When Maarten Seegers (47) took singing lessons a few years ago, he was so shy that he did not dare to look at his singing teacher. A year later his first single came out and the title is in black ink on his hand. “But it means much more than that. It is a memory of the victory over myself.”
The music was there early with Maarten. His father played in the band ‘Nat’ (just like then), with music by Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard. “Just before Corona, he asked if I wanted to sing along. I did it for the Gein.” You have to do something with this, “a friend said, but I waved that away. After all, I had a busy job.”
Yet it started to itch. Maarten took singing lessons, they didn’t go without a struggle. “I sang ‘She’ by Charles Aznavour in my first lesson, but did not even dare to look at the singing teacher,” he says. “I was so insecure.”
When he was temporarily without work during Corona, he posted a video on Facebook. Not much later, Talpa, if he wanted to participate in song at first sight, called a dating program on music. “I said yes, without thinking. But when I stood there for a room of three hundred men and three cameras I thought: what did I start?” He laughs.
He suddenly made the step to a larger audience of daring to sing. Not much later he also stood at Hart for Music from Omroep Brabant. “Then I suddenly stood behind the wings with John de Bever and Corry Konings. That was really bizarre.”
“Because I was bullied, I thought I wasn’t good enough. This tattoo changed that.”
As a child, Maarten was bullied for years, which initially led to uncertainty with him. “I sincerely thought that I was not good enough. That feeling nestles deeply in you. I did not dare to show myself, literally and figuratively,” he says frankly.
Tattoos, which he had had on his arms and back for a long time, he hid under his long sleeves for years. “At work, with strangers. I was always afraid of the reactions.” Because he came out of nowhere in popularity and mainly received positive reactions, that uncertainty changed. “I used to find it important what others thought of me. Now I am not. And I can be there.”
The tattoo on his hand was therefore consciously chosen. “It is my memory that I have to show myself. That I crawled out of that uncertainty and shame.” Nice side effect is that the colors are extra visible to others. “People ask about it and that is a nice entrance to talk about my music,” he explains.
“I only just come to see as a musician, I stay with both feet on the floor.”
He now works together with producer Hans Aalbers, known from Hazes ‘she believes in me’ and ‘blood, sweat and tears’. Their next songs, Maartens fifth and sixth singles, are about bullying and about tattoos. “Thanks to music I got on top of that. If I can now touch others with it, then my mission is successful.” A tattoo of those two ‘pictures’ will not come. “No, I am happy with all the singles that follow, but I am not going to tattoo the rest,” laughs Maarten.
It is not only with all those promising plans: he works forty hours a week as a manager of a chain on wash streets and performs about ninety times a year. “That can be more, but I don’t have to be able to live on this, I have a job for that,” he says soberly. He does some of those performances for free, such as at a nursing home in the area. “The reactions you get are priceless.”
He also has fans: “From young to old: a 98 -year -old woman and my best friend’s daughter, who wanted a video message,” he laughs. “There are not many; I’ll just come and have a look in the music world.” Maarten is not the Bever of Konings yet, but that’s fine for him. “I stand with both feet on the floor.”