Welcome to the Mayhem, Introducing a brief history of De Wallen

We kind of skipped this guy a bit, but better late than never right? So let's get to it !!!

Today we will run you through a quick journey of all the members, and the highlights of the band to date.

The year was 2011, the place was Stellenbosch and this was the start.

Starting from the left is Jeandre our frontman who we will from now on refer to as "Pikkie". He is the mad genius behind the band. Second from left is a very younger version of myself (Pieter), I was the lucky one to be picked as I wasn't really any good at playing guitar at the time. The third is Dawid old trusty, Davy Jones the ace behind the drums and the only mentally stable one of the few. Lastly, Ruan, when we started out we actually had a bassist before him, but after the first practice we never saw him again, why is still a mystery to us.

So we are a rock band from South Africa and based in Stellenbosch, if you have never been this it what it looks like for tourists, not even kidding, google it!!!

Okay, getting off topic this is not a travel blog haha.

So with that lineup, we started playing some shows and getting decent gigs, but we always had the critique that as an old school 80's rock band we were missing that second guitarist for crazy solos. So I introduce to you our first shred JEDI FROM THE DARK SIDE Justen Hosken.

With Justen in our team, we started to get our own sound and started playing bigger shows and festivals. We also won the Aandklas Battle of the Bands that gave us money to record our debut album called "Dirty Deals" that you can listen to here.

Ruan then left the band to pursue a more logical and realistic lifestyle, in his place we then got Mr. Brandon Bell, who had studied music with Pikkie.

Soon after the departure of Ruan, we had to let Justen go and in his place, we got the smooth talker and SITH LORD on lead guitar Thomas Tommy Gun Knoesen!!!

We continued growing as a band and our reputation on the local scene soon moved from nothing to something.

Unfortunately, at the end of 2014, we were met with the sad news that our drummer Davy Jones had to pull out of the band due to his studies. (He was studying Psychology at the time and 2015 was the year for his honors.) This hit the band really hard and we dropped the ball for a bit. The next year/year and a half were not really our best months as we just started flying through members.

We got a new drummer called Andre but the fit did not last very long, on the plus side he did play one of our biggest shows with us. If you are from The Netherlands you might have seen the band Fokofpolisiekar before. We were playing with them quite a lot at that time and on this specific night, we opened for them at a venue called Klein Libertas in Stellenbosch, a decent size outdoor venue. They had just upgraded their area to accommodate 1600 people and we packed out the venue that night to just under 2000!!!! Here is a shot from the stage after the show. PS. Andre is the one on the far right.

We then eventually had to let him go due to issues within the band. Next lady up for a shave was Victor Green, or as we liked to call him Vicky Boerewors.

With the current line up being.

• Pikkie on Vocals
• Me, Pieter on Rythm Guitar
• Tommy Gun on Lead Guitar
• Brandon on Bass
• Boerewors on Drums

We decided that enough was enough and it was time to get out of the slump we were in and decided that it was time for a new album. We started writing and getting funds together for the recording. A few months later "De Wallen 2.0" was released, you can buy it online here and stream it on our YouTube channel here, while you're at it, hit that subscribe button won't you ;)

We had a lot of fun in the studio tracking the album and even more fun with our photo shoot where we set an old sing star mic alight, burned some cards, had makeup done and threw each other with water and that was only the first one. What we ended up was this:

This guy (Below) made us extremely happy, let us know what you think about it in the comments!!!

The second one, we baked a cake and I think the photo says it all :)

At the time we were also working on getting a sponsor from a milky drink company called Steri Stumpie, but alas they only sent us three cases of their product and said they are sorry but they couldn't sponsor us, the next photo (Below) was our last attempt at showing them we had commitment to the brand and we could be of some use to them.

We used this album and started touring nationally and we got our biggest show to date thanks to a brilliant review written by Tecla one of the most reputable entertainment bloggers in SA, you can read it here.

Unfortunately, before we went to play the festival we once again in true De Wallen style ran into some member issues.

Boerewors could no longer put up with the unpredictable stunts our vocalist pulls out to derail any planned plans and he jumped ship, to our delight old Davy Jones came aboard again. We then also had to let Brandon go due to commitment issue's towards the band, in his place we got a brilliant replacement namely Ashley Hilton-Jacobs. Ashley had been touring and playing with Jan Akkerman a famous Dutch musician, most famous for being the guitarist for the Dutch band called Focus.

The line up now being:

• Pikkie on Vocals
• Me, Pieter on Rythm Guitar
• Tommy Gun on Lead Guitar
• Ashley on Bass
• Davy Jones on Drums

We then set off on a few national tours and then finally ended up at OppiKoppi the biggest alternative festival in South Africa. It happens yearly in Limpopo, this year will be the 23rd year of the festival. On the road we had one of the writers of Texx and the city with us to document our journey to Limpopo, you can read the article here.

We also did a small photoshoot for a promo campaign we did for the fest, here is two for you to check out:

Below is a video of us performing one of our tracks "Heart Rate Rocker" live at the festival, this video was done by the guys from Dizzy Khaki

That draws an end to most of the glamor...

Once again upholding our tireless reputation we had more members changes...

Ashley had decided to disappear one week before a national tour of 13 shows, he was later found 2 months later in Jeffreys Bay, to this day with no reason and it goes without saying he was out.

Davy Jones also said he was not available for touring anymore, so it, unfortunately, made him quite useless to the band as our biggest push is touring. The next few months we decided to just take a step back and evaluate our position and options. We decided we were not ready to throw in the towel yet and started jamming with some random guys and having auditions. What we ended up with was who we are now. So let me introduce you to the new guys:

The man who goes by many names and that can get you anything ... (drum roll andddd tha duchhh)

Adriaan "Halfies Von Meth" He actually started off as one of the band's photographers and he is actually a guitarist by choice, but when the opportunity came up to play bass he jumped at it and we caught him.

Next the out of nowhere blessing on the drums, he is studying to become a social worker and he went to Zimbabwe to build houses and schools for the underprivileged, they blessed him with the name Kasesema, his real name being Adriaan but we call him "The Happy SlenderMan" also it's his birthday today (so upvotes will be counted as gifts :) ).

So the current lineup being:

• Pikkie on Vocals
• Me, Pieter on Rythm Guitar
• Tommy Gun on Lead Guitar
• Halfies on Bass
• SlenderMan on Drums

This is still the current line up and we have not done much since, except for our Strab - Mozambique tour, you can read all about it in a previous post here

Ps don't feel lost if you see this face:

Instead of Tommy Gun, his name is Chris "Chopper" Noble, he is a good friend of ours that filled in on the tour whilst Tommy Gun was in Malaysia.

We will do some more posts in the week about our future plans and how Steemit fits into it. We will also do some more personal intros on each member and their backstory.

Until then as we say "Live a Little"

You can check out all our music and social platforms with the links below and also check out our website that me and a friend of mine @benniebanana made, I'm sure you've seen his bad ass pizza photoshop skills on here somewhere, if not do check it out.

Website: http://dewallenband.com/

New album 'De Wallen 2.0' out now! Get it here:

Itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/za/album/de-...
CD Baby: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/dewallen
Deezer: http://www.deezer.com/album/12000906
Spotify: https://play.spotify.com/album/4UGyHR...

Follow De Wallen on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DeWallenBand/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dewallenband/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dewallenband?lang=en
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/dewallenband
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8aATVncStmTnPB3NOY-AOg