Seesaw, the story

When you want to know the story of Seesaw, you'll have to start with another band: Hey Tony. Hey Tony was an all-girl band from the bulbs-area in the Netherlands and actually started making music while being stuck on a boat during a school's excursion. In boredom, the three girls started playing the guitar and sang some songs, which was picked up by their teacher. She encouraged them in joining the annual performance night at school. Less than a month later they joined their first contest in the local club, playing covers of various bands diverging from Dinosaur Jr. to the Milltown Brothers.

After these first performances, Naomi, Ineke and Ingrid decided to form a band and called themselves Hey Tony, originating form a talking sandwich called Tony and Sonic Youth's classic Hey Joni. Naomi and Ingrid continued playing their acoustic (Spanish) guitars while Ineke picked up on percussion. The voices of Naomi and Ingrid blended very well and though they didn't have much experience, almost everyone was charmed by the appearance of the three girls.
After a year of playing their songs on acoustic guitars, Hey Tony plugged in and slowly turned to the electric world. Ingrid had been playing the bass for some years and with Naomi starting the electric guitar the band was ready for some real stuff. Gradually, they started to write their own songs and still performed on a regular basis.

Then, in June 1993, it was time to record a demo. And where else could that be than in the Next To Jaap Studio with Corno Zwetsloot! Corno, being a little older than the three girls, had played in a number of bands and had a lot of experience playing the guitar. At the time, he had just formed a new band called December Boys. He had written some new material for the band, but the other bandmembers found it was too dissonant for them. Corno decided to ask the Hey Tonies to play these songs with him, initially only for recording these songs. The girls accepted this offer and they spent many days of that summer in the Next To Jaap Studio's rehearsing and recording the songs. During this period, it seemed that the four musicians fitted well together and that their co-operation turned out better than they thought.

And having recorded a demo, why not play it in public?

So that's where it all started. At first, the band's name was Small Hat Seesaw, which is a literal translation of the Dutch game "hoedje wip". Where Hey Tony's songs were bright and easy, the songs of Small Hat Seesaw seemed to be drenched in mud, with heavy guitars and spherical drums. The next songs of Small Hat Seesaw, which were recorded in the winter of 1993, were much more pop-based but had still heavy noise eruptions from time to time. Influenced by bands like Sonic Youth and The Breeders, they found their own way in noise-pop songs. The combination of heavy sounds, dissonance and Naomi's melodramatic vocals, sometimes doubled by Ingrid, created their unique sound.

Hey Tony developed almost independently from Small Hat Seesaw. After their first demo, they released two other demo's, both recorded and produced by Corno at Next To Jaap studio's. After years of successful performances, including being a support act for Heather Nova in 1995, the girls decided that the school-based Hey Tony was no longer an extension of their personal lives.

Meanwhile, Small Hat Seesaw was slowly winning ground in the bulbs district. Their music might not be easy, but it went deep, and for most people it just took some time to get used to the sound of Small Hat Seesaw. This was proven by several positive demo reviews. Small Hat Seesaw's demo "Composition Between Black and White" was even the best demo ever in Opscene's demo-column.

Encouraged by their friends The Post (now The Ponies) who recorded their first CD in the Sing Sing studio in Metslawier, Friesland, Small Hat Seesaw counted their money, packed their instruments and drove up north to put their music on disc. In the summer of 1995 they spent five days in the studio to record nine songs. They made use of several instruments like xylophone and accordion. The then drummer of December Boys (Marijn, now Mashed Potatoes) filled in with percussion. It took a long year to return to Sing Sing to mix the songs.

The release of the debut CD (containing eight of the nine recorded songs) was, again, months later. With this release, the name of the band was changed to Seesaw, which was is shorter and easy to remember. The Amsterdam based Konkurrent distributed the CD which was called Ish. The CD presentation on the 20th of March 1997 was mainly acoustic with mandolin, flute, harmonium, accordion and additional percussion. The first 100 CD's came with a surprise-bag, filled with all kinds of stuff, including a mini work of art. Reviews of the CD can be read in the review section of this site.

Slowly but steadily, Seesaw reached more people with every performance they had. Though their aim was not to conquer the world, they knew that their music was good enough to be heard and appreciated by a number of people. Meanwhile in the rehearsing room, Seesaw was working on more pop-based songs. They cut with the everlasting, ten-minutes songs and tried to put more melodic parts into their music. The noise, however, was still a big part of it all. Although the new songs were more up tempo and less muddy, Seesaw still sounded like themselves.

In February 1999, five days were spent in Sing Sing Studio's to record nine songs. The final mixes were however in January 2000. The CD, called Gold and Money, was released by Amsterdam based label Transformed Dreams in September 2000. The successful presentation was on October 4th in Paradiso, Amsterdam. Since Seesaw joined the Transformed Dreams Label, they did several gigs with other bands from this label, like Seedling, Zea and Zoppo.

Unfortunately, Naomi left Seesaw in December 2000 for personal reasons. After her departure, Seesaw was doing gigs, with help from our friends Asta, Ad and Cees. At the end of August, Asta decided to join Seesaw as their new singer.
Though Seesaw was still looking for a guitar player, the first recordings for the fresh and renewed Seesaw were made in December 2001 and February 2002 in Sing Sing studio's (Metslawier, Friesland). Marcel Hermans, running the Transformed Dreams label, came along to do production.

In March 2002, Seesaw finally found their new guitar player in Jason Langdon (from Brighton, UK). His first appearance was in LVC, Leiden on March 23rd 2002. Since then, Seesaw was complete again with five members.

Seesaw decided to do new recordings of the songs that would complete a new album, but now in Next to Jaap studio's, the home studio of guitar player Corno. With help from Peter v/d Meer (Mashed Potatoes) and again Marcel Hermans (Transformed Dreams) they had two sessions of five days. A couple of songs that were recorded in Singsing had to be done again due to hissing on the tapes caused by the transposition of the original tapes. Still, there was plenty of time and energy to do so. Also, Jason could play along now, what could make the songs sound more like the band was at that time.
The mixing and mastering took a little more time than expected. But eventually, the CD was finished and released in April 2003. With a CD presentation in Paradiso, Amsterdam, Seesaw was looking forward to the upcoming gigs.

Soon after the release of Violent Elegance, Jason Langdon decided not to continue playing with Seesaw. To be able to play live, Cees van Appeldoorn was helping Seesaw out of a scrape for the second time. But whith a great many bits of bad luck, the rest of the band decided to chuck it at the beginning of 2004. Seesaw's last gig was on October 31st in OCCII, Amsterdam.