From around 1965 he first played guitar in a band, then became more interested in playing drums. As a drummer/percussionist/guitarist/singer he has played in bands with mainly his own music! John is left-handed, but plays his guitar and drums right-handed, his cajon however strangely enough left-handed. Without lessons and inspired by John Mitch Mitchell, John Bonham and Keith John Moon from the 60s and 70s he developed his own drumming style! As a power drummer he prefers to drum with the flexible/light/fast Jazz drumsticks Vic Firth SD4 COMBO but he also likes to play beautiful quiet ballads. He has been asked in the Jazz world lately and then has to drum very softly on his small Taye Go Kit with brushes & rods.
“Inspired by the music of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks, my parents bought my first electric Egmond guitar with sound box at KeurKoop when I was about 12 years old. The old tube radio served as an amplifier. When I was 14, I played as a rhythm guitarist in the band of the now famous guitar builder Ellio Martina. So why my passion for drumming?
Around that age, I always liked to go on holiday with my Indonesian aunt Nan and her son Tommy in Amsterdam. My aunt rented out rooms there to musical Antilleans and Surinamese, who had a band in the attic. In the attic, where those musicians also practiced, there was a drum kit of my cousin Tommy, at that time still with real drum heads made of animal skin. They practiced the real rhythmic soul music from the 60s there.
My cousin Tommy gave me my first drum lessons there and I was immediately sold. I also wanted to become a drummer and later received the drum kit from my cousin as a gift! Without lessons, I practiced all the songs of The Kinks at home in my bedroom, but also all the soul songs of Otis Redding, Wilson Picket, Sam & Dave. My neighbors at the time, but also the entire neighborhood could enjoy my drumming extravaganzas.
At the age of 17, I was asked to be the drummer for the Zutphen band DIRTY PINEAPPLE, where I came into contact with blues music again. The name of this band was named after the homeless man who was called “dirty pineapple”. After changing musicians, the name was changed to INDIAN, where we also started playing our own songs. Albert Mol became our manager and we were about to break through with an album recording at Polydor. However, our music was not commercial enough.
In 1979, I played as a drummer in the versatile Deventer Latin rock/reggae rock band DELAY with symphonic influences. A completely unique repertoire was played at a high level. Fortunately, all studio recordings have been preserved and have now been digitalized.
In 1982 I played as a drummer in the rock band THE BOYS from Zutphen, which was the roughest for me. The click was so good among the 3 musicians, later supplemented by a 4th musician, that we performed after only a week of practicing and on the spot we shook the roughest rock songs out of our sleeves. I recorded all these songs on a small radio cassette deck, of which the recordings have been preserved and some can be found on YouTube under the name John Ooms, or on my personal FB page. In 1982 we also released our album THE NIGHTHAWK with this band!
I have never been a standard top 40 drummer, but around 1992 I played in a very nice cover band that was named after me: Johnny’s MID live Crises.
After the dissolution of this band, I said goodbye to being a musician for about 22 years and at home I concentrated on playing my acoustic guitar and singing beautiful old pop songs.
In 2017, I was asked to be a temporary drummer in the Zutphen punk band VAN KETJEN. Punk music was definitely not my thing, but there was also a saxophonist and pianist/organist in that band, who also played an accordion. This made the music completely different and even fun to play. I built a nice band with the singer/songwriter Ben Garritsen from that band and later he asked me to join as a drummer in his Dutch-language project/band JE-VAN-HET, where musicians from other bands accompany singer/guitarist Ben on his own composed Dutch-language songs.
Since January 2019 I am the new drummer of the fantastic CRY WOLF GANG, where I can indulge myself in the blues-rock segment within a three-piece formation. (Source: crywolfgang.nl)
