Siard's Blog

12 Jan 2008 13:26|
Happy newyear! Maybe a bit late , but I don't think it brings bad luck if you wish somebody happy new year after the sixt,as somebody sugested last week. I hope there will be plenty to blog about this year. Unlike 2007, when I almost lost my licence to fiddle due to lack of experience....Well hopefully there will be a few interesting events and i will keep you posted. Wednesday the 16th I ll be playing in Vredenburg with Danny, janos and "just married" Onno Kuipers so I call that a good start of the year.

28 Mar 2007 11:16|
Just back from a brilliant trip to China!! 1 gig in Shanghai's ARK club and 3 gigs in Beijing.St Patricks day in the Kerry Centre was the best organized party I was ever at.It was a pleasure to be over there with such a nice bunch of people and we couldn't have done it without our guide-oranizer-translator Duncan Stirling.Pictures etc are slowly coming in on www.myspace.com/thejohnogods for instance.John O Dream's brother Gerard took some 400 pictures and filmed 3Hrs of material.Most of my own pictures are blurred(Iwonder why) but I took some niceones of the Gobi dessert from the plane . I ll put them in my photo gallery. We also played a few songs on board of the 747 to say thanks to the crew. I will have some pictures of that soon too.Hopefully we will be back the same time next year.
The new Within Temptation CD is out and you can admire my fiddle skills on two tracks ( Forgiven and Hand of sorrow). New CD of american singer Uegene Ruffolo should be out soon. Also new CD Kieran Fahy.




03 Oct 2006 11:26|
Watch 2 songs from gig in Cobblestone 2005 on www.Youtube.Com. Search for Danny Guinan!!!

02 Oct 2006 15:15|
As some of you might know, i had quite an eventfull couple of days last week.
I was asked to play at the members club at the Ryder Cup in Kildare. For those of you who never spend a day looking for a little white ball (ping pong size) around a large field ;-) its the biggest golf tournament of the year. This year hosted by the K-club in Straffan Kildare Ireland. A big event with lots of international guests s.a. Pres. Clinton and Bush Sr. Michael Jordan, Boris Becker ..You name it. We played wednesday till sunday. The first evenings where kind of quiet. The weather was awful as the tail of hurricane Oskar swept the country. On thursday night the whole club was evacuated because of falling branches and even trees. The band consisted of my long time pal Francie Conway on vocals and guitar; Val Cook from Cork on unbelievable vocals and bodhran; and Brian Morrissey on whisles bodhran and great banjo playing(yahoo!). It was our first time playing as a band, but it went great from day 1. I hope we'll be doing some more in the future. Finnbar Fury joined us for a great show on sunday, as did Dr Michael Smurfitt (owner of the K club) with right behind him his chauffeur-bodyguard (i thought) it turned out to be Prince Albert of Monaco. It was great to be there for the week. The atmosphere was fantastic.
Next week I'm off to Germany to play some fiddle, mandoline etc on Eugene Ruffolo's new album and at the end of the month I am looking forward to playing some tunes on Within Temptation's new one!!!!!

11 Apr 2006 11:40|
All the tracks are recorded now!! All we have to do now is mix and master:-)).
We are not very busy with gigs, so... plenty of time to spend on this project, and to take a little holyday to Madrid as well.
In the beginning of August we are planning to go to Slowenia for a couple of gigs and later that month Denver Collorado (more about that later)

24 Jan 2006 13:39|
The new-year started kind of quiet. Had a great time over x mass in Poland, and it was lovely to see the Conways over in Amsterdam to celibrate Emily’s 18th birthday.
Musicaly things are in full swing again now; the new album is near to completion, all the instrumental parts are recorded now. I put on some fiddle viola bouzouki mandolin tenorbanjo uklele lowwhistle slide guitar and jawsharp bits, fair play to Barry for recording all that stuff! All that remains to be done are the vocals and Dominic can start mixing the lot…
Also I am going to record some more stuff with Within Temptation this week.
Beginning of February I am going to do some theater gigs with Eleanor Shanley and Frankie Lane.Those gigs are in Dronten,Purmerend and Doetinchem.
So as you can see, plenty of stuff to keep me busy…


14 Nov 2005 17:01|
The gig in Concertgebouw last friday was great, thanks to everybody who helped to make it an amazing night!
We have had only great gigs since Janos joined us.Hopefully we will do more stuff with Hanneke Anneke and Judith( the Dutch Divans)
It will be difficult to top this one this year. We are not so busey in the next couple of months, so maybe we can finally finish this fuckeoewtiy album!
My pictures didn't come out exept for 1 or 2. (see Picture gallery).
I am typing this with one finger because I got caught in a rattrap I was setting.Sweet revenge of the poor fucker I just caught minutes before!!


21 Oct 2005 11:29|
1 st week of October I took a trip to the Stockfish recording studio in Northeim to do a few days recording.I was working on the albums of Ewan Carruthers and David Roth.Most of the time I was playing to the brilliant tracks that the sadly missed Chris Jones had put down earlier in the year. I can only hope I did his work justice. As I am typing this I am listening to the live recording of our gig in Vredenburg last week. Some nice bits! esp. from our new guitar and mandolin player Janos.Only his 2nd gig with us!?!



23 Aug 2005 16:29|
It has been a while since my last blog-and there was so much to be blogging about!First of all a vist to "de rustende jager" on the island terschelling.We were made very welcome and hopefully we can stay a bit longer the next time.I had to be back the next day to play with Within Temptation on Java Island. Quite an experience I must say.The set up was fantastic. There are fotos on their web site www.withintemtation.com. I can't copy them on to my galery because the format is different.The DVD will be in the shops soon no doubt.
Well they have a good few No 1 hits around the world now, and I 'm proud to have made a small contribution to the succes.
Speaking of foto's ; I dropped my camera at the gig in Alden Biezen castle on sunday and put my phone in the washing machine yesterday.
I did manage to take some pictures of our tour in Ireland.Mainly the gig in Kinnity Castle.That was great fun ;so were the gigs in Clonakilty and the Cobblestone in Dublin.It was great to play in Ferbane again.Wexford was a bit of a disaster. (But you need them as well).As for Ryan Air ; never again!!!They charged us an arm and a leg to bring our gear on board.Even wanted us to book 3 extra seats for the bouzouki and the guitar.For some reason there isn't much gig material, but I did get some nice castle pictures.Speaking of castles; I wonder if they will give us a night-hood, we have played in so many castles this summer
I took some pictures at sail amsterdam 2005 as well.See you soon...

10 Jun 2005 13:35|
Write up fling in Zwolle-pictures in the gallery..

Fling moest het stellen zonder de zieke violist Peter Zijlstra, maar invaller Siard de Jong kweet zich uitstekend van zijn taak. Fling zette in Zwolle een korte, maar strakke set neer, waaruit bleek dat de groep met nieuwelingen gitarist Peter Rechsteiner en zangeres Annemarie de Bie inmiddels volledig op elkaar is ingespeeld en misschien wel de beste samenstelling ooit herbergt. De groep is gestart met cd-opnamen, dus dat kan wat moois beloven in de loop van dit jaar.



06 Jun 2005 15:23|
Hello bloggers, had a very good weekend on the road with Fling. Their fiddler Peter is ill at the moment and I filled in for the weekend. The first gig was for the 'football Bobos at the under 18 world soccer championships. Thanks for the lovely food guys, its a pitty we had to eat it outside.(the restaurant was off limits for the plebs....).Sunday was at the Blue Dew festival in zwolle , with a totaly different atmosphere! wonderful!!Playing with Fling was a delight great band great people great soundman....

10 Mar 2005 12:35|
Hello, winter is gone. It fell in a weekend this year. Amsterdam was extra pretty for a few days. I made some pictures and put them on this website, along with some other pictures of gigs , instruments etc.It is great fun, isn't it?
New album with Danny is not ready yet, we are working on it though.
More news in the very near future.

25 Jan 2005 13:14|
It has been a while since my last confession....The year has started very well,I must say. We have had a couple of realy nice gigs so far . Especialy the gig in the church in Winkel. We were feeling very welcome there.Thanks a lot Jan and marianne.My new fiddle takes a bit of getting used to. Amplyfied it sound very good Imust say. Last weekend in zevenaar; it was a real Onno and Danny comedy show. A great laugh. We played pretty good as well.(Ithink). After the gig we stayed up in my parents house and didn't go to bed till 5.00 or so, wich didn't help the gig on sunday afternoon.
One more thing: Help Beautyful affair by Mike Hanrahan(stocktons wing) get voted best Irish song of all time by voting on the following website :http://www.todayfm.com/Article.asp?id=60341


28 Dec 2004 11:22|
That was some shock,last week at central station Amsterdam,to find my fiddle stolen right from under my nose. All week I have been trying to get some info.. no reactions, so I presume I won't ever see it back again. I descided to buy a new one. With the help of Tom van Berkel and Soren Venema I got a nice brand new fiddle.(Made in China) I 'm delighted with it ! All I need now is a good pick-up and I'll be flying again.

24 Nov 2004 16:15|
The tour with ronnie and mike is over.We had a mighty fine time. Lovely gigs,music, food , drink and company. I hope we can do it again sometime soon.
The Mulligan's CD will be launched on friday 23d.Great work by Barry and Dominic!I also got the new Paul Stephenson CD in the post; very good. The new Within Temptation is out as well, haven't heared it yet, Isaac and I play Celtic Instruments according to the sleeve notes.I put some new foto's on the gigs and mugshot page.I am not able to put in text with the foto's so you'll have to gues who is what,when and why.....

18 Oct 2004 12:49|
There are some changes in the ronnie drew tour! one or two gigs might be added within the next week.

01 Oct 2004 13:58|
It has been a while since I wrote some thing for the BLOG. I supose I ve been too busy..ahumm. I was in Ferbane with Danny, Tanja and Killian. It was Ciaran's (Danny's brother)40 th and a big party was organized ,a big suprise it was ! This week I finally made it to the lovely Atlantis gig in Alkmaar. I had two cancel the last two gigs there due to Queensday and gayparade trouble(sounds queer).
I met up with Pat Kilbride last week.We hadn't seen each other for 17 years. We played together with Kieran Fahy at the time. I remember seeing Pat with the Battlefield band in a place called Veghel when I was about 14 and still lived in Brabant. Pat travels a lot and passes trough Schiphol a few times a year.The next time we are going to arrange a gig (or two). That should be some time next year.
Enough bull for now...

14 Sep 2004 13:41|
Just back from a weekend in Belgium. We played at the anual backpipe festival in the castle of Bilse. 100's or 1000 nds of pipers there,from all over Europe having a pretty good time! The saturday night was called the celtic night, with some pretty nice music. Old friend Sean'ODonnel was there,playing with two brilliant pipers, North Gregg was really good too. (see website www.folkroddels.be).I tried to make a photo from the stage,(Danny even got everybody to say cheese), but it came out a bit blurred.The weekend before last I was in the studio with Within tempation for their new album. I played some fiddle-parts and Isaac did some whistle. Its is a gigantic production, with Symphony orkestra and a 100 piece choir. Its being recorded in Wisseloord, their own studio in Schiedam and Moskow. Mixed and Mastered in two different studio's in Sweden.It was really great fun to be let loose on a couple of tracks. I think the result is going to be quite nice!(took some photo's in the studio). Eventfull couple of weeks to say the least!

24 Aug 2004 15:58|
The gigs with Ronnie and Mike in Oostende went great! Ronnie was singing like a little angel! (See fotos)We had Mark and Barry with us to drive and look after things so that was great. Ronnie has a great way of dealing with over enthousiastic fans; he just puts his hands over his ears! On thursday we played Mulligans again. Some Norwegean fans made their way up to amsterdam to see us.Unfortunatly we didn`t see them the next day because we were off to Zwolle.The Rosenberg trio were on after us . If you don`t know them,get to know them!Next was a gig in Solingen.I thought it was in the middle of the ruhrgebied. Well it is , but what a countryside,beautiful.The weather was fine all day. Just before the gig it started lashing rain for about 10 minutes,so the whole place was a mud-bath. Only one half of the p.a. was working during the Mahones set, so when we all started playing (10 of us) it must have sounded lovely.....



10 Aug 2004 12:16|
The boat has survived the gayparade.( See picture). I was away in Lottum for the rose of Tralee the Limburg way.The atmosphere was great! When a whole gang of people ran on to the stage to take shelter from a thunderstorm nobody knocked over or stepped on anything.Much more relaxed than the city.We were driven to the gig by mini tracktor.(another picture) Looking forward to next monday. We are going to Oostende to play at the paulusfeesten main stage 23.45!(with Ronnie drew and Mike Hanrahan) Mark Gilligan and Barry Teehan are coming as well for sound-road managing etc(the craick basicly).

03 Aug 2004 11:17|
Everything was oranized perfectly, at the Meire Morogh festival in Dendermonde;unfortunatly somebody forgot to invite the soundman.He was probably sitting at home watching tellytubby`s. Thanks to Peter ex keyboard player of Blunt the festival could go ahead.THANK YOU! Our plan to go to bed early on saturday went out the window, we didn't get back to headquarters till about 4 am.Lovely gig in Turnhout next morning.Hopefully we'll be there again;open air or the theater(Carousel?)Next weekend rosenfestival in Limburg.Thank god I can escape Amsterdam for the day(for obvious resons)

06 Jul 2004 11:57|
YESTERDAY WE RECORDED A NEW SONG IN A BRANDNEW STUDIO. SAE IS A SCHOOL FOR STUDIO ENGENERING. WE WERE THE GUINEAPIGS FOR A CLASS OF 5 GUYS FROM INDONESIA,RUSSIA, THE STATES,AMSTERDAM.THE RESULT IS SUPRISINGLY GOOD,SO MAYBE MORE IN THE NEAR FUTURE. I MADE MY DEBUTE ON THE BLUESHARP! 2 NOTES BUT ITS A START

03 Jul 2004 13:24|
Helaas pindakaas; The gig in Noordwijk(3-7) is cancelled (too much weather in one day). Yesterday had a good practice and some lovely gamba's. Can anyone fix outboard engines(Mariner 5 -2 stroke- shorttail) or tile a bathroom? please contact:

04 Jun 2004 14:04|
...hun improvisatie groeide uit tot een waar hoogtepunt dat het publiek voor het eerst in extase bracht. Vooral de indrukwekkende Siard De Jong (viool en zang) werd zowat de ontdekking van de avond. Hoe deze fiddler virtuoos omgaat met traditioneel werk deed me vooral denken aan de inbreng van Aidan Burke bij COMAS. Bekende nummers als 'I'm alive' en het wat rustiger 'If I was wise' kregen samen met enkele nieuwere songs een plaats in de set. De muzikanten hadden zich voor de gelegenheid elk in een kleur getooid van de Belgische vlag. Er werd afgesloten met een samenzang 'Never to part again'. Het eerste hoogtepunt was dus een feit op Labadoux. Guinan beloofde ons in de toekomst rustig werk te blijven maken, en met nieuwe nummers op deze akoestische wijze een cd te zullen opnemen. (Stijn Vdb)

RECENTIE LABADOUX

14 May 2004 17:29|
Labadoux was what it was supposed to be; a PILE OF MUD. Onno got lost on the way from Cork to Shannon and just made by the skin of his teeth, and Barry, Danny and myself were stuck in trafick for nearly 7 hours, but was it worth it. The good thing about ariving late is that you don't have to wait around so long before playing. We weren't going to stay the night in Ingelmunster, but after we dicided to stay Jean Pierre arranged for a place to stay within miniutes.Gino and Claudine Storme put us up for the night, and looked after us realy well. The beds were comfy the breakfast lovely and Claudine even managed to wake up Onno in time for his flight back to Ireland after one hours sleep. The bottles of IJ beer are in the post.Thanks! It was a lovely gig , great people organizing it, and a great audience!! I hope to go back there really soon. Next trip Hungary. First an other recording session on monday. But first ; enjoy a bit of the nice weather

03 May 2004 11:06|
Thank god that queensday is over! Uptill about three Oclock everything was fine, but as people were getting a bit drunk they all wanted to climbe on top of my boat. The house party was going at 100Db. Most boats on the canal had their own speaker system. It was a long day. The worst thing was that I could'nd leave my boat alone so I wasn't able to do the gig in Alkmaar. Saturday in Deventer was great though. Cafe de Heks organize a festival for their 25 years. Very nice admosphere.Afterwards a nice meal with all the musicians. Then rushed back to Amsterdam to have a lovely gig in Mulligans. Spent all sunday in bed......

27 Apr 2004 11:32|
Last thursday we made our way up to Ameland, to play at Noel Shannons wedding.We is; Leon on drums,Jaco on bass, Onno, Danny and myself and two vans full of gear.It was schooltrip material! Noel and Yolanda had everything very well planned. All the guests were picked up in Holwerd by a chartered boat,they had lunch,champagne, a trip to the beach etc. After diner the party started and everybody was dancing away. Mark Gilligan did a couple of songs, so did Noel himself.It was great to play with a full band again (for a change). maybe in the future we will do more with Leon and Jaco.After the gig we enjoyed a few Amelandertjes, a beautiful star night with special lighthouse effects and ofcourse the schoolboy craic before going to sleep.

16 Apr 2004 15:23|
What a gorgeous day! Time to take to the canals on the boat. Plenty of time this weekend because some###idiot has canceled saturdays gig with Duck Baker. I had to phone the organizer myself this week to find out .Lovely, Thanks very much! Great organization....Anyway who wants to spend a lovely SUMMERS evening in some stinking folkclub. Tonight some craic with Mark G. in Mull. The song 'when we where young' turned out great! So off to the IJ!!

10 Apr 2004 16:20|
Yes!! we are going to Hungary!!! On may 19 we are flying to Hungary do do a couple of gigs with Mark, Erik and Danny. I am realy looking forward to this: never been in Hungary before. Played the gig with Daithi Rua yesterday. We know each other for a long time but never did a gig together. We should do it again, absolutly. We'll meet again at the Labadoux festival in May. Happy Easter

03 Apr 2004 12:10|
Hello, again it was a busy week. Danny and myself finished recording the new song 'when we where young'. Turned out lovely! On thursday I went up to the very north of Holland to do a few fiddle tracks on Robert Pfeiffers new album .
After the recording we sat up till 5.00 yapping about the good old days. I wasn't feeling the best yesterday. I met my second cousin Loes for the first time in my life (In Mulligan's).
We share the same interests; pints of Magners and the Chieftains!
Only joking, the whole family listens to irish music and she has lived in Ireland for a good while. I better send some music their way so they won't be stuck with the Chieftains forever. Yesterday; a lovely relaxing day and in a few hours I am off to Breda. Party time again, so I don't suppose I'll be in Mulligan's for the session. There is going to be a singer from Wales at the session today, bringing a BBC camera-crew. Thats going to be crowded!! That's it for now...

30 Mar 2004 20:15|
Hello again, it has been a busy week for us! First of all we have been working on a song (when we where young) in Freshbeat studio in Amsterdam and hope to finish it tomorrow, so Omroep Friesland can air it. It's going to be very nice! Then we had Miriams birthday last friday in Mulligans. We are turning into quite a party band if you ask me! It was a good night. Saturday we headed for the Tilburg schouwburg where we had a double bill gig with FLOOK. Great band and a hard act to follow. There was an audience of about 750 (full house), and I must say they didn’t exectly go mad. May be it was all a bit too much for the one night... Bodhran maker Brendan White came with us to show John Jo one of his new drums. It's amazing what he can get out of a drum. The next day we were of to Den Bosch to do the third gig of our mini mini tour. Brendan came with us and it was great craic. The only downer was my fiddle falling over and cracking in two places. As I understood it's not too complicated to fix it again. It is still playable. Tomorrow we are going to do more work on when we where young and thursday (april fools) recording with Robbert Pfeiffer. Later

20 Mar 2004 23:02|
Hello everybody! From now on I'm going to keep a BLOG!!!
Slowly but surely this website is taking shape. I'm working on some MP3's. I am putting some work into a biography. There will be a few links added, few pictures thrown in etc.
Yesterday I had a few tunes with the great box-player Sean Vaughan. It was great to meet him again. There were some people though, who thought it was still Paddys day, queens day x-mass, new year, mothersday and the 4th of october at the same time (thinking they where playing mighty stuff).
Tomorrow we are playing for John Morresey's 50 th, so you are all invited!!!
Only joking. Should be fun. Later