2022 on JukeJoint500.
Digipak with sticker,
We were able to experience Tim and his quartet at the Goezot festival in September 2021 and Tim's version of the Blues directly crawled under my skin. After the gig wwe immediately agreed to work together, which unfortunately came to an abrupt end in May 2022 when Tim died during an operation. These are the last recordings with the newly formed band we were so excited about.
Growing up in rural Westouter, Tim de Graeve discovered his love for blues music in his father's collection of records, including an acoustic album by Blind Lemon Jefferson. From the age of eight he took lessons in classical guitar and soon started writing songs himself. Tim started his own blues band at the age of 17. Tim went to Ghent to study biology at the university and lived there for the rest of his life. He worked for a while as a teacher where playing music with his band The Heartfakers was just a hobby.
At the age of 20 a 9-year ordeal began. Even at his childhood he had problems with his liver, but it was not correctly diagnosed at the time. As a young adult he spent most of the next 9 years in hospital, basically fighting for his life. In hospital he learned to play his grandfather's slide guitar and listened to his Delta Blues heroes and wrote songs. Back then he swore to himself that if he survived, he would only make music.
In 2009, he released his debut EP Please Dr. Please out as Tiny Legs Tim & The Concrete Blues Band. After that, for several years his focus was on releasing solo work as a singer-songwriter. His stage name, Tiny Legs, was a reference to his small and skinny appearance, which was a result of his severe liver disease. The inspiration came from some of his blues heroes such as Blind Willy Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy and Sleepy John Estes who also bear three part names and often describe a physical characteristic. He thought it was a funny name that had a self-relativizing effect. It was a way of dealing with his "new" body.
In Ghent, especially in the Little Turkey district, Tiny Legs Tim became the voice of a completely new blues generation, together with fellow blues musician Lightnin' Guy. In 2011, Guy started organizing electric blues jams, first in a small B&B, then in the Volkshuis. From 2014 to 2018 they were co-organizers of the Boogieville blues festival in the Balzaal of De Vooruit. In 2015, a good friend Marie Follebout, at his encouragement, became the founder and manager of the blues and roots concert club Missy Sippy in Little Turkey, where Tim became a house musician. He performed there numerous times and curated the blues jams. In addition, he and the club sought out alternative music styles such as funk, americana, jazz, country, rock and roll, burlesque and soul to give more young musicians a chance. During the ten-day Gentse Feesten, at least thirty performances were always planned in the Missy Sippy. On the occasion of the club's fifth anniversary, Tim released an album in March 2020 called Missy Sippy All Stars Volume 1, recorded with twenty promising musicians. To find inspiration in the blues, Tim traveled to Louisiana in the United States, especially New Orleans, in 2017 and 2019. African music such as Mali blues and Tuareg blues also inspired him due to their rhythmic feeling, with a lot of percussion. With his so-called One Man Blues Band, Tim has mainly performed solo in clubs and festivals throughout Europe. He supported Peter Doherty, John Mayall, The North Mississippi Allstars, Graham Parker, Bombino and Ian Siegal. His live reputation was to be rock solid.
Tim self-released all his records to maintain full control over his own musical identity. He liked to make records with only him as a singer and musician. In 2015, Tim started a real record label with his third album Stepping Up, called Sing My Title. The label releases albums by local blues & roots musicians such as Kaai Man from Temse, Paul Couter, Steven Troch from Mechelen, Little Jimmy and the band A Murder in Mississippi.
"Call Us When It's Over" (the title is a reference to the Pandemia that made performing impossible at the time) is Tim's last recording with a newly assembled quartet. They blew us away at the Goezot festival in Belgium in September 2021 that we had to release Tim's music on JukeJoint500. This was supposed to be the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration, but Tim de Graeve passed away on May 22, 2022 following complications from his 3rd liver transplant. R.I.P.
