Real Roots Café

I grew up with music of Otis Redding, Grand Funk Railroad, Wishbone Ash, Black Sabbath, The Free, Buffalo Springfield, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. When I was fourteen I worked as a DJ in a local discotheque called Walhalla. First, I want to dedicate the Real Roots Café website in memory to the most futuristic roots-rock temple of the late sixties begin seventies called Walhalla. It was the winter of 1972 as this house of “Real People, Real Instruments and Real Music” burned down to the ground. This musical nightmare happened in place called Millingen aan de Rijn in the Netherlands. After that I did learn more about more popular music of bands like Stealers Wheel, Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers, Crosby Stills Nash & Young and The Eagles. But the roots of the best American Roots Music came in those days from The Ozark Mountain Daredevils. I always stayed true to the music of the band.In those days, I entertained, as a DJ, the youth movement in our area and myself with some real music. Although I do not think that in those the name Roots music did exists, I enjoyed all true believers, mostly in the weekends, about the latest discoveries and developments in music. I always stayed true to the music that I did loved then and that I love now.In 1994 I did get my first Internet connection. With my super fast 14 K4 modem, connection music world was on my feet, new opportunities to discover music and to broaden my music knowledge. At that time in our country, the Roots Music scene was doing fine. It didn’t matter if it was country, blues, world, reggae or singer songwriter music, in general the interest in Roots music was growing fast.Via a live performance that Jimmy LaFave gave in O42 in Nijmegen back in 1995, I landed at the Munich Records Anniversary Festival, in 1996. It where LaFave and his friends Wyckham Porteous, Michael Fracasso, Abra Moore en Mark Shumate who introduced me in world that they call now Americana. I noticed, with a lot of pleasure that I was not standing alone with my love for "Real People, Real Instruments and Real Music". The slightly stolen slogan, after visiting the Munich Records Festival, was for me the moment to start the a Roots music website. I in fact picked up where I stopped in those nostalgic days. I started the website “JJ’s Alternative Music Corner”. I still remember my first interview with Neal Casal, in catacomb of Paradiso, Amsterdam, meeting my hero’s David Munyon, Jimmy LaFave and Joseph Parsons.After I finished my study, in 1997, I started to work, as a volunteer, at the local radio station WFM 107.1 located in our hometown. I actually started the Real Roots Café radio show and website in 1998. In 2000 we started to experiment with interactive radio on the Internet. With a little of my friends Egbert Kingma (Lelystad Radio) and Paul van Gelder (roots DJ number one in the Netherlands) I started broadcasting the Real Roots Café radio show via Live365.com. Knowing that the victims were my involved local listeners, I was strained to stop the broadcasting of the Real Roots Café radio show in 2002. Bases of trusts were broken and my own trustworthy and code where standing under discussion. In other words, boy it did hurt. After informing my local listeners and contacts about the disaster allot of reaction came to me. It gave me new spirit, so here we are with, what I think, one of the most interesting Roots music places on the internet called the Real Roots Café.Please surf to www.realrootscafe.com to find out more.