We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dutch Hippies. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dutch Hippies below.
Alright, Dutch Hippies thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
Eva knew she wanted to be a singer since a very young age, probably around 12 years old, when she did her first professional recording in the studio. She actually got a record deal with Sony Music when she was 15.
Pepe started playing guitar when he was 14 and auditioned for a professional rockabilly band at the age of 17, called “The HellCats”. D
They both met in 1998 at the infamous bar “de Korte Golf” at the Sunday jams and formed a band “EveNi” ,(pronounced Eve-N-I) with Eva at the age of 16 and Pepe 22.
Dutch Hippies, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
We’re originally from Amsterdam. We moved to NYC in 2007, where we recorded and performed for 6 years and started creating and selling art in SOHO and lower east side. In 2013 we moved to Miami and Wynwood became our new homebase for the music and art business.
We also started a family, with the birth of our first daughter Beau Lilou.
What we’re proud of in our lives is, firstly, that we moved to another country with nothing but 2 guitar and 2 bags, and that we built up our name and business from scratch with solely music and art.
Our biggest pride and accomplishment is our family with 3 kids, while having a successful career as artists and remaining independent for all those years.
We’re very grateful for our fan’s, followers and clients who have supported us through the years and are loyal to us.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
We have beautiful children and we’re very happy as people and as a family. Our kids names are Beau Lilou, (9) Lotus Lily (5) and Neo(1)
On January 21 , 2020, we were blessed with a babyboy named Zen Atreyu. However On February 21 2020, a tragedy unfolded in our family and our babyboy Zen Atreyu passed away after suffering a hemorrhage.
This happened right before the worldwide lockdown for the pandemic.
We were broken and destroyed as a family , while others were concerned about the pandemic, we had other things on our mind and had to deal and process the death of our babyboy and the trauma it caused our kids and ourselves as parents.
Meanwhile we had to keep our business up and running to survive the pandemic.
This has been the biggest challenge of our lives, and to this day we’re dealing with the trauma and missing Zen.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Our mission as Dutch Hippies is to spread love through our art and music, which promotes and stimulates ALL human beings to follow their own highest excitement in life. We believe that excitement is the organizing principle in the universe and that when you do what you love, you’ are expressing your true self. This state of being brings happiness and innerpeace into peoples lives and has the ability to inspire others to do the same.
Image Credits
Olga Miljko