The Project
Henk Hofstede meets Leonard Cohen in a TV-studio in Brussels in 1988. Henk has been a huge fan for many years and sums up his courage to talk to the man. They have dinner together at the cafeteria of the station. Cohen tells Henk about an upcoming world tour and how he doesn't have a band. And he asks whether the Nits would be willing to go out on tour as his band.... Unfortunately the Nits are on their own extended tour after the success of their album In The Dutch Mountains, a tour which leads through Europe and on to Canada, New York and even Moscow. Henk has to refuse the golden offer. Years later he still wakes up at night as he was dreaming of that world tour they didn't play.
A couple of years later, Henk put on a pilgrimage with movie-director Seppo Pietikainen, his friend from Finnland. They plan to make a short film about their voyage to Hydra, the island where Cohen wrote his first songs. In 2003, Henk meets the Belgian writer Marc Hendrickx on the very same island. Hendrickx is busy writing a book about Cohen. For the Dutch edition of the book, Henk records the CD "Yesterday's Tomorrow" with nine songs of Cohen's and one of his own about the pilgrimage to Hydra. These sober and authentic arrangements are developped with Pim Kops (De Dijk) and Marjolein van der Klauw (Powderblue). Arwen Linneman, the ex-bass player of the Nits, joins for some of these tracks. Thus the Avalanche Quartet is born. They do some TV and radio-gigs.and the CD receives good reviews
The Avalanche Quartet has given several concerts in Holland, Switzerland and France in 2006 and in 2007, some with guest-guitarist Oli Hartung (Stop the Shoppers, Hank Shizzoe, Shirley Grimes, Simon Ho) with whom the Quartet has recorded some songs for a commercial release of the CD on Faze Records.
The Musicians
Henk Hofstede (Nits) - vocals, guitar
Marjolein van der Klauw (Powderblue) - vocals, guitar
Pim Kops (DeDijk) - various instruments
Arwen Linnemann - double bass
&
Oli Hartung (Shirley Grimes, Hank Shizzoe) - guitar
