Cees van Leeuwen

Cees van Leeuwen (born april 29, 1951) was Kayak's bassplayer on the first 2 albums. Before Cees, Kayak had a French bassist called Jean-Michel Marion. But Van Leeuwen was the first one to play bass on a Kayak record.

After he left Kayak, Cees went on to finish his studies. He became a well known lawyer, specialising in legal matters in the entertainment business. In july 2002, he became the Dutch State Secretary of Education, Culture and Science, under prime-minister Balkenende. When the Balkenende-government collapsed in may 2003, Van Leeuwen recorded a CD-single as a sort of farewell. The charity single was called "Balkenende Blues". Van Leeuwen wrote it, and recorded it with the help of Ton Scherpenzeel.

After the Kayak-reunion in 2000, Van Leeuwen quite often visited a Kayak concert. On april 3, 2003, he visited the "Merlin"-show in Leiden. During the encores, Van Leeuwen joined the band on stage, and played bass on "Wintertime" (see pictures above). A couple of weeks later, the same thing happened at the famous Carré theatre in Amsterdam.

Nowadays, Van Leeuwen has his own Executive Search Company. The company La Search, of which he is the co-founder, is based in Amsterdam.

The Most Underrated Van In The World...

Kayak on Radio 2 again...

On saturday 8 october 2011, only a 12 hours after the end of the Dordrecht show, Kayak played in a pub in Utrecht. The performance was for the radioshow "Spijkers Met Koppen". They played 5 songs: Life Is Good, Passing Cloud, Anywhere But Here, Most Underrated Band... and Ruthless Queen.

I won a Kayak prize!!!

After the concert in Dordrecht, I collected the prize that I won at the 'album pre-order-raffle': a drumskin that was used for the recordings of the new album (and it was visibly used!). It was already signed by Hans, and in Dordrecht I collected autogrpahs from Cindy, Ton and Edward too. Thanks, Kayak!

First show of the ABH tour: Dordrecht

(all 'live' pictures on this page: Martijn Stadhouders/Bibelot)

Friday 7 october 2011 saw the start of the Anywhere But Here Tour, at the cosy "Bibelot" in Dordrecht.

Let me just say that I was pleasantly surprised. Surprised by a tight and enthousiastic band, that didn't make many mistakes for a première. Rob completely messed up the words to Sweet Revenge, in spite of the 'guide' that hung in front of him. He blamed his sunglasses for not being able to read the words...

Rob's 'guide' to Sweet Revenge... didn't help much!

Apart from that: fantastic, and a wonderful setlist with lots of new material and some unexpected oldies! My Heart Never Changed was -in my opinion'- a typical Max Werner song, but Cindy gave a brilliant performance!
The setlist:

Kayak on Radio 2

To promote the new album, Kayak is doing some radio shows. The first one was at the 'TROS Muziekcafé' in Hilversum, for Radio 2. They played for almost an hour, with the following setlist:
Hunter And Prey, Credible Lie, Chance For A Lifetime, Passing Cloud, Starlight Dancer, Anywhere But Here, Ruthless Queen, Most Underrated Band In The World, Life Is Good.