‘I knew you all along’ was the first song I ever wrote (or at least the first song that had a start, a middle and an end). I was 19 when I wrote it. I recorded it acapella just to remember it later. I didn’t use my guitar that day, I don’t remember why not but I probably didn’t think I would be able to pull it off. Years later, I would grab my guitar and put music to it, the result sounding slightly different from the original recording.

Its story is incredible. It starts somewhere in the 1970’s, when four school boys from Amsterdam start a band they call Vamos, and start playing cover songs first, and compose their own later. Most of the songs are being written and sung by a boy named Pieter, although the other band members (André, Joy and Sidney) compose as well. Pieter is remarkably wise for his age, his lyrics profound and meaningful. In 1979, Pieter falls ill with leukemia and after a long battle eventually passes away, leaving his family and friends heartbroken. The band disintegrates and the boys each go their own way, though they all stick to their music. It could have ended there – but it didn’t.

In 2001 – 21 years after Pieter’s death – Joy, Sidney and André decided they wanted to get together and record some of Pieter’s songs, as a kind of tribute. They went out to look for someone to sing Pieter’s parts. Through a mutual (and musical) friend, I had met Joy and he thought I might be interested. After telling me about Pieter and explaining the project to me, he invited me over for a try-out and we sang a few songs together. It felt right. At some point, I noticed the signature on the (original) sheet of lyrics to one of the songs. Up until that point, I had only heard Pieter’s first name. But the name on the sheet said ‘Van der Kraan’. In my head, some things suddenly clicked into place very fast. I said “not Pieter van der Kraan?” “Yes”, said Joy.

I had heard that name my whole life. I knew him, even though I had never met him. I knew his mother and I loved his sister, who was my aunt Tineke. Joy and I sat together in stunned silence for a few moments, goosebumps on our arms. It seemed almost impossible, but here we were. Somehow, it seemed, through space and time, Pieter had arranged this meeting. There was no doubt after that I would continue singing with Vamos, and we made a pretty cool record in 2002 called Tribute.

I wrote ‘I knew you all along’ shortly after this unlikely discovery on a sheet of lyrics. I finished it when I was recording my cd Songbird in 2007. The harmonica on the track was played by my father, who, of course, had known Pieter way back when. I love the song because it really felt like I wasn’t writing it alone. In a sense, my songwriting days started when I met Pieter, who died two years before I was born.

The recording in the video is the acapella version I made when I wrote the song, almost seventeen years ago. Recorded with an old cheap chat mic and an even older computer – talk about raw and unpolished! Here you can listen to what the song sounded like when it finally ended up on the cd (and you can download it, of course).