After forty years, you’d think Batmobile would be slowing down, even just a little. That is so far from being the case. In just a couple of months, they’ll be releasing their fifteenth album, and frontman Jeroen Haamers is already excited.

“We’ve been working with the singer and guitar player of Peter Pan Speedrock who does the production and the mix, so that gives a certain point to all of it. And it’s good. We are really happy with the results so far. We are aiming to release [it in] October. Really exciting, yeah!

The concept, the idea is… Well, a few years ago we had Covid and everyone… All bands weren’t able to play, and we did an online show. We made it with the background that we moved to another planet because there wasn’t Covid, and we could play there, and the planet was called Tremor. We went to Tremor to play… Well, to shake the earth there. Now we are ‘Back from Tremor’, so now we are finally back to Earth. We have a really funny album cover that goes along with that. So that’s the concept, the idea of the album cover and of the album and I wrote thirteen new songs and we recorded that live in my studio, and we are all ready to go.  

The last two albums we did here in my studio, so that was quite exhilarating for me because I did all the production. I did the recording, I did the mixing and the mastering. I did everything. And I had to play. So it was really a lot to do for me, but I think both albums and especially ‘Brace for Impact’, sound wise really… For me, we were very satisfying. I really loved the sound. It’s maybe more rockabilly than some of our albums. The tempo and the speed is maybe like a little toned down. But it fits the fact that we’re all sixty plus, so that’s something to have taken into consideration I think. I think we’re always steering a certain direction which is different from the last albums, so we always try to do new things with a new album we make. That’s why we asked Peter from Peter Pan [Speedrock] for this album, because I thought the last two albums were quite a bit similar in sound. I don’t know if you agree but for me personally that feels like a little… It’s really the sound of this studio, so we really try to step out of that and try to create something new, and I think that it really works out. But I’m still happy with ‘Brace for Impact’. I think there are a few fantastic songs on it. But it’s always… every album is always weird when you release something, and I have heard that every album. There’s always a short period that you can’t listen to it anymore, you don’t want to listen to it. You want to play the songs but you don’t want to listen to the album. But lately, I’ve been listening to it again [as] a preparation for the new album. 

Yeah, I think there are quite a few great songs on it, to be honest. Personally I think ‘Sick Love’ was a really good one. Yeah I think that production-wise and the punch, and the lyrics were written during Covid, so that reflects a little bit the period where we were in back then. Yeah, I’m really happy with that sound of that one. But there are quite a few good songs. I think ‘Brace for Impact’ itself was a good song as well. I love ‘Ba-Baboon’. That’s a song for me that really, really is ‘that song’. You know, like the jungle sounds and the big toms and the crazy monkey lyrics. There are quite a few songs on there that we play live as well and that go down live as well.” 

I think the most important thing about writing songs is that you have time. You have time and you don’t have too much worries. When you really can enter your head and just… I’m here in my studio. When I’m here and I just sit down with my guitar and I don’t have anything to worry about[anything]. I don’t have work or I don’t have shit going on. Normally I just play and I start to write and things just happen.  Sometimes a song takes like days to make and sometimes a song takes like ten minutes to make. So it’s not a standard procedure but I feel I think that the more you do it, the easier stuff pops up. Sometimes it’s shit and you have to throw it away. Sometimes you think ‘well, I put it away for a while and I try a week later or a month later’. Sometimes you have something instantly which is good. It really varies [with] every song. Most of the time, the best songs are written in ten minutes.”

The songs for the next album seem to be a mixture of both types, along with at least one song that’s been waiting for it’s moment in the sun. “Well. one song I wrote for a few years back when we were working with Big Bat. I don’t know if you remember that [album] with Big Bat,” He’s talking about his album from 2020 which included a brass section. “I wrote for ‘Big Bat’ that song. That’s the opening track for this album. We didn’t really get the vibe with a big band, so we tried it with the three of us and I think it’s one of the best songs of the album. It’s really fantastic, turned out fantastically, so I’m really happy with that one. I think half of the songs that I wrote came quickly. Normally I have my phone ready to record like a dictaphone. I record something with acoustic guitar and I immediately make a rough demo, like a rough sketch. I have a drum[kit] here and I have double bass, and guitars of course.” He’s calling from his well equipped home studio, pointing at the instruments lining the walls. “So I try to… When the song is only like ten minutes old, I try to make a demo already of it and make it as definitely as possible. A lot of songs were made like that. The idea was that in a few minutes and two hours later there was the song. That’s mostly my process of making songs.”

How Haamers has time to sit down and write is a mystery, considering Batmobile’s tour schedule. That’s not his only commitment, as Haamers points out. “Yeah, and I also have my country band and I also have Speedmobile, and I start working again – like a normal job – last November. So it’s really been busy. It’s been like seven days a week working.

Most of the stuff I do, I just love and especially music. I really, really, really loved doing that. So it takes a lot of effort, but it doesn’t cost much energy. You know, do you understand what I mean? Yeah, you have to travel and you have to go out and you have to wait a lot. But that hour, hour and a half, that you play, it’s all so worth it. It charges you up. When I do a show, I can live off that energy like a month or so, you know, it’s really fantastic. So, even though I’m almost sixty, it still comes really naturally, I think. I see bands with people my age of which I think, ‘maybe it’s time to stop’. But it doesn’t feel, for Batmobile, it doesn’t feel anywhere near that. I think we still are energetic bands and we’re still fun to look at –  not that we’re handsome – but I think we put up enough energy for the audience to still enjoy us. 

There are quite a few factors, of course. First thing is that I’m working with my brother and my dear[est] friend in the world,” his brother, Erik, plays bass in Batmobile and his ‘dearest friend’ is Johnny Zuidhof, their drummer,  “so that helps. We’re very loyal to each other, three of us. We always said to each other if one of us stops, the band stops. We’re not going to replace a drummer or replace a bass player or anything. The three of us are Batmobile and that’s it. That loyalty and that friendship, I think that’s the main reason that we still love to go out and play. And all three of us think this is the best job in the world.”

 

The influence of Batmobile over the scene is something that Haamers really appreciates. “I think the funny thing is that you’re not aware of what you create. You just play your music and of course you see that the audience appreciates it. But the influence you have on other musicians, that’s not so tangible. That’s not something that’s really clear. Sometimes people say it and sometimes people acknowledge the fact that we’ve been [influential] to them. I think that’s amazing. It’s unbelievable. In the early 2000s there were two albums that came out,’A Tribute to Batmobile’. And there were all kinds of bands from all over the world that played our songs and that really blew my mind. It’s so unbelievable that so many bands found something in our music that made them want to go out and play it also. I think that’s fantastic. There are still young people that are coming to the show and still young people that pick up a guitar because of us. That really blows my mind, actually. 

[This year at Psychobilly Meeting in Santa Susanna]  we played between the Selector and Lee Rocker and those are also bands that go on for like forty years, just like us, but I thought it was a really different vibe with those two bands and us. I think that the crowd really exploded when we came on. The energy that comes off that crowd, that’s mainly because the young people are so excited and really go wild like we used to when we were young. You know, there’s a lot of people in our audience that are our age or even a little older., and I totally understand that they enjoy our music but that they don’t want to go out in the pit anymore and get beat up every evening. But that’s what we did when we were eighteen and twenty. There was also the fun of the music and it’s really cool when you see young people still understand that energy and still go crazy on it, and that reflects on us as well. Because when you’ve got so much back from the audience, you put in some more energy as a musician as well. It goes two ways. But it’s fantastic. It’s always a mystery what happens on stage and how you connect with the crowd. Sometimes it’s like hard work, especially when you don’t have a home crowd. Santa Susanna is our crowd. We always know that we will be accepted very good. Last week we played on a pop festival with rock bands and pop bands, and there are thousands of people that never heard of us, so then you have to work harder to make them understand why people like us, really present yourself like, ‘how are we going to get them?’ But I think we still can do that. We still can be exciting for all kinds of people that like heavier music.”

Batmobile will continue to speed through the rest of this year, probably pausing at a town near you. “Well now, it’s the release of the album, and then it will be touring. We’ll be playing a lot of shows here in Holland, but also abroad. We’ll be doing a full new setlist of course, starting in October, so we’re trying now to [include] all the new songs.  I hope to have time again soon to start working on new material again. It’s because of personal reasons, I’m not really in the right mind space to write songs now, so that’s what I hope will come back soon. 

Well, my hope for the band is just that we can do this until we drop dead. We don’t want to be bigger. We don’t have ambitions for pop, a top 40 song, or anything like that. We never had the ambition and we still don’t have that. I think we are really in love with our crazy little scene that we have here. It’s always fantastic to just pack the bags and go to Santa Susanna, or go to Northampton, or go to Berlin, or go to Paris or anywhere, and meet lovely people there again, and people that are heartwarming, that love us. I think that’s the most exceptional experience that you can have. You drive like eight hours, or you fly like ten hours, and you are on a certain place where you’ve never been, and there are people that are waiting for you and they are loving your music. I think that still blows my mind every time we do that, so I really hope to do this for years and years to come. 

I hope the world will continue to support live bands. A lot of live bands [find it] hard, especially for new live bands, to make a name for themselves. So I’d say go to your concerts, support your local bands, support live bands…not only the big acts, because the big acts get the big money. A band like U2, or the Stray Cats, or the Rolling Stones, or whatever, they all make the big bucks, but support the little bands, support the local bands, and support your own scene, go to concerts. Come meet us!” 

Kate Allvey

Pick up a copy of ‘Brace For Impact’ or your Batmobile merch here