bands

NIJLEN • A wild band from the Kempische Wild West that plays what they call "modern-day campfire songs" with the bare-wire energy of rockabilly.

interview:

Me and most of our bandmembers live in Nijlen, a small village in the province of Antwerp, Belgium.

In 2005 I started the famous Montignac diet. Montignac allows you to drink red wine and drinks without sugar. So, that summer I drank a lot of red wine during several BBQ-parties. But to prevent me from being drunk I mixed my red wine with diet coke. Because it tasted like sangria, I started calling it a 'sangriola'.

At that time in my life I made plans to start a Rockabilly band with a pal and a female friend. At first we wanted to call our band: 'The Bonicat and the Cacao Boys'. But because that summer we drank a lot of sangriola's, everywhere we came, people said: "Look there are the sangriola's!". So eventually we decided to call our band "The Sangriola's". In 2006 we started performing.

A year later when I drank a sangriola at an afterwork-party, one of my colleagues said that it was the same as a 'Kalimotxo'. I never heard of that name before, so after googling it, I discovered your website. Because I found out that I didn't invent the red wine and (diet) coke - combination, I did a little more research. After googling 'Sangriola', I came across some old advertising posters of a drink called Sangriola. Until now I still don't know how the 1953 drink tastes like. So I didn't invent the drink. I wasn't the first man who came up with the name 'sangriola'. But I did a good work in promoting the drink. And we will continue until every self- respecting bartender puts 'sangriola' on his price list :)

Meanwhile, The Sangriola's have been doing more than just drinking sangriola's. The last couple of years we have been performing mainly rockabilly and country covers and have been enjoying ourselves. But in 2012 we have been working hard on our own songs. So now we can proudly present to you, our first CD called: 'Radio Kalimotxo'!