Van Veen

This 4-piece band performs original contemporary roots music by Canadian/Australian singer-songwriter Van Veen. Music could be compared to Bruce Cockburn, Xavier Rudd, The Waifs, The Backsliders. The band members have been performing together for years and this shows in their ability to “get into the groove” from the very first song to the last. While the emphasis is on acoustic instruments (with electric guitar in some songs) the band delivers a very tight, powerful and sometimes hard-driven sound, thanks to a very talented rhythm section. The band are also renowned for outstanding instrumental solos from Miss DJ Gosper (harmonica) and Van Veen (lap slide / guitar).

Van Veen & Band

An Article by Zak Daniels

Canadian-Australian singer/songwriter, Van Veen, has been described as a cross between Bruce Cockburn, Leonard Cohen and Leo Kotke. It’s not surprising, then, to discover that all of these artists have had a strong influence on Van Veen’s singing, playing and song writing. He describes his music as “acoustic roots music with a slightly alternative edge”, but admits that he took the long way ‘round to where he is now.

“I guess I’m a product of the music my parents played when I was very young,” says Van Veen, “as well as the music I turned to as a young man all those musicians who influenced me over the years. My parent’s house was always filled with music. They were both musicians, and if they weren’t singing, playing or writing songs there’d be a record playing or a radio blaring. They listened to everything from Woody Guthrie and Mississippi John Hurt to Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Ella Fitzgerald, Louie Armstrong, Frank Sinatra. It was a fairly eclectic mix.”

As a teenager Van Veen discovered Bruce Cockburn, Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot, Phoebe Snow, Neil Young and the usual host of 60’s and 70’s folk heroes. But he was also drawn to performers like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Cream, Jean Luc Ponty, Chick Corea, Dire Straits, Tom Waits and Rickie Lee Jones.

“With the folk singers it was mostly the songs I was drawn to,” says Van Veen, “but with the rock bands it was the guitar playing. I was a bass player at the time, but I really wanted to be a guitar god.”

Van Veen started his music career at age 10 when his father decided he needed a bass player in his band, The Generation Bridge. “Dad brought home this pear-shaped electric bass he had scrounged and told me to learn how to play it.”

The Generation Bridge, so named because of the range of ages in the ten-person group, toured all over Canada and Northern USA, playing in coffee houses, bars, community halls, churches, parks and festivals. The band eventually recorded an album in 1970 and won a competition to open the prestigious Ontario Place Forum to a packed house of around 10,000.

“Mum and Dad had day jobs at the time,” recalls Van Veen, “but that never stopped us packing the gear into the van on a Friday afternoon and heading off for a 5 or 6 hour drive. It was a fairytale life for a kid.”

After his family immigrated to Australia in 1972, Van Veen, still only 15, started playing bass in rock and jazz bands and by the 80’s was a sought-after freelance and session bassist.

However, he eventually gave up performing to study and raise a family. “I didn’t play for nearly 15 years,” he says. “I didn’t even have a guitar laying about the house. I guess I’d realised that I was never going to ‘make it’ or be satisfied playing bass. I really wanted to be a song writer and guitarist, but at that time I felt both of those goals were way beyond my grasp.”

It was an automobile accident that eventually re-introduced Van Veen to music. “I was hit by a car and I received a small payout. So I bought a guitar and organised to have some lessons. I was 39 at the time and it seemed a bit like ‘too little, too late’, but I really needed to do it. I felt compelled to get this ‘thing’ out of my system.”

Van Veen’s newly-developed skills as a song writer and guitarist lead to the formation of the band, Man Bites Dog. The band, a trio that included his brother, Mark, recorded a CD in 1997, which was released with moderate success.

He later joined blues-rock outfit, The Dynamic Lifters to satisfy his “need to wail on an electric guitar”. However, grinding out rock covers in pubs and clubs “started to wear me down,” recalls Van Veen. “I really felt that I was still on the wrong track. I was satisfying a need, but not the right one. Then one night during a fairly soul-destroying gig I looked over at Kev [Austin, drummer] and I knew that he was ready to give it all away too. The next day Kev rang me and said he’d had enough he wasn’t going to do the pubs or clubs anymore. I knew it was time to take a break and try to focus my musical energy on what I wanted to do.”

With plenty of spare time in hand Van Veen set out to write enough songs for another CD and ended up with enough songs for three. The first of these, One Tiny Life, was released in Feb 2004, and another is currently in production. Van Veen has been re-joined by drummer, Kev Austin and harmonica player, DJ Gosper, as well as ex-Sydney bass player, Dean Edgecombe.

“I’ve been playing and rehearsing with these guys for a while now, and I always feel blessed to have such a symbiotic relationship with this band,” says Van Veen. “We think the same way and, musically, pretty much want the same things. You can’t ask for more than that.”

So has the long journey been worth it? “This new acoustic CD and the work that I have been doing with the new band feels, well right,” admits Van Veen. “I started off in a mostly acoustic outfit in 1967 and now I finally feel that, after a journey of 37 years I have, in some way, taken over from where my father left off.”

We play mostly on the East coast of Australia

The great singer-songwriters, such as Neil Young, Bruce Cockburn, Bob Dillan, Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and so on...

I use Fender, Gibson and Martin guitars and Fender tube amps. (D'Addario strings on all guitars.)