Today I had a truly incredible experience! The first time I came to Belgium many years ago, people told me about Bobbe Jaan, a Belgian country music star who owned his own amusement park, named BobbeJaanLand.
It took a couple of decades, but when I posted a few days ago that I was staying in Herenthals to play the Sjock Festival, my buddy Diego Geraci hooked me up with Bobbe Jaan’s son Jack. Turns out the private, family-owned Bobbe Jaan Museum is in Herenthals where we are staying! What a stroke of luck!
Jack invited the whole band to come along, but in the end it was just myself and our Untamed Youth go-go dancer Manuela Mondo who walked over to the museum today. We got a personal tour and it was incredible!
I guess I wasn’t expecting something this well curated. Located in a giant warehouse area in an industrial park, the family has done an incredible job of incorporating lots of original vintage elements from the amusement park, some really exceptional museum-quality displays of their father’s and mother’s stage wear, cowboy hats, boots, guitars, saddles, and most amazingly, two of Nudie Cohn’s original Nudiemobiles, which Bobbe Jaan bought from Nudie in the early 1970s!
I was really impressed, and I learned a lot about Bobbe Jaan’s extensive career, which began right after World War II and ended when he passed away in 2010. The guy did it all: singing, yodeling, whistling, playing the harmonica (he was good friends with Toots Thielemans), guitar, horse riding, and just being a proper country music star in a European country where that was not a normal thing. I really wish I could’ve met him!
Big thanks to Jack for the tour, and I think Manuela enjoyed it as well (Jack is fluent in French, it was impressive to watch him go back and forth between Dutch and English and French in conversation). And of course big thanks to Diego for getting me the invitation!! What an amazing day! Tonight, I will go see Joan Jett play at the Sjock Festival. I have to admit, I have a pretty fun life! Very grateful!
See many more photos and videos at Deke’s original Facebook post!
