Well,here it is...RHP live! This has been a long time in the making, just like the album. How do you get a band on the road that is spread out all over Europe? Lale is living in Sweden, Bas is spending most of his time in the U.K. nowadays, Udo lives in Enkhuizen and Richie resides in good ol' Amsterdam.

CD copying and the downloading of music is a thing that's common in every household nowadays. Everybody and his dog download the music, put in on their mp3 player and there you go. Surely I have done my share of downloading music and checking out new stuff, but for smaller artists, I always support them by buying directly from their sites. We have sold a fair amount of RHP cd's, but enough money to take care of a bigger tour...no way. Venues don't pay much for this kind of music and I get 35 mails a day of people who don't want to pay at the entrance and ask me to put them on the guest list. This all seems like the perfect scenario 'how to mute an upcoming and promising new jazz-rock act'. So what's the answer here?

The answer is the music.

Everybody was so much into getting together, even if it meant playing the smallest clubs for very little money, just the kick of bringing this project on the road was enough. Guitarday was the first major gig that came in at summer '04 so I decided to take care of some gigs around that so that everybody could stay over for a couple of weeks to keep the financial damage to a minimum. Some gigs got cancelled along the way, some gigs were added, but around december 2004 there was two weeks of playing and a clinic for Lale so things looked good. Rehearsal space was taken care of, flight tickets were booked and last but not least.. fingers were getting blue from the hours of practise some of us got. Stuff was happening!

Thank you Arthur Alphenaar for your countless hours repairing pedals and taking care of other equipment problems we encountered, from midi splitters, mega pedals to boosting pedals. Thanks again for loaning out a complete keyboard set to Lale for him to use on this tour. Shipping equipment is not an option nowadays, and this help just resqued the tour. Thank you Bose for loaning out a complete cylindrical system set to us. This way we are not depedent on house pa's that are sometimes, most of the time, not reliable in smaller place.

We'll try to keep you updated here of our travels and playing experiences and will add some personal notes from me and the band on the way. Hope you enjoy!

Rich, jan. 05