Mr Kris Kristofferson and me

So I opened up for country legend Kris Kristofferson past Saturday evening. Just me, my electric and acoustic guitar. Right before I went on, I ran into the man himself. He was very friendly and down to earth, just as I had expected. We talked briefly, I thanked him for the great opportunity, he wished me good luck and told me he'd maybe check out a couple of songs. So I walked out on stage, plugged in my electric guitar, introduced myself to the audience and started playing "21st Century Punkrocker". Right after strumming the final chord to that song there was a short silence in the audience which got interrupted by loud clapping coming from behind the stage. I turned around and to my surprise it was the legend himself still clapping and cheering enthusiastically. I'm pretty sure he was sober. Ultimately flattered, I went on and played a set of mostly country tinged songs I wrote over the years. I'm not exactly a walking country music dictionary, you know, but I've always had a fancy for country songs ever since I was 18 and heard GP + Grievous Angel by Gram Parsons for the first time. I've even had my own little country band Marco Z & The Cosmopolitan Cowboys for a while. But when line-dance groups started showing up at our shows we felt the time was right to call it quits. I then went on to record my solo album, had a hit song on national radio which granted me the opportunity to open for Kris Kristofferson at a packed Handelsbeurs in Ghent, so there I was again. After nine songs I cleared the stage, sold a couple of cds and went on to watch the legend himself play. You could sense that for most of the audience it felt as though an old friend came to visit them. Except that that friend had a suitcase full of classic songs that are permanently embedded in country music history. After the show I had a chance to talk to the man for twenty minutes or so and the warmth coming from him felt as familiar as the characters in his songs. To my own astonishment he started throwing actual compliments at me: how much he enjoyed my songs, that I reminded him of himself when he was younger and how convincing my lyrics sounded. His last piece of advice was to always follow my heart and that that would get me to wherever I needed to be. "You got yourself a good man", he told my manager. As we shook hands he told me he hoped we could do this over again sometime. Meanwhile, I was afraid I was going to wake up really soon..

Tomatoes, lemons, onions and Charlotte Cornfield

Charlotte Cornfield is this Canadian singer-songwriter I discovered through some blog, about a year ago, and just like that she became my favorite songwriter of 2012. It's gotten to the point I can't stop talking about her and feel compelled to mention her to everyone. But since it's the digital era and I'm more or less living like a recluse these days anyway, I thought I should do a post about her and conveniently kick some new life into the digital wasteland this blog turned into. Yesterday I had the chance to see her live for the first time. She's completely unknown around here and her and her French musician/friend/touring buddy played this tiny club in Liege which seemed huge since there were only seven people or so there, of which five were chatting the whole set through, while two - my girlfriend and i - were just completely jaw dropping awestruck by her amazing songs. Her lyrics and chord progressions sound deceptively natural but let me tell you they are some of the most refined and thoughtfully chosen, unequalled these days in my humble opinion (or maybe I should just look harder, suggestions are always welcome by the way). After the show we went up and said hello and bought some cd's. And even though she seems like the nicest and most humble person in the world I was actually kind of nervous the whole talk through, as if i was talking to my childhood hero. So yeah, maybe that explains it all. Here's an acoustic rendition of my latest favorite song of hers. We've got some tomatoes, lemons, onions and not to forget the amazing Charlotte Cornfield. I hope you'll be hearing a lot about her soon.

Charlotte Cornfield singing 'Harbord & Grace' at the local fruit market