She got sick, fought, got better and wrote the album in 2021 Killer King about. Blues singer AJ Plug from Grolloo survived the diagnosed esophageal cancer. But one record doesn’t cover it all. She released the second one this fall about what she couldn’t say on the first album: Underneath your skin.
“You’ve had cancer and it’s not like it’s suddenly gone or something like that,” says Plug. “It’s just part of me and that was the first single too, which I wrote: Part of me.“
She has been at home for quite some time, but AJ Plug is now doing just about everything again. “It’s going really well. I went through a long process and in the end it all went well and they were able to operate on me.” She is well aware that she was taken away from death. “I was really lucky.”
“I accept almost everything very easily,” says Plug, remarkably optimistically. She now goes through life without an esophagus and, apart from some minor inconveniences, she is doing fine, according to the singer.
Even though she is doing everything again, her energy level is not what it was. “I had to get used to that when I first started performing with the band again. I was a tough guy chicky: always running, jumping and dancing. I probably did that again automatically. Yeah, I was totally fucked then.”
Dosage is the magic word, she explains. Performing goes well, but: “I take a stool for the ballads,” she says. “But yes, I’ll be back.”
It still depended on whether she could continue making blues after the operation. “My voice kept cracking. Then I thought: oh, that will never be okay again.” Her partner Klaas remained positive and said: “Then we will make country, because then you will just have a sob in your voice.” The sob disappeared and the blues returned to Grolloo.
AJ Plug wrote no fewer than two songs about Klaas on her new album, to give her gratitude and love a place musically. “Klaas really ignored himself during that period to cheer me up. And that realization came to me when I was writing this album,” she says consciously. “Then I thought, Jesus, he was really sad about it too. But he never showed it to me.”
Together with her Klaas and a number of other musicians, AJ Plug will play her new record during a tour through the country. Next Sunday they will be in De Amer.