Thailand Story

From about 1985-1989, when I lived in New York, I spent most of my springs and summers hanging out in the international busking scene in Europe.  From Paris and Zurich, I would join various bands forming up to play the summer season on the circuit.  The money was actually quite good back then--good enough to fly to London or Paris 2-3 times a year.

One of my friends, a Dutch one-man band named Thomas van Nes, had relocated to Chiangmai and fallen in love with Thailand and with a young Thai woman.  He later married her and they had two sons, now grown. 

The band I was playing with at the time, the Rhythm Pygmies, bumped into Thomas in Switzerland during the summer of '89, and he urged us to pay him a visit.  The four of us in the band--me, my running buddy Marc from New York on guitar; Gilles,a Canadian bassist; and Christian, a French-Spanish gypsy singer/guitarist; took Thomas up on his invitation just a few days before the Berlin Wall fell in November of '89.

One thing led to another and we started getting gigs in Chiangmai, so we decided to stay indefinitely, or at least for the winter.  In the end, the Rhythm Pygmies celebrated its swan song with a lengthy run in Bangkok's Brown Sugar jazz club in May of 1990, and then we split up more or less permanently with Marc and me staying in Thailand while Gilles and Christian returned to Europe.

Marc and I found ourselves hooked on the Thai people, the food, the culture, and the ease of getting paid gigs in Chiangmai.  Marc later married a Thai citizen, Pik, and eventually they had a daughter, Peppo.

Long story short, Marc and I eventually went our separate ways and I joined a Thai country band, Banjoman and Friends, whose members were mostly from Phrae province.  We enjoyed a very well-paid run at Chiangmai's Mae Ping Hotel, and this led to other gigs including private engagements in Thailand's "Hi-So" scene:  Army and police generals (including a former prime minister and leader of the 1991 coup that ousted Chatichai Choonhaven), aristocracy including the King and Queen, and other various and assorted rich and powerful figures.

This experience--roughly from 1992 through 1998--culminated with several Banjoman recording sessions and CDs and at least one appearance that I recall on national television.  So I was fortunate enough to be hooked up with Thai musicians who were sort of C- or D-list famous.  But these led to other gigs for me with a few A-list people including Ad Carabao and Nga Caravan.

Perhaps most importantly, all this was happening as Thailand was in the midst of an economic boom which ended only with the so-called Asian currency crisis in July 1997. In other words, Thailand in the mid-'90s was the right place and the right time for me.

Along the way I also met a Thai woman, and we ended up together for about three years--no children--and it was from her that I learned the bulk of my Thai language skills.  Meanwhile, my colleagues in the Banjoman group were the ones who introduced me to phlaeng luk-thung and Thai classical music.  Banjoman ultimately disbanded in '98 but since then there have been many imitators in Chiangmai and Bangkok--indeed, probably in every major city in Thailand.