Album Notes

Imaginary Conversation’ is an imaginary conversation between Michael de Jong and a woman from Texas, with whom he had an open, intense spiritual relation. A relation which was very open and honest but nevertheless doomed to fail. The release of ‘Imaginary Conversation’ is an important event for de Jong. Not based on any kind of logic, but only on feelings and the thought that the album as it is now, acoustic, fragile, emotional, is the only proper way to close this period of his eventful life.

Some of the songs included on ‘Imaginary Conversation’ have been recorded before with a band. Because of certain circumstances they developed differently from the way Michael had imagined. They were missing the honesty, the directness and the emotion that these acoustic recordings do have. Also they were taken out of the context they were written in.

Michael is an American of Dutch/French decent, born in France at the end of World War II. His mother is Basque, his father Frisian. The family lived for a short while in the Dutch Town of Alkmaar before they migrated to Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, where Michael grew up.

De Jong Sr. had a building firm. It was hard work for the family. Especially in the winter when young Michael had to rise early to defrost the building sand. At the age of 13 Michael was given his first guitar. Two years later, his dad borrowed money to buy him an electric guitar. And Michael de Jong decided to be a musician. More precise, a successful musician. His first band ‘The Nightwalkers’ backed Bobby Bare, the country superstar that broke through with the classic ‘Detroit City’. Sometime in ’65 Michael moved to Detroit and became a regular at John Sinclair’s well-known Ann Arbor Blues Festival. Several years of never-ending touring followed before Michael set up camp in New Orleans, where he played in the strip bars of Bourbon Street. Seven nights a week for thirteen months. Sharing the stage with such legendary performers as Professor Longhair and Earl King. Next stop: San Francisco, where Michael lived on and off in the gutter and played with artists like Jerry Garcia, Paul Butterfield, Albert Collins, John Lee Hooker, Maria Muldaur, Country Joe, Charlie Musselwhite, Albert King and Roy Buchanan. Just to name a few. Again De Jong decided to move on and joined the band of blues legend Jimmy Reed as his guitar player. In this period Michael started to write his own songs. Reed had lectured him: ‘It ain’t how you sing the song boy, it’s how you live your life and if you ain’t lived the life, how can you sing the song’. Michael most definitely lived that life and would continue doing so for a long time. It was Michael who found Jimmy Reed when he suddenly died in Oakland on August 29, 1976.

In the early ‘80’s Michael de Jong recorded his first album, using the Steve Miller band as backing musicians. Producer was the notorious Nick Gravenites. But restless as ever Michael decided to move to Europe. ‘I was clean. Had stopped drinking and using drugs. Financially I was in good shape and several record companies showed serious interest. Things looked great. I decided to visit my aunt in Biarritz. We are having lunch and she is offering me wine. I decline and explain that I’m an alcoholic. Probably hard to understand for a French woman. She pours me wine anyway. The third glass I was pouring myself and two days and many bottles later she asked me to leave. I literally drank my way through Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia. Missing every appointment. I was avoiding Holland, thinking I might still need that country’.

Michael returned to Alkmaar and Amsterdam was close. Too close. Drugs and booze were too nearby. De Jong became a regular guest in prison cells, lived on the street and ended up in the gutter. One week on booze, the next on drugs. In 1994 his father, who he always stayed in touch with and who he considered his best real friend, passed away. Soon after he was offered a recording deal. Michael decided to clean up his act and had the willpower to succeed. Dordrecht, Holland’s Calvinistic bastion, became his new domicile. But…. His girl friend left him and Michael fell ill. Incurably ill. In spite of this, he did not grab for the bottle or started using drugs again. Smoking cigarettes he does. Constantly. And writing songs. All the time. A never-ending flow. One after another with more and more depth. Increasingly honest and intense.
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