The farm where the songs were recorded has unfortunately been demolished a long time ago. Yet Ferry Heijne still regularly passes by the place where he really started with his band De Kift in the nineties, in the middle of the polder near Oostknollendam. The singer worked on the songs here but also lived there. He experienced his golden years there.
If you look to one side you see the Schaalsmeerpolder. Turn around and you look out over the Wormer and Jisperveld. It was an ideal place for the studio, says Heijne. “The moment I came to live here, my interest in nature and in particular the water birds really blossomed. Since that time I know what is flying and walking around here.”
The bond with the neighbors was good: later the band’s studio was even named after the late neighbor Toon Blokland. Heijne: “In addition, my children grew up here for the first five or six years of their lives. Very special that that is possible in such a place.”
“It was a transition period for me. We started in 1988 as a punk band with the four of us. Our drummer Wim ter Weele was working at Natuurmonumenten at the time. He didn’t have a house at the time and could move into the empty farm here. I’m free there move in quickly.”
New phase of life
“I first lived in the White Villa, a well-known white house in Wormer. It was a former director’s residence of the Van Gelder paper factory. I had lived there for about nine years in a residential group and at that time I felt the need to spread my wings. That was possible here on the farm in Oostknollendam. It ushered in a new phase of life for me.”
In the farm the band recorded the CD Krankenhaus. There was also De Maan on it, with which the band broke through nationally. “We actually wanted to make a vinyl record, but that whole era was upside down. So we were basically forced to make a CD. We then packed it in a wooden cigar box so that it at least looked good. ” This was followed by the CD Gaaphonger, after which the band had to leave the farm. It was later demolished.
Series
Heijne is currently working on a series about Kift’s past. During corona he took a dive into the archive. “I found out that there are really a lot of places in the Zaan region where we played. I make a number of mini-documentaries from some of those places.” The studio in the Schaalsmeerpolder is also included in this. NH Nieuws will broadcast the series.