Hello kindred spirits of the world, it’s All The Kings Daughters!

We’re Nina and Laura Philips from the band ATKD (All the King’s Daughters). We are twins and yes, I am writing “we” instead of “I”. For your information: it is just me, Nina, typing this. We’re not standing in front of the computer doing quatre-mains. But I shall continue in plural as if “we” are.

We live in Haarlem, the Netherlands and we decided to write this because, well, who doesn’t like traveling, food, music, art, books and other things that tend to inspire you? And also, of course, because we could hardly refuse the sweet request to share a tale or two!

Where to start? With what we love.

Reading, drawing, making jewelry, cooking, thrift stores/car boot sales, the sun, the woods and the beach, dancing, the start of every season and the smell that goes with it.

At the moment though, our daily life mainly consists of music and all that goes with it:

Writing songs, band rehearsals, boring administration work, gigs and touring, making band artwork and merchandise, the ‘social media’ game – and in general just trying to get our act together!

Because, although it may look that way, life of a musician is definitely NOT all about roses. The lack of 9 to 5 structure tends to make it quite tempting and not at all hard to avoid responsibility. And truth be told, one can get rather detached whilst balancing on the edge of society.

Life of a musician

Me: hey! What are you doing Monday around 13: 30? Coffee?
Friend: Nah sorry got to work.
Me: ok Tuesday then? Morning?
Friend: … Work.
Me:(fingers crossed): Wednesday?
Friend: ….Sorry. I work all week. Like a NORMAL person… I could do Saturday though. What about Saturday evening? Dinner & wine?
Me: I’ve got a gig on Saturday ….

So, there you go. Detached. No, but really. Not being able to get together with friends is the least of our troubles. Not having a steady income (earning nothing or the bare minimum) whilst having to invest lots of time and money in something only you (and if you’re lucky a handful of others) believe in is perhaps the hardest. That said – we do very much love our job to bits. We love it. All The Kings Daughters. It’s great.

So, this is what our blogs will mainly be about. Hope you enjoy our blabbering and maybe… see you at one of our shows.

“Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”– L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables