Meindert Talma: 'I can do this, I want to do this, I do this'

Meindert Talma's album Gezinsverbijstering contains songs about his lover, members of his band, a deceased sound engineer, his father and mother, the birth of a daughter. Many songs are poetic and light-hearted, almost always moving, often making you laugh. Meindert Talma sings them with a characteristic, somewhat drawling voice with a slight accent.

You can also read the lyrics, ferskes as they are in Frisian, but they are almost all in Dutch, in the book of the same name, published at the same time. In Gezinsverbijstering, Nederlands Onbekendste Popster 3 they are embedded in chapters with more details about the people from the songs.

And even more than in the ferskes you experience in the book the dry humor and light self-mockery, it sometimes almost seems like amazement, with which Meindert Talma (56) looks at and experiences the world around him. "Was a voluntary spectator of life / I looked around me how people did it", he sings in the song Gezinsverbijstering.

Or take the chapter 'Heit en mem'. It is 2003, Meindert Talma has just given a concert in pop hall Vera in Groningen:

'I invited my parents for a drink in the dressing room. " No young man, tsjoch and lokwinske (cheers and congratulations) with your book and record! ", laughed my mother. "This is really your life, isn't it, the artist's life?" laughed my father too. He had asked this question probably two hundred times since I had been able to make a decent living from my art. I always answered as cheerfully as possible: "Yes, father, this is really my life." Last week my father sent me a letter with a vacancy for a history teacher at my old school in Drachten.'

Family Bewilderment is the third part of a series of autobiographical books including albums, hence the subtitle with the 3. Cellar Fever (part 1) and You Think It's Coming (part 2) were released in 2014 and 2017. Meindert Talma has been a musician since 1995, at least that's when friends had his first single pressed as a birthday present.

Basement Fever begins shortly after, in January 1996. In the first, hilarious chapter, his parents come by with a handwritten letter. In it, they give tips for his upcoming, very first job application (which comes to nothing):

'“A letter?” I asked, surprised and also a little worried, “what about?” The last letter I had received from Dad and Mom was on Boxing Day, a month ago. When I had played them my vinyl single on Christmas Day, they were deeply disappointed with the result. The next morning Dad gave me a three-page letter that he had been writing until late at night.'

Since that visit from his parents in 1996, Meindert Talma has released dozens of songs and albums. Mostly about events in his life and feelings about them, but just as well about football or his heroes (socialist politician Domela Nieuwenhuis, professional draughts player Jannes van der Wal). Sometimes an album comes with a booklet (Gummbah, Peter Pontiac were illustrators), and two novels, a collection of poems and, in Frisian, the Libbensferhalen fan 15 eigensinnige Friezen (Libbensferhalen fan 15 eigensinnige Friezen ) have also been published.

Meindert Talma and I met in Brasserie Kolkzicht in Surhuisterveen. We both grew up in that village on the border of Friesland and Groningen – in 2014 he wrote the song Surhuisterveen about it ('He sat there in church, he sat there at the korfball / He sat there unnoticed always behind the organ')

At that time, Brasserie Kolkzicht was still called 'Zaal Hollema' (Meindert Talma played billiards there every Friday night with his friends), everyone went to the Reformed Church on Sundays, and his father taught at the Protestant-Christian primary school 'De Hoekstien'. I was not in the class of 'master Talma' myself, Meindert is eight years younger and I am meeting him for the first time today. We will visit his parents later, he has arranged with them. We speak Frisian.

You often skip the little things in life, you think they don't mean enough

Tell me about your autobiographical books. You're twenty years behind your real life, I noticed. Your daughter Meike is 19 now.

Meindert Talma: “I read the books by Karl Ove Knausgard, Father, Love, Writer, you know them. He is a month younger than me – and I saw all sorts of recognizable things. Not the alcoholic father, but the bungling, the dealings with women, the desire to become a writer. So I thought: I am not that famous, but I have experienced a lot. And I also thought: writing about your life is something that is often done, but the combination with records is not there yet. That was actually my main reason: then you can still make a song about something afterwards. Because subjects like playing tennis with your girlfriend or a visit from your parents: you often skip those kinds of things in life, you think that they don’t have enough to say. But if you take as a starting point that you are writing about your life, and that you include everything that is important in it, then you end up with precisely those subjects.”

You made songs about feelings and events from twenty years ago?

"Some, like Heit en mem. But others were on the shelf. I made Famke fleane after Meike was born. And Hottenoije Duveltje , about my mother-in-law, I once sang with my ex Ella on her 80th birthday. Only those were never released, because I always wanted to put them on a theme record."

Famke fleane is the only album song in Frisian, it also sounds the most beautiful and sensitive in that language. Why do you write so little in Frisian?

"I want to do that more often, I could have made Heit en mem in Frisian. But then a lot of people don't get it. I do it, people like it. I have the translation at a performance."

Do you have any more ferskes on the shelf?

"Not twenty, but enough to keep going. This book was twice as thick at first, but I wanted to concentrate it more: love, parents, children. So more thematic than chronological. And I want to keep doing that. The next book is about faith, then about my experiences as a solo performer. I have four more parts in mind."

How do you get the details, if it was all a long time ago?

“I have enough sources. For ten years I had a column in the Leeuwarder Courant on Saturdays, Talma tikt . I have letters, e-mails: you can find a lot if you save things. And I didn't keep a diary, but I do have a good memory.”

So it's about right?

"Yes, most of it is correct. What exactly is said: that is more based on what the atmosphere was like at the time. I like writing dialogues, it almost comes naturally."

I could say: a writer has been lost in you. But you are both: musician and writer.

“I like writing a song the most, then you can completely immerse yourself in the combination of text and music. Writing is sitting behind the laptop, it is never finished. You can always adapt a book: extra dialogues, make it longer, shorten it. A song is always finished, you record it and then it is ready.”

I wanted to make books about my life and life includes your parents

I thought when I read your books and listened to your verses: it's getting more and more loving.

"Yes, that's true. Kelderkoorts was sometimes a bit of a caricature, they weren't always people of flesh and blood, so to speak. People have pointed that out to me, that I should try harder. It shouldn't just be humorous, I'm more aware of that now."

The letters your parents wrote to you, did it really happen like that?

He laughs: “Ask them later.”

And then: "I still have all those letters. They were really worried in the beginning: that things were going the wrong way, that I was hanging out with the wrong people. And Dad wanted to get that off his chest. They were also surprised: I was studying history, I had never shown that I wanted to be a musician."

Your parents appear quite a lot in your books. And now also in a song.

"That's also because... For example, that opening piece in Cellar Fever ... You can read it as meddling, but I actually like how they sympathized with me. They always supported me, also financially."

Is it some kind of tribute then?

“I wanted to make books about my life – and your parents are part of life. As a teenager you distance yourself, but later that changes. When our daughters were little, they came over every week to babysit. That will also be reflected in the next books. Then you get a much better bond. The children also went to stay overnight. And when they came here, Dad would immediately grab the vacuum cleaner, and when he was done vacuuming, he would mow the lawn. I could do that myself, but they always wanted to do something right away.”

Jan (80) and Klaske (81) Talma pour coffee, a plate of cookies is passed around. "He has processed his parents' care in a ferske about the past," says his father.

You didn't like his career at first. What do you think now?

Jan Talma: “In the beginning we had to get used to it. We were critical, we didn’t like his lifestyle. You can probably imagine that. He was always good at learning, he has a PhD in history. So you think: he can become a teacher, go into research. And we also had to get used to his style, it’s not for everyone. So we were worried: is there a future in that, will he have enough audience to make a living from it.”

Meindert Talma: “She wondered if you really wrote letters.”

Jan Talma: “Yes, that’s right. I did that. We thought: if he doesn’t want to become a teacher, he might want to go into journalism – anything is better than this. But he kept going, he found his own way and he succeeded. We have gained great respect for that – we have also expressed that. He once said: Dad, I know this, I want this, I do this . Then I thought: I have to stop now, because if we continue with this it will become a nuisance.”

Meindert Talma: “Did I say that? I don’t remember.”

Klaske Talma: "As a boy you were like that too: you did what you wanted. And what you didn't want, you didn't do."

Jan Talma: “Meindert has strong ideas. A typical Wâldman . In the Frisian Woods, people are free-spirited, they do their own things. And the Wâld humor, that is dry humor. It is humor that you have to understand.”

You read all the books, follow the reviews. And you often go to performances, I understand.

Jan Talma: "We don't find everything equally beautiful, but that's not necessary. He doesn't make it for us, he does it for himself."

Klaske Talma: “These performances are attended by very warm people. Really nice people.”

What do you think about having such an important place in his work?

Jan Talma: "Do you think so? Well, we were decisive in his life. We also worked on him quite a bit (he laughs), to try to get him to go in other directions. That acceptance process, that he had to be given space by us, I think also left its mark on him. If we had always said: it's all well and good, then we wouldn't have had that role."