Playing, making music, performing; that’s what you do it all for as amusician, but Henk Koorn, singer of rock band Hallo Venray, dares to say:“Driving away after a performance is always one of the highlights. You comeout of a room where everything is busy and loud. Then you get on the bus,close the door and pfff… That enormous peace. The privacy of your own club.”
And then drive back to The Hague at night, with three band members and a soundengineer. No music on, just the hum of the diesel engine. It’s been that wayfor about 35 years. Henk Jonkers drums again on his towel that he puts on hislap. That’s what he does. They talk about the evening some more. Sometimeswith a beer and an extra stopover.
Photo Michael Bles
The orange Volkswagen T5 is bus number nine in the glorious history of theband. The previous one was still fine, but was no longer allowed to enter thecity center of The Hague because of the environmental zone. In corona time,Henk bought this replacement from a bassist from Nijmegen. It is certainly notflawless, but after all these years on the road Henk knows what criteria agood tire bus must meet: economical driving, everything must fit, you must beable to understand each other and he must continue to drive.
Many of the predecessors, in particular, failed to meet those last tworequirements. How many times he has bent over the hood of their first biscuittin, a Citroën HY. That was still in the period when they sometimes drovethrough the night with fourteen men, a mattress and all equipment. Theycelebrated their greatest successes in the early nineties in the Dodge, an oldarmy ambulance. For a short time there was also a limousine. It gave up theghost along the highway, white smoke came out of the tire box. Later, the morereliable Volkswagens, such as ‘the Alexander’, came from a gardening companyfor the ‘regal gardens’. He left the lettering on it. This is also the casewith ‘de Huisarts’, a play on words of a contracting company.
This one is faded orange, with no print. The spanners and handy gloves stillgo on tour, but he hardly needs them anymore. That the window cannot be closedafter opening, well, then you open the whole door when you arrive at afestival to hear where you can park. You do not actually need the broken rearwipers and there are missing caps at the seat belt attachment and theadjustment knob of the seat. But he drives and you can understand each other.
It is spacious in the back. Over the years they have started playing withsmaller amps. Saves lugging and those little ones are at least as good. Butthe massive 1960s London City bass amp remains. There are hardly any rules.There are empty candy wrappers on the dashboard and bottles of water under theseats. Sometimes a beer can, but the days of booze and drugs are over.
Henk bought the orange bus with two seats in the front. When he took a ridewith his girlfriend, singer / songwriter Elke van Zevenbergen, and dog Pien,the animal turned out to be completely upset because she couldn’t sit betweenthem, like in the previous bus. Now the co-driver’s seat has been replaced bya two-seater. As Koorn and Van Zevenbergen as the duo The Gray Pants Pienregularly joins the performance. She sits quietly between them in the bandbus, and then eats the playlist backstage.