The road is a wonderous place!  Filled with a new scenery everyday, new faces, new names, sights, sounds and smells.  Yet as time goes on, the sense of wonderment becomes dulled by monotony and the time moved fast or slow depending on which way you looked, names and places forgotten.  Without sounding grim, the heights and lows are drastic in comparison, the heights of the beautiful moments being amazing, from seeing the cathedrals and ever standing stones that built up a seemingly permanent Europe to the stages lit up with lights and faces of an eager audience as we hope to fill their hearts and ears with amazement and joy.

That is the goal, for me at least.  To bring people whatever gifts that music has inside of its beautiful vibrations, the intentions, the sounds, the emotions released, be it simple joys of the heart or the healing of pain or simply moving the human body to send blood to every limb that shakes to its rhythms.  Interestingly enough, the relationships of the musicians and their states of mind and heart flow through the music to the listeners, making each show unique.  The road tests these relationships, with character traits of each traveler coming to the foreground to either rage or to evolve to better understandings.  But in the end, for differences or otherwise, the show must go on and we must share the compassion of our hearts through the music.  Adapting and learning, creating bonds through which the proper vibrations may flow.

Aloe Blacc.  Is one of the hardest working individuals I have met aside from Pablo, our tour manager/front of house sound guy/backline tech/resident Welshman and walking punchline factory, some Pablo creations are:

“F*&^ my life”      ”dick bag”     ”sturdies”  and more…. he can also burp full phrases like “bollocks” or any of the previously mentioned

Anyhow, Pablo is killing it.  But now back to Aloe.  This guy has been doing promo almost every morning, waking up and going to bed earlier than all of the rest of the band going to countless interviews, of which most questions are almost exactly the same as the preceding ones and everyone wants of piece of the star, they don’t care if they wear him out.  While he has began to have fun and subconsciously mess with some of these poor questionairres.   By the time he makes it to the stage sometimes his energy wanes, but nonetheless Aloe is a tireless performer and is in his finest form when making onstage inside jokes with the band.  Mind you we have an ever expanding vocabulary of phrases that would mean nothing to the casual listener, be they codes, or meaningless until given purpose.  Murmors of “tiger woods” “soaking” “telling my questions” and such have been known to hit stage.  Sometimes jokes include meaningless banter for effect when in reality he might say to me in my ear “How’d you get so ugly?” in our opening notes.

The Grand Scheme is chilling as usual, what we do best, modifying the show on an almost nightly basis, trying to perfect presentation, show flow and such.  That being said, per usual music business shtuff, some folks standing off stage get to influence this process, perhaps just to “tell their questions.”   That being said, not including the roughly 20min opening set that the Grand Scheme plays nightly with Maya Jupiter, Aloe’s set is spanning around 1:15 compared to our last European tour in which we played a staggering 2-2:30 minute sets.  And we wonder why the audience is not completely warmed up at times.  The ending song before the a-typical leave the stage “fake ending” always feels like a joke to me.  We used to play another 3 songs after that one and give the audience their moneys worth before imposing a potential encore.  Anyhow, gripes aside I still love it.  However we play the set is still fine.

In other news: The other day in Cologne (Koln) I purchased a new guitar!  In trade for my stratocaster (which was feeling lonely as a mere backup guitar) I picked up a “Vintage” brand 335 copy.  Beautiful top and mahogany body, with a real warm “thickie lake” sound.  It has taken place for the moment as my main guitar, but the G&L still has a nice bite for specific tunes.  I have been loving playing the Mesa Boogie Mark IV (I was previously playing a Fender Twin, with mixed thoughts) and have realized that I need to get brighter colored guitar picks, with my name and website on them, for when I throw the pick at the end of the show to the audience members!  They don’t usually see these black picks flying at their heads and at times ends awkwardly lol.

Of all the places we have gone, Amsterdam and Utrechtt are my favorite!  Perhaps it is my Dutch blood, the fact the Weed is legal, their amazing pancakes, or a similar blunt and sarcastic sense of humor that I have become accustomed to through my father and his ways.  But these places feel like home to me, I would love to live in Amsterdam.  Just as well Brussells, Belgium is a great town.  While we were there we went to a blues jam around the corner and sat in with a west-african musician “Samba” and had a good ol time!  The people there are very friendly as well.

The weather is slowly turning warmer here in Europe and the birds are chirping most beautifully and the sun is making more and more appearances so I will leave you with a few pictures and be off to see this sunny day in Linz, Austria (at first glance doesn’t seem to be all that interesting but we shall yet see!)

peace, blessings and wishing safety to the beautiful people of this world in this turbulent time!

your friend, JVD, Joel Van D, Van Dizzle, Van Dijk… at your service.

only here at http://joelvandijk.bandcamp.com

Truthseeker: Featuring my band Special Force and other very talented musicians.

Go to this link to see the official video as well as a special acoustic version of “I’m Beautiful” that Aloe and I did backstage!

So where do we start!?
The Joel Van Dijk album release party on September 18th was a great success with a nice turnout and wonderful Performances from the likes of Ultralove and a sweet Eclectic set for Douglas Charles Showalter and Crew! I learned alot in the process of creating the album and now the learning curve has turned to the realm of live performance and future production (the next album/albums are in the works!). I did my second full band set on Dec. 6th at Harvelle’s as well as many small solo performances at times accompanied by Douglas. Practice, Practice, Practice! The first half of my guitar playing career I considered practice. Now I don’t think about guitar playing, I just do it. This is where I would like to get with singing and performing.

(Here is a sneak peak at a new joint, FYI the band MURDERs this track!! Soon to come!)

The album progress has been here and there, with some successes and a strong realization that this process of artistry and refining my craft is going to potentially be a long arduous journey (hopefully not, can you help with this?). But I have also realized that the single on the album is most likely “Shine Bright” which has became one of my favorite songs to play live as well, which is good to know!

The JVD project will continue from this point for as long as I breath (me thinks), the desire to release material is stronger than ever and with the use of sites like bandcamp.com (Joel’s Bandcamp) having a storefront to release any and all material at the click of a button is rather revolutionary! The most current project in process is the Truthseeker Remix EP which currently will feature the production of Natasha Kmeto, Douglas Showalter and Peter Dyer, and hoping to get the homie Afta1 on the project and potentially others. This project is due out in February and may be featured as bonus material if you purchase the full album!

That said more to come, I have been writing up a storm and I am constantly inspired by limitations!

Now, The GRAND *#^&%@ SCHEME is seriously getting it in! We have been traveling all over this continent, Europe and will be going to many more in the coming year (Japan, Vegas, Australia, New Zealand to name a few!). Though there are few Grand Scheme/Aloe collaborations released to the public, know that there are many unreleased projects that were created far prior to “Good Things.” But for now you can download for free our version of “The Dark End of The Street” here at Stone’s Throw’s website. Btw, big up and many thanks to Carhartt clothing for their sponsorship of our European tour and releasing this tune on their “Dark End of The Street” mixtape featuring Dam Funk, Mayer Hawthorne and many others.

The Grand Scheme also has a facebook page now! LIKE US!!

We also recently visited the legendary KCRW and did a live broadcast which you can download Here

One of my favorite promotional ventures on our Europe Tour was on the show “Taratata” which you can check out our version of “California Dreamin”

And here is our next European Tour Dates! Hope to see you out!

And for a couple more video’s from The Grand Scheme collection:

Buy Joel Van Dijk’s “Truthseeker” on iTunes