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Cedric Willems is a belgian guitarist
born in Ghent - Belgium.
He got his first guitar at ten,
and formed his first band with some school fiends at 13.
He co-formed the local popular instrumental
prog band Graffitti at age of 15.
(Alex de Bruycker, Frank de Waele, Glenn Westelinck and later on with
Luc De Lil, Jan Boddaert and Ward Poppe)
It was a kind of sport among the
band members for composing the longest track.
Twenty minutes was not an unusual lenght .... where are the days .....
There was even a Mendelsohn inspired piece on the program, written by
Lucas De Lil
Once he composed a piece of 45 minutes .... as no one was interested in
rehearsing such a long piece,
he decided to leave the band.
Seventeen years old and temporaly
enough of bands, he took some classical guitar lessons with
Anne Marie Vermaele.
After about one year he realised that this was nothing for him, as he
was only interested in improvising and composing,
altough he learned some basic right hand skills from her ...
This was also the period that he
heard Waso for the first time, a gipsy band with great musicians like
Koen De Cauter (guitar, clarinet) and Fapy Lafertin (solo guitar), who
played mainly Django songs.
Since then a lot changed for him.
Improvising was the basis for everything ...
Till now django is still an important
influence.
This resulted in some formations,
mostly acoustic.
Begin eighties he joined the band
of French singer Danny Laure (Peter Bauwens, Joris Peeters ....) which
never came further than a few months of rehearsals ...
In 1982 he formed the band Electric
Rendez-Vous with Luc Baetsle (drums),
Chris Thoeye (sax) and Wim De Vos (bass) .
A few months later the band was called Sundance.
Sundance was also the title of a track that was recorded on a compilation
LP of Belgian Bands.
It was recorded in one take and mixed by Peter Gillis .
It take not more than 6 hours in total (from which at least 5 hours for
miking, recording and mixing the drums .....)
The music of Sundance was Fusion and Jazz-Funk oriented.
Sundance ended after three years. In this period they played once for
a week in Perugia - Italy.
After Sundance he discovered multitrack
recording, what was the start of recording his own music
on 4 and 8 track recorders.
He also bought his first guitarsynth in this period, the famous Roland
Gr 500,
from Jo Bogaert (Technotronic, Nux Nemo).
In this period he jammed a lot with all kinds of musicians (Luc Baetsle
(drums), Marc Baekeland (Drums),
Jan Gorduyn (guit), Gert Keppens (bass), Guido van Milleghem (drums),
(both from The Bet),
Michel Vanderhaeghe (keys) and later on with John Snauwaert (sax) and
Jean Van Lint (bass) ...
With Michel Vanderhaeghe Cedric jammed a lot on a regular basis.
Besides jamming they made also a lot of tracks for multimedia.
It was also in this period (begin ninenthies) that Cellar tape (Aspects)
and Almost full Venus (The old ones)
were recorded, but remixed in 2007 and 2008.
All this experimenting and recording leaded to a mass of tracks.
In 2007 he released the CD Aspects, which contains 10 tracks of instrumental
guitar music
(with Cellar tape, recorded in the ninenties and remixed in 2007).
2007 also ended with a gig with Vincent Goeminne (vocals, guitar), Stijn
Tondeleir (bass),
Lorenzo Wezenbeek (drums) Thomas Coene (drums) Eva Martens (vocals) Jo
D'hollander (vocals), Frank Vogelaere (keys)
In 2008 he started the project
"The old ones", with remixes from elder recordings which will
be finished
somewhere in 2009 ...
The "Gr 500 files "is also a project with elder tracks recorded
with the Roland Gr 500.
Meanwhile he is recording new tracks for both an acoustic and electric
project which will be available in 2009.
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