band Racoon. The band went on an American and European tour with the Lemonheads, performed literary everywhere - from Kiev to railway stations - and saw their biggest misfortune turning into their biggest success.

Profile
Name: Racoon
Reason name: a TV-documentary about racoons
Members: Bart van der Weide (vocals, harmonica), Dennis Huige (guitar), Stefan de Kroon (bass, background vocals), Paul Bukkens (drums)
Music: a band playing singer/ songwriter songs
Influences: 50 years of pop music
Recommended Dutch bands: Voicst, Anouk

Racoon started out in 1997. As with many bands, Racoon was the result of other bands breaking up. ‘A year before Racoon Bart and I were in a hardcore band called Victem. We just tried to copy Tool, but heavier. Bart and I quit because we wanted to make real songs and the others didn’t. So we started writing songs with an acoustic guitar on our lap.’

The first results of the new musical direction of Bart and Dennis could be heard on the compilation album ‘Characters’, released by Nationaal Popinstituut, a Dutch organization who promotes Dutch music. ‘That was during the time we were performing as a duo. It was basically the foundation of what turned out to be Racoon. We knew from the very beginning on, this has to be a band. With two people you’re committed to guitar and vocals, that’s quite limited. Coincidentally Stefan and Paul also came from Goes (a city in Zeeland, the south-western province of Holland) so we knew each other already. During the same period their bands broke up as well, so all of a sudden they were available for a new adventure.’

The foursome not only spent their days off together, but found each other in the same city again as well and even in the same house, in Utrecht. ‘That was just because of our studies. I first studied in Rotterdam before I switched to Utrecht, Bart was already there and so was Paul. Stefan used to live in Amsterdam, and he lived there as well. So we just ended up together in the same house. That was kind of practical for the development of the band. It just coincided with the start of the band.’

Their student house not only meant more possibilities to practise, it was also where they came up with the band name. ‘A year before we started the band Paul and I were watching Discovery Channel, or National Geographic, and they showed a documentary about racoons. Especially Paul thought ‘that’s quite a good word for a band name’. One year later we needed a band name and Paul still had this word in the back of his mind. We thought: ‘it doesn’t make any sense, but…it’s a simple, good word and easy to remember’.’

‘We certainly had the ambition (to make it). When we first started out it was mainly for ourselves. I make music because I want to do that; it needs to get out of me. You want to create something. That’s still the most important thing. You’re doing it for yourself in the first place. (But) we did set ourselves some musical goals. Musically, that you can rock as well with an acoustic guitar only. You don’t have to sound nice and soft. Have you heard of Luca Bloom? He was a source of inspiration, especially in the beginning. That man sounds pretty big on his own and with an acoustic guitar only. So that was our ambition musically wise, and concerning performing and what we wanted to achieve…we were quite ambitious, we were very serious. When the band started we locked ourselves in a rehearsal room for a year to write songs and to improve things and to look at everything again and again. And we certainly wanted to get a record deal and go as far as we possibly could go.’

‘(Our influences) really covers fifty years of pop music. Our preferences are quite diverse; the first one loves jazz, the second one doesn’t; and someone else loves metal and the other doesn’t. But somewhere in the middle there’s something we all love. Things like the Beatles…our singer Bart is a huge fan of Randy Newman, especially his lyrics. Elvis Costello is my hero. ‘Songs’ is our key word, even when it comes to influences. It doesn’t matter which genre, every good song is a good song.’

We are not a ‘show’ band. As far as live performances go we don’t really have an example. It’s quite basic. It’s just an old-fashioned band on a stage, working his ass off. In the beginning of your career, you take everything you can. Performing, performing, performing, as many times as possible. That’s what we did, from pubs to festivals, just everything.’

The hard work and the time spent in the rehearsal room paid of, because their demo album 'It's an Ice Cream Day' was quite a success. ‘We’ve been writing and working on it until we were really satisfied with the results. And then we just send it to record labels. And (the responses) were really ridiculous. Ten record labels showed, to a certain extent, interest. Of which five or six really came up with a proposal for a deal and that was quite a luxury. We could compare everything, we had lunch with everyone and talked to them and we really took our time. Especially I am a pop music freak; I read everything about it, the business side. I’ve heard enough stories about…well, everyone knows the cliché about pop musicians who get screwed because they’re signing a bad contract – and we wanted to avoid that. So we took our time and asked people to check the contracts. Funnily enough we didn’t sign a contract with any of those ten labels. In the end there was this label, Smart, a sub-label of Sony – we didn’t send them a demo because they were more into cabaret and Dutch acts – who was looking for English pop/ rock bands and they had seen us performing at Noorderslag festival in ’99. That’s where we signed in the end.’

The result was their first full-length album ‘Till Monkeys Fly’, produced by Michel Schoots, former drummer of Urban Dance Squad (the Dutch equivalent of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, reaching number 21 in the US with 'Deeper Shades of Soul' in 1990). ‘Yeah, that was funny…everything is going like one step at a time; you start a band, writing goes well and you think ‘maybe I can get a record deal’ and you succeed. And next the record label asks you ‘did you think about a producer?’ and you think: ‘Oh yes, right, a producer.’ We didn’t have a clue. So you’re checking your album collection at home and you come up with the most ridiculous big names, all the expensive American producers. So the record label came up with Michel Schoots, we hadn’t thought about him. So we send him a demo and he was very enthusiastic. We met him and especially in the beginning…I was quite impressed. I’ve always been a huge fan of Urban Dance Squad and suddenly you, as a rookie, are talking with one of your heroes. We connected very well. He produced our first record. He didn’t do the second one, but he did do the third and fourth one, and for a reason. The combination ‘Racoon and Michel Schoots’ just works extremely well. And we learned so much from him, how to make a record.’

In 2002, a year after they released second album ‘Here We Go, Stereo’ Racoon was invited to do a Marlboro Flashback tour. The idea behind the Flashback tour was to let Dutch artists ‘go back to their roots’ and play a set of songs from a band or act they admired. ‘The Flashback tour was already quite established and we were one of the last acts to do a Flashback tour. Shortly after, it wasn’t allowed anymore because of the tobacco advertisements law. We had talked about it before, ‘what if they ask us, what are we going to do?’. Because we were one of the last acts to go, a lot of bands were already covered; the Beatles, the Police, we would have loved to do that, but that was already been done. We thought ‘what in Gods name are we supposed to do?’. Also because the preferences within the band are so diverse, there was always someone who said ‘I don’t want to do that’. The first artist we all agreed on was Elvis Costello, but the organization said it was too unknown. Then we thought, let’s do an ‘angry young man’ theme…the end of the seventies, the beginning of the eighties; Elvis Costello, but also XTC, Joe Jackson, things like that. But again, the organization thought it was too vague (laughs). So we didn’t know what to do anymore. Then one day Bart came up with the idea of Faith No More. And everyone thought: yes, Faith No More. And the organization of the Flashback tour thought it was a good idea as well. It was the perfect thing for us to do. Nobody expected Racoon to do Faith No More. (But) Bart and I already did heavy stuff with Victem and Paul is kind of a metal head and Stefan is from the punk scène. We all produced quite some decibels in the past.’

Another great opportunity came up when they were asked to perform in Ukraine, in 2003. ‘Ukraine wanted to be part of the European Union and they tried to make the citizens enthusiastic. So they came up with a festival, Europe Day it was called, on a huge square in Kiev. Bands from all the countries of the European Union were invited, as kind of a delegation and we were the Dutch delegation. And it was really fantastic. Welcomed by the Dutch embassy, everything was very well-organized and what I do remember is that food and beverage was ridiculously cheap, that it was a beautiful city until the moment you left the main road. And ridiculously beautiful women, that’s what I remember.’

Sadly everything was not well at the labelfront and the same year Smart dropped a lot of their artists, Racoon included. Read all about it in part 2 of 'Highlights of the Lowlands' - Racoon.

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