Klezmer style song by Simon Oak about the ongoing injustice being done to the Palestinians by Israel and the international community, largely initiated by the famous Winston Churchill, whose mistakes have cost so many lives and whose plans still have their aftermath around the world…
The name is a tribute to Hendrick’s Pub in Alphen aan den Rijn, where we used to have a series of lovely Irish music sessions, unfortunately discontinued. I used this tune for a little video. Photo: John Richard.
Some songs can’t be sung just like that and to me “The Ballad Of Claudy” by James Simmons is clearly one of that kind. In the early days of our band The Doggy Dike we had regular gigs in a pub called “The Lowlander” in Bodegraven. It was at…
In 2012 when the financial crisis in Greece was fairly new, I wrote this song. The chorus is based on a Dutch saying “when the drink is in the man, the wisdom is in the can” (Als de drank is in de man, is de…
This morning I had to go up early for to go out cycling with my friends, but when I looked out the window and I saw the rain, I got an instant depression and went back to bed. Because of my new telephone, I couldn’t…
Here’s the Ballad Of Charlie McCoy. This is our first Cripple Oak studio recording. Last September (2014) I was at the impressive ancient Celtic site of Glendalough, co. Wicklow. Looking for old undocumented Irish songs, a local man, John Holden, told me about the late Charlie McCoy,…
Here’s the ballad I wrote one year ago about Nelson Mandela, shortly after his passing. I was delighted when Claudio Benito was willing to join me to make a version of this song by combining his Flamenco skills and my folk style into a brand new…
Here’s a song in Dutch about a remarkable accident with a crane that happened recently in IJsselstijn. The crane toppled onto a neighbouring house while lifting a man over the roof to another house. He wanted to surprise his girlfriend by visiting her bedroom at the back of…