J-Mann

Life, eh? Doesn’t it just have a habit of getting in your way sometimes? Everyone in the known world would have had this feeling at some point but fewer would know this as much as Dutch singer Willem Bijkerk, who performs under the name Waylon. He’s a country singer who’s a bit of a star in his native Netherlands, and has made waves across the world. Even signing to EMI in 2001 to record an album in Nashville and eventually perform with his idol Waylon Jennings (the man he pinched his stage name from) the year before Jennings passed. So nearly twenty years after his first proper steps into the music business he had a great song to perform on the biggest stage in Europe, the Eurovision Song Contest, in front of 195 million people watching all over the world. It was finally going to be his night… Or at least it would have been. Had it not been the same year Conchita Wurst completely stole the show away from anyone and everyone else in the entire continent.

Again, life hurts like that sometimes. However, Waylon is an artist who’d be worthy of your time even without the hard luck story of the year to back him up. The dude has a voice to die for, one that can handle anything from the most powerful James Brown influenced soul numbers to the country rock tunes that nearly made him a sensation in the states. He also has the charisma to hold a crowd of any number of people in the palm of his hand, but you don’t need to take my word for it. He’ll be in your town soon enough, and it’s up to us to give him the exposure that he would have had in any other year of the song contest. One to see as soon as possible.