Amsterdam was a trip! I took Ernest Lane the great blues/boogie Woogie pianist to the INTERNATIONAL BOOGIE WOOGIE FESTIVAL HOLLAND 2011. We rolled into Schipol Airport after a pleasant flight from LAX on Thursday March 10, 2011 and went to our hotel in Ermelo, about 1 hr East of Amsterdam. After the flight we pretty much crashed out...jet lag!

Friday I went into Amsterdam for a few hours. The train station was a couple of miles up from the hotel in Ermelo and I walked it. What a great way to see the "real" life in any city. Go exploring. Caught the train into Amersfoort and changed over to the line that runs into A'Dam.

Really didn't get into too much trouble, just walked around a bit and had some breakfast. Sampled some of the finest that Amsterdam had to offer pretty much and enjoyed an afternoon of just walking around the city, over bridge after bridge, canal after canal... Just great!

The festival is a pretty big deal; Europeans take quite a lot of interest in American Music...southern music especially. It makes me proud of my southern roots! The first night (Friday) was the big hang out/jam session time. Mike Sanchez, Martijn Schock,Hannes Otahal and Han Van Dam all performed on the piano. Stefano Franco and his musical compadre James Thompson got up and did a few tunes. Just awesome!

Later after the dinner we all ended up in the basement of the hotel at a jam session with bass, sax, drums, piano, and singers. The bar was rockin'! I took Ernest down and he performed a tune for everyone. He had been a little ill from the plane ride over but he did well.

Funny story: Ernest has several lines that can only be called "Ernest Lane Licks". This one line I'd heard him play hundreds of times before, he went to pull it off and didn't quite play it right. The next night I heard one of the piano players pull it off verbatim, complete with the mistake!

The evening of the performance was incredible. Everything went like clockwork and it was so nice to be appreciated in such a manner! Go explore their site to see the photos of the evening; their site is in frames so it's not possible to provide a direct link to the page. Look for the link to view photos.

After the festival we all went back down to the basement and had a jam session until about 4am. The next day I woke up at about 9am and went into the city once again; the great guitarist Stephan Janowski took me down to the port and dropped me off as he was headed home from the weekend in Ermelo. I did the whole tourist thing, captured some video, took pictures, walked through the Red Light District and somehow ended up in the scratch & dent section...LOL.

Tried to sleep but that didn't work so well and ended up starting the video at the top of this page and finished it on the plane ride home. Hope you enjoy it!

3 Random pics

View more pics here