A heaving house of musical ill repute, inhabited by a horn section sharp as a razor, a top-notch guitarist, one hell of a honky-tonk piano man and a crazy stoker on drums. A regular wrecking crew guided by a captain on banjo and vocals who often is found standing aghast by his crew-members antics, but always reconciles to their crazy musical ideas in the end.
Front man JP Mesker owns a record collection that runs from Louis Armstrong to Tom Waits and all the way through to Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. He started Maison du Malheur in the year 2010, initially as a solo/singer songwriter project. Within four years, his ‘project’ had turned into a wild rhythm-n-blues-jazz-jive band, that played hundreds of gigs for over a hundred thousand enthusiastic festival goers, sold thousands of albums, and saw their music being incorporated endorsing globally a Dutch bestselling beer brand (yes, Heineken).
Maison du Malheur like to celebrate every gig like it’s a jubilee. Eagerly they mount even the tiniest of stages, adjust their hats, plug in and away they go. Full throttle. The crowd hasn’t come all this way to watch a bunch of shoe gazers; they want to see and hear musical swashbucklers, top notch players that can build a musical safe haven in minutes. A free for all, for outsiders and insiders, for the found and lost, for tramps and tricksters, in short: for all musical vagabonds out there.
This calls for high energy and explosive musical dynamics, a rough ride that often seems to get dangerously close to the edge. But herein exactly lies Maison du Malheur’s power: playing live, creating music on the spot, music that breathes, and in so doing they claim their rock-‘n-jazz hot spot in the universe -together with their audience. And this celebration isn’t about fame or money or the latest mobile phone. It’s about life and enjoying life. It’s about the bop till you drop rock till you stop, and then start all over again.
