About a year or so after my arrival in the city of Amsterdam, The Netherlands in the mid-1990’s, as a bass player I found myself meeting quite a few very fine musicians, singers, and artists who populated the city. With me going to so many of the open mic and open jam nights the city had on offer, I played music one evening with a singer/guitarist whom I actually met on stage; he was a Dutch man who introduced himself to me as Sonny Griffin.
Sonny was playing and singing his own brand of R&B and Soul music, and he had a great and deep repertoire of songs to choose from as well. It turns out that he had booked a lot of gigs and shows, and he stayed busy. At first, I would only see him occasionally at the jam nights, but shortly thereafter he asked me to join his band as a bass player and singer for an upcoming show he had booked outside of Amsterdam. I accepted. I was ready to gig at that point; I had invested in a good bass amplifier built by the people at Hughes&Kettner; the model was called the BassKick 505. I liked how this bass amplifier delivered great sound for me with all of the artists that I played music with in The Netherlands, and later, a bit beyond its borders.
Sonny picked me and my bass gear up in his van, and we set off on our first gig together. The gig itself was a simple one; it was a backyard house party where the band had a space already set up for it to play. I met my new band mates as we set up our gear, and Sonny was kind enough to introduce me to them all as we talked about which songs we were going to play together that evening. I liked a lot of things about Sonny early on, and one of the things that I liked about him was something I liked about myself; that we were not biased about which gender plays which instrument in a band. The drummer in the band that night was female and a fabulous player, we played soul, funk and r&b songs that kept people dancing for quite a while at that party.
After the success of playing music at the party that evening, Sonny asked me if he could call on me to do a few more gigs and shows with him that he had coming up. I said yes, as Sonny was a marvelous singer who played some good guitar, mostly rhythm guitar in his band. This began a musical relationship that was to last for all of my remaining years of living in The Netherlands, and a musical relationship that I will always cherish.
Sonny and I worked on a lot of songs together, and he also wrote good amount of his own original songs. I enjoyed playing his original songs with his band; a couple of them were good dance floor songs that he would weave into the band’s sets among the popular cover songs that he would play. Sonny liked the idea of me being in his band also for my vocal ability; when it was time for him to have a break after singing so many songs, I would step up to the microphone and take over the lead vocal duties for a few songs. People who attended the many events that we played at always liked my voice and my native African American accent while I sang. This added a nice feature to Sonny’s band, and he was already popular and had many Dutch fans that followed him and attended his shows.
After a year or so of playing shows with Sonny’s band, I then asked him to take a role as a rhythm guitarist and singer in my own band, Jerome Lee City. He said yes, and I became a fortunate musician to have him play many of the shows that Jerome Lee City played in the Amsterdam area up until the time I left the city in 2003. Sonny would find gigs all over Holland, and at venues that were always fun to perform at. During the late 1990’s, he had us perform as a band at some really nice clubs, pubs, and a gig at an actual castle in the south of Holland, near Maastricht, that was just great. Towns and cities named Eindhoven, Venlo, Tilburg, Breda, Utrecht, Nijmegen, Amersfoort, Zwolle, The Hague, Rotterdam and more were included in the places we did shows, it was a great experience for me to visit so many places with Sonny in Holland.
A high point in our collaboration was the assembling by Sonny of a special band of some popular professional Dutch musicians to back him up for a very special concert series he had created called “Soul Shadows”. The Soul Shadows series came about after Sonny, and I had been playing music together for close to four years. I was elated and excited to be chosen by Sonny to be his bass player for the show series. He was inspired to use the name Soul Shadows in celebration of the original music of the same name by The Crusaders. Hey, The Crusaders influenced us all at some point! I thought it was a great title for the show series indeed.
Sonny was a great organizer, manager and band coordinator all wrapped into one person. He had worked out dates for the Soul Shadows series at a nice theater in Amsterdam called Theater De Krakeling. From what I understood, Theater De Krakeling was mostly used for children’s plays and shows; the theater staff was very open to the children of the community which is why it had so many events in the theater for them. But they also held events there for adult attendance as well. The Soul Shadows concert series by Sonny Griffin was scheduled during the year 2000 and had four total performances at the theater; one performance about every three months during that year.
The musicians that Sonny chose for the Soul Shadows concert series at Theater De Krakeling were stellar musicians without a doubt. They could all play solo parts on their chosen instruments like mad; they were all seasoned pros for real. Sonny asked all of us at the very first band rehearsal to not go off too heavily as players, you know, not to take away from the groove that we establish for each song. Sonny wanted a true soul and r&b feel to come from us; he wanted the way we felt inside about those genres to emerge during each concert. I was the lone American in the band, and the guys in the band asked me early on if it was alright for them to speak in their native language, Dutch, while we were all together at rehearsals and shows. I told them that it was quite alright to do that, I was constantly working to get my Dutch language skills going a bit better anyway. They told jokes and had a good time and made me feel comfortable.
Finally, the first Soul Shadows concert performance by Sonny Griffin at Theater De Krakeling took place in April of 2000. Setting up for the show, I noticed the serious amount of live recording gear that was brought into the theater for us to record with. In Holland, I learned that the major media broadcast centers were mostly in or near the towns of Hilversum and Bussum. There were also quite a few recording studios located in and around those towns. Sonny eventually mixed and mastered the live concert CD at a studio in a town in that area called Kortenhoef. Two guys that I met named Pieter and Menno took charge of the live recording process for all of our concerts at the theater. They brought in a multitude of microphones, direct boxes and cables. And for a couple of the concerts at the theater, they brought in a Sony PCM-3348 digital reel-to-reel recorder to capture everything on. I thought that was really cool, and I did get to listen back to a little bit of the raw live recording over a pair of headphones just after a show, it sounded really great.
After the Soul Shadows concert series was complete in 2000, Sonny asked me to do more duo gigs with him. He had taken a bit of a break at that time from having live bands so often, but he did not want his gig contacts to diminish. He had done a fair number of solo gigs, but he said he found it more fun to do more duo gigs. Again, I said yes, he didn’t have to ask me twice. We went out around Holland as a rhythm guitar and bass guitar duo, and both of us would sing. I was amazed yet again at the places and venues that we perform at. Sonny had a professional working relationship with an organization in Holland known as Center Parcs. Center Parcs was responsible for a large amount of public community recreational properties all over Holland, Germany, Belgium, France, and England, and booked many other entertainers at them.
Living in Amsterdam puts one close to the water, Sonny once booked a duo gig for me and him on a nice sailing ship that was docked in the city harbor, and he also later booked a gig on a sailing ship for the Soul Shadows concert band during the annual Amsterdam event known as Sail Amsterdam.
I will never forget my wonderful and positive experiences that I had with such a bright, warm, caring and intelligent soul as Sonny. He was a great friend, a great singer, a cool guitar player, and a great spirit. Sonny’s work and music can be found today on his official website, and there is more music to be found at his YouTube channel. Miss you Sonny and thank you always for being you!
Sonny Griffin Official Website – https://www.sonnygriffin.nl/
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