Mr. Cat & The Jackal was conceptualized at the beginning of 2007, although the name of this music project was at that stage not yet found. The inspiration for this project came naturally while Gertjie Besselsen and Jacques du Plessis were working on the Theatrical Music Score for the Award winning, Marthinus Basson, theater production, ‘Die Storm’, for which they received a KANNA nomination. While working on this project they experimented with instruments like Xylophones, glockenspiels etc. and consequently found tremendous inspiration for their own project. With a perfect combination of the understanding of, and the passion for, interesting instruments…and exceptional musical genius, they incorporated these instruments in songs already written by them and voila! Mr. Cat and The Jackal were born! They thought, what the hell and went ballistic on instruments like the Accordion, Lap-slide, Bouzouki, Melodica, Kalimba and a shit-load of percussion instruments, to only name a few! Soon afterwards the name ‘Mr. Cat & The Jackal’ emerged out of thin air and a five piece band was formed. Gertjie and Jacques started performing with muso’s who came and went and was finally joined permanently by the talented and groovy, JC Visser on bass, Bernard Willemse on light percussion and Pierre Theron on low percussion. Since then they have been recording an album at their own studio, making some of their own instruments, creating and writing songs, Performing live, in and all around Cape Town, Creating a whole repertoire of theatre soundtracks (from Peter Pan to more serious stuff), and made a music video. There sound can best be described as experimental acoustic folk, with a dash of blues. With a circus of sounds created by foreign and handmade instruments their live performances is a complete musical experience. Their debut album “Themes and Variations” was released 28 Nov 2009. The music video “Fresh Meat” is available at Youtube.
