Over het album

The Ian Ad Venture; the long standing collaboration between Ad Vanderveen and Iain Matthews continues after a 5 year break. The new cd is now a fact and it has been working towards a broad song selection of originals as well as some cool covers. "Ride The Times" is an acoustic based record with some electric streaks.

This record is sweet on the ear: the two voices are similar but clearly  different, one track flows into the next, each one a improves with repetition and it doesn’t seem to matter whether the song is a cover or an original. Some, like prescient Mohammed’s Radio or Tom Waits’ classic Heart of Saturday Night, you’ve obviously heard before, but so manu others sound as if you have. In the end, it doesn’t matter. You’re in the safe hands of two confident craftsmen, their talents and having a good time.

I don’t know Ad Vanderveen, but Iain has been surprising me ever since
I first saw him standing in front of a curtain at the Cromwellian Club in
London in 1967 with his group Pyramid, while the backing band remained
hidden behind it. I can’t say what has been the most surprising thing I’ve
learned about him over the years: that ‘he was a good enough football
player to get a trial run with ‘Bradford Park Avenue football club’ before
becoming a singer? That after he left Fairport Convention he had the
gigantic folk-rock hit single his former mates never managed? That he
moved to the music mecca of Austin, Texas and wrote songs worthy of the
best his new home had to offer? That he dropped singing for a while and
became an A&R man? That he moved to the Netherlands? That he wrote a
great song about my boyhood cowboy hero Randolph Scott and recorded it
beautifully with a jazz band?

After so many surprises, perhaps Iain’s latest Ad-Venture doesn’t astonish
– but Vanderveen does! What an excellent singer and songwriter! The Dutch
have always been good at absorbing alien cultures and out-doing them at
their own game (like Boulevard of Broken Dreams and the American bigband
torch song). His songs and his singing carve their own niche in the
canon of American song. Maybe you have to stand a little way outside it to
see it so clearly.

This record is warm and clear, relaxed and stimulating, satisfying and yes,
surprising. And it finds its way regularly on to my sound system.
Joe Boyd in the linernotes of Ride the Times