JB Meijers
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JB or Jan-Bart Meijers is a Dutch musician/producer. Not long after his birth in 1972 his dad taught him how to play trumpet and other brass instruments. He was able to read notes before normal letters. After a short stint in school JB decided to leave his hometown Hulst for the rest of the world and quickly settled a record deal with Virgin Records and major gigs with his first proper outfit Charmin' Children. His reputation as "the other guitarwizard" went ahead everywhere he went and before his twentieth birthday already was an in-demand session player. Things started to get out of hand when he got asked to join Richard Janssen of Fatal Flowers fame to embark on a prestigious project called Shine. They released two albums and toured madly. In between JB starred on sessions for Pizzicato Five, Money Mark, Eboman and Spiritualized.
After Shine quit, JB practically lived in the studio and just got out to fulfill his touring duties with Eboman (world tour with The Prodigy) and upcoming band Supersub. Supersub started out as a joke project taking the piss out off Oasis, but to JB's surprise people reacted positively to it, so Virgin released two albums, but JB never been able to sit too still was already deeply involved in many many other projects. Worth mentioning are Wally Tax, Ross Curry, Ellen ten Damme, NITS, DNA, Cantona, Eboman, Zita Swoon and Rex a.o. He recorded the whole of the Amsterdam scene from 1994 until now. This gave JB the opportunity to focus on engineering as well. JB got hired as a producer for major Dutch acts like De Dijk, Acda en de Munnik and Frank Boeijen because of his ability to say decent things about the artist's music, record that music professionally and play along on virtually any instrument at the same time. In 1998 lack of sleep and hard work caused a nervous breakdown and JB just stayed inside his house depressed. He turned down an offer to play for Paul Weller and to be in Anouk's recording and touring band. But, after heavy workouts, JB got himself together and came back twice as strong releasing the highly acclaimed Supersub album Fly Pilot Fly, the band's masterpiece. Soon after JB left to focus more on production. He also formed Gratis Jazz with fellow-free minds Gert-Jan Blom, Wouter Planteijdt and Richard Heijerman; all very skilled musicians. Gratis Jazz is a freeform musical improvisation band who have but one rule: No rules.
Currently JB tours hard with Holland's pride De Dijk and now and then with Acda en de Munnik and produces a vast amount of artists in or outside his studio co-owned with Frans Hendriks and Sjoerd Terpstra. His playing is still exploring new areas and many consider him the best guitar player of the Lowlands, though this is of course not measurable. He's also involved in arranging for orchestra's and hearing plays as well as commercial music.
