Paceshifters

A true story...

Wijhe, a small town in the eastern parts of Holland. Home to friendly people, lovely views, great fishingspots and vast amounts of space. Bikersparadise, the smell of dung. Wijhe is green, quiet, healthy. It’s also boring as hell for local teenage boys!

Luckily, they do have electricity in Wijhe. As we all know, boredom, teens and 220 volts can only lead to one thing: punkrock. Picture brothers Paul (17) and Seb (15) Dokman, strumming their guitars in an attick in nowhereland, somewhere in 2008, dreaming of punkrockstardom. But rocking out without a drummer is hard, as is tracking down an equally bored drummerboy in Wijhe. That’s like looking for a tractor in New York City. But somehow they found an 18 year old guy called Koen (18) to drag his drumkit up the stairs. This not only resulted in even more mayhem from the attick, but the three found out their punkrock sounded pretty cool! Or at least, that’s what they thought. Needless to say, there’re not a lot of punkrockconnaisseurs in Wijhe to tell ‘m otherwise. But pretty soon the three knew they actually were on to something good...

All normal teenage kids need rolemodels and examples. Seb, Paul and Koen are no exception. They get their kicks from worldfamous punkrockmasters The Supersuckers.To grow up on the countryside and to not play metal or bluesrock is a small miracle in itself. But to have the kings of the simultanously risen guitarnecks as a starting point is something you’d wish al lot of kids in small towns all over the world would think of. Which they don’t. In what only can be described as a strange case of circumstance (a story I leave for future coverstories in all leading punkrockmags worldwide) noneother than Rontrose Heathman, guitarslinger for the Supersuckers, somehow ended up in rural Wijhe, at the home of the Dokman brothers. The quiet and peaceful atmosphere the punkrockconnaisseur pur sang found himself waking up to was soon disturbed by a sound he knew all too well. It came from upstairs. Thinking he was still dreaming at the sight of the three rocking youngsters (who were about his age...combined!), Rontrose was still pinching himself, when Seb, the youngest, said: “Hi, we’re called the Paceshifters, we’re big fans of the Supersuckers, we even made a song about you guys, and we want you to rock out with us right now!” The powerchord from his brothers guitar made sure Rontrose –who liked what he heard and heard what he liked- was fully awake. It didn’t take him long to plug-in the good ol’ Gibson.

“Let’s try that song again...the song about Canada”, he said after the Paceshifters blasted through the song Seb and Paul wrote after missing out on a Canadian Supersuckersshow because of their age. They did. Rontrose was playing the music he loved, and playing it with these kids never felt more ‘punk’ than that morning in Wijhe.

From one came another. The song “Do Whatever It Takes” is available on a Paceshifters/Supersuckers split EP. Both bands will perform together at the infamous Vera Club in Groningen, Holland. And more gigs in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Holland are scheduled.

What it comes down to is that things do happen in small villages like Wijhe. If only you will and can make it work... (Paul Schwarte/Groningen/April’09)