A trip down memory lane. This is what the K-otic reunion feels like after 25 years for singer Stefan de Roon (47) from Waalwijk. The group, which broke through at the beginning of this century through the TV program Starmaker, will be back on stage at TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht on June 11 and 12.
The band just went through one of the hits, “I Can’t Explain.” “So we have been back at it for half a year now,” Stefan says in the radio program Afslag Zuid. “I’m 21 years old again.”
K-otic emerged in 2001 from Starmaker, a talent show by John de Mol. Twelve young singers stayed in the former Big Brother house, from whom a pop group was eventually formed. Stefan was one of the seven participants who remained.
“I was a shy boy from Brabant, born and raised in Waalwijk,” he reflects. “I came there and there are twelve of you there, cameras and a broadcast every day. After a millisecond and a half we no longer noticed all the cameras and we were just a bunch of unguided projectiles who started singing a song.”
“We thought they were expecting the Backstreet Boys, but they just came for us.”
Only after the program did the group members realize how popular they had become. “A signing session where we thought ‘no dog will come to that’ had to be canceled because thousands of people came. We thought they were expecting the Backstreet Boys, but they just came for us.”
Even in everyday life they could no longer walk undisturbed on the street. “I remember that I was out with my girlfriend at the time and I went swimming. Suddenly there were forty people standing around my towel. Yes, that was very bizarre.”
“That was a bit of a deception.”
In 2003, K-otic fell apart. Stefan had a music school for a short time, but quickly fell into a black hole and started working as an order picker at Xenos. “That was a bit of a deception,” he remembers. “But you also learn from that and I really needed structure at that time.”
Despite the setbacks, he continued to make music. Ultimately, his own album was not released, partly because he was struggling with a drug addiction. He calls it a “Colombian cold”. “Not to be tough about it, but if you fall once, you also know what it’s like to get back up. Only when you have failed do you know what success is.”
Yet he looks back without regret. “If you change something in the past, the future is completely different. So I needed things to get where I am now. I lived, survived and now I’m living again.”
“We were like: we have to do this.”
The idea for a new reunion arose about two years ago, when radio station 100% NL paid attention to the group’s anniversary. “Then we jokingly shouted: Oh, then we’re going to do a reunion. That’s where the media and the fans we still had showed up. We thought: we have to do this.” And with success, because the first concert was sold out within half an hour.
For Stefan, the reunion feels like coming home. “We really are a family, we have experienced something special that we can only share with each other. It feels like old times again, it just makes sense and that is very nice.” And he feels a lot younger again. “In my head, my body says something different,” he laughs.
