Kees van der Poel was born in Hilversum in 1947. At early age his family lived in Texas USA. After returning to the Netherlands, Kees found the guitar the best instrument for the music he loved. Classical lessons around the age of 10 soon became boring and Kees played in rockbands covering Shadows and Rolling Stones.
A major shift came when Pete
Seeger on his tour in 1964 played at Kees´ high school. Acoustic 12-string, what a sound! After studying 12-string and 6-string fingerstyle guitar, Leadbelly, Blind Blake, Doc Watson, John Hurt, and medicine in Utrecht in the early 1970’s, Kees toured as a solo artist and later joined the group Wargaren. Inspired by Martin Carthy, he turned to Dutch traditional folk music and studied with Rob Smaling at the Meertens Institute in Amsterdam. This became the basis for the later legendary Dutch folk group Wolverlei.
Dutch traditional music was also the reason to study diatonic harmonica with Frans Tromp and Carel Kraayenhof. In 2007 Carel asked Kees to join him with his guitar for a concert at Concertgebouw Amsterdam.
So Kees retired from medicine and presently takes a solid daily dose of guitar.