Agenda

When asked about his obvious preference for lawnmowers, Melle de Boer, head of the Dutch alternative-folk-band John Dear Mowing Club replies: "They are a typical tool of my home country Holland; an expression of smalltown, bourgeois density in all those backyards. I also like keeping things short. I think I have a destructive nature." A troubled childhood in a dismal suburb of The Hague gave the poet, painter, singer/songwriter, de Boer, a veritable speech disorder. However, the experiences of a difficult youth have given his work the density of reinforced concrete. With a vast and surreal vocabulary the scraggy and, in real life, rather taciturn de Boer pulls objects from the borders of consciousness and arranges them in word, image and sound. He's not one to use grand gestures; rather he sacralizes the supposedly banal. However, his 2003 debut album "Lawnmower Mind" hit with a wave of euphoria, proving how interwoven with the zeitgeist his melancholic existentialism really is. De Boer's artist-friendship with manic-depressive songwriter genius Daniel Johnston has limited his appearances at international festivals to just a handful. Whenever the opportunity arises, de Boer and his John Dear Mowing Club back Johnston. Melle de Boer performs solo and with a variabe group of musicians called the Mowing Club.