Katvanger was a blues-roots trio based in the Netherlands that was active in various forms from the late 1990s until 2022. It started out as a spinoff from Jim Wake & Sleepwalker, a Dutch-based roots and blues sextet fronted by American expat Jim Wake. Jim and the other two songwriters in the band, bassist Ruud Fransen and lead guitar player Egbert Kemner, rehearsed almost every Tuesday evening, working out arrangements and trying out new material, often with the aid of strong drink and semi-controlled substances. There was an intimacy to the stripped down sound of the trio that couldn’t be replicated with a bigger band, and so from time to time, the three would perform under their own names. Sometime around 2007, Ruud suggested the name “Katvanger” — a relatively obscure Dutch word for a certain type of scoundrel who does the dirty work in a criminal gang such as registering the stolen car at the DMV — and it stuck. Katvanger played a few gigs every year until Sleepwalker broke up at the end of 2014. The following year, around the same time that Jan Vereecke replaced Egbert Kemner on lead guitar, Katvanger began performing more frequently. In 2019, they recorded 15 tunes but the Covid Pandemic put a damper on the August 2020 release of “So Late So Soon”. Katvanger was only able to play sporadically between lockdowns for much of the following two years, and late in 2022, Katvanger played its last gigs.

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