by Richard Skelly Dutch blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter Hans Theesink has been carving a niche for himself in the U.S. market throughout the late 1980s and early '90s. It's no easy task growing up in the Netherlands and teaching oneself the blues, but perhaps that's the reason Theesink's guitar stylings are so unique. Theesink became hooked on blues as a teenager listening to the radio, playing mandolin and guitar. His favorites became Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee, but later on he was exposed to a wider variety of influences. Theesink was 12 or 13 when he began playing guitar in earnest, and by his late teens he was playing in clubs and coffeehouses around Germany and the Netherlands. Theesink began his recording career in 1970 for a variety of small labels in the Netherlands and Germany, and continued perfecting his craft and honing his skills at clubs and festivals across Europe. Through the '70s, his eventual goal was to come to America to learn firsthand from the masters in the Mississippi Delta. It would be 1979 before Theesink would make it to America, and not surprisingly, his first stop was the Mississippi Delta. The trip proved fruitful, as he met and jammed with many Delta musicians, absorbing all he could from them and eventually incorporating their knowledge into his own style. Theesink's U.S. albums include two for Flying Fish/Rounder Records, Baby Wants to Boogie (1987) and Johnny and the Devil (1989). More recently, his other domestically available albums for a variety of labels include Call Me (1992), Hans Theesink and Blue Groove: Live (1993), Hard Road Blues (1995), and Crazy Moon (1997).