Biography
As a very young girl of four years old I loved to listen to Roberta Flack’s album ‘Killing me softly’ and decided I wanted to become a singer. The pureness and honesty in her music and voice felt like magic to me. Five years later in 1979, listening to Steve Gadd’s drumtrack on Rickie Lee Jones’ “Chuck E’s in love” I suddenly dreamed of being a drummer. I already found my affinity with playing drums for about three years. Six years old I was when I got my first lesson. It was my brother, who was eighteen at the time, who tought me how to hold the sticks and how to play some simple rhythms. At the age of eleven, still playing drums, my youngest brother started to play bassguitar. We sort of formed a two-man’s band, performing for the kids in the street who stood there in front of our house, staring through the window, asking for more. I started to sing while playing drums because we were in desperate need of a singer..
At that time I became more attracted to singing than playing drums and I started to sing in several schoolbands. At the age of seventeen I had my first gig with Karel Boehlee, really being somebody in the scene, he made me feel so nervous that I totally messed up. Now, after more than twenty years, we’re still making music together so probably it wasn’t that bad at all.
What else…
In 1989, I joined the group “Girlstreet”, produced by Jochem Fluitsma en Eric van Tijn and did several commercials. In 1993 I wrote the titletrack of the feature-movie “Angie”.
During the following years I regularly performed as a freelance background-vocalist in the bands of Trijntje Oosterhuis, Marco Borsato, Berget Lewis etc., was in the organisation of the most special concert I have ever experienced: “Samen voor de Molukken-2001” and wrote a few tracks for Edsilia Rombley’s debute album. Recently I performed as a backing vocalist with the Metropole Orchestra and Trijntje Oosterhuis singing Burt Bacharach songs (DVD-recordings) and the great Al Jarreau concert during “The Hague Jazz”. In June 2012 the CD “Al Jarreau and the Metropole Orchestra Live” was released on Concord Records. Conducted by Vince Mendoza and with me as one of the backingvocalists :)! Check out some video’s in the “Simone Backing Vocalist”-section!
Now with the foundation of Storybook Music Publishing and two beautiful album-releases followed by the release of our live-DVD, all I want for the future is the possibility to compose and perform songs that are recognizable by their pureness and honesty.