Going round in circles……
Smoeff started at the turn of the century as a means to overcome a year of not having a plan. I just quit working at a record company / distribution company / live music promotor as it had become predominantly a job in the office more and more, instead of it being a way to be physically involved in the live music business. I never had the patience and energy to sit down behind a desk a whole day, several days a week, so when it became mostly that, I was getting unhappy and had to step out. But I stepped out without having a plan.
As part of leaving I received all the amps&drums that were lying around the office, gear that was used to help the touring bands we had on our roster. No one else was gonna use it after I left so it was given as a golden handshake somehow, after being involved in that company for more or less 15 years.
So I decided to use the gear to rent it out to touring bands and as that wasn’t gonna pay my bills I also was gonna go back on tour more often again. In the meantime I would take the time to find out what I really wanted to do with my life.……
….. And now we are 16 years further in time, I am kind of still figuring out what I want to do with the rest of my life and I am still renting out gear. So it never has been a conscious decision to go and have this company and make it bigtime, just one thing led to another…..
I have to say that what I probably like to do most is to take on a duty and try to do better bit by bit. Develop it, learn from mistakes, keep growing. If anything, that would be the basis of my “everything”. I did it in sports when I was younger, I am doing it within Smoeff and right now I am also trying to do it in Mambo, a little village in the Usambara mountains in Tanzania. I get enthusiastic about something, I like to be involved, I agree on being involved, I make a judgement on where we are and start building from there. It is the natural lifecycle for me.
With Smoeff I have gone almost the full circle. I started it because I didn’t want to be in an office anymore. So I went on tour, I did a bit of gear rental, I booked tours. Then it grew so I had to go on tour much less, later I also had to stop booking tours as it conflicted in time with the immer growing amount of bands I was renting gear to.
So Smoeff became slowly a company that was renting gear to touring bands and on the side we helped them with finding a van, finding a tour manager/driver, find a place to print t-shirts, etcetera. Because of all the pick ups at the airport, drinking coffee while loading the van, it didn’t feel like an office job luckily, but the days were getting longer and longer. And as noticed I am now writing we instead of I. It had become too much for myself alone, so some other people got involved.
The other people were friends who toured as musicians or as tour managers and inbetween touring started working at Smoeff to be able to pay the bills, or simply because they loved the concept. Everyone was doing everything at first, but then slowly it felt that people should do what they are best at. A drummer should compile drumsets, a guitarist should test the amps.
This also meant I should stay away from all of that, as I am not a musician and do not have a technical ear. After almost 15 years it felt that every job there was to do at Smoeff could be done better by someone else but me. In that way it has been a miracle Smoeff had done amost 10 years without these people.
So it has been a good moment for me to step back a bit as those 15 years have been tropical years (as we say in Holland) and I decided to move away for a year and just focus on doing a lot of the communication and keep an eye on the books. This is where the ‘job’ would become an office job again and so I decided to do this somewhere on the other send of the world, on top of a mountain, without a desk, without phonecalls, without stress. And enough time to think about the rest of my life and start up something new again, next to Smoeff.
This is the real story of Smoeff. So everything else you have read about it was a lie. As a big part in me don’t want it to be too serious. Making music is supposed to be fun…. working with musicians is supposed to be fun also….. I hope this is still the basis for Smoeff and everyone involved. We try our utmost to come up with a great product, but receiving the bands at our warehouse, going to see them playing live, talking to them about all the arrangements, it should be fun for everyone involved. Luckily almost all bands we work with look at that in the same way, so it clicks.
The ones where it doesn’t click, who are unreasonable in their requests, who act like assholes, ask for discount for no apparent reason, or made up reasons, we usually stop working with quickly. And for some reason that almost never has to be communicated, most of the time that is a mutual feeling. A mutual feeling between band and us, but also between the various members of the Smoeff crew.
So who is carrying on the works at Smoeff right now….. Thale is testing all amps before and after tours. Rogier is compiling all drums and doing most of the repairing of drums. Luc is looking after the keyboards and does a lot of the straightforward fixing of amps. Tos does almost all the more complex repairs. Shireen and Martijn are looking after the vans. Shireen also does a lot of deliveries all over Europe, so does Marjolijn. Martijn does a fair bit of pre-production. Everyone is doing pick ups of bands at Schiphol. I am doing almost all the communication in advance and is making sure everyone pays and gets paid. Eva goes through the horrors of waiting for my information and keeps the website updated…… And still most of them can take over eachothers duties as everyone is stubborn enough to admid they can’t and also treasure the friendships that the whole thing is based upon.
Ok. As said, in the past I always made up bullshit stories as I don’t allow myself to take myself to serious. But now, sitting on top of a mountain looking down, I have to say that I am pretty damn proud of what these people at Smoeff have been accomplishing. And it feels right to state that this time.
So there you have it!
Gijs
April 2016