Mark BoulasAlmost 5 years ago Michael and I started Rockstone Sessions from the attic in our parents house. Today we reached 1,000,000 YouTube views! Something we obviously feel proud about! We look back at some of the highlights that we have had along the way to this milestone! Here are some of our favourite moments from back in the days when our video production quality was not as good and our logo was different – i.e. ugly – but that got us to the million views!
Trixie Whitley (2012)
When Trixie agreed to do a session with us, we were like two kids on their way to Disneyland. Little did we expect her to be this amazing. In her dressing room at Paradiso in Amsterdam Trixie played ‘Oh The Joy‘ for us on her guitar. Then she followed up with a song that she said she had not really finished yet but wanted to try for us anyway. She pulled out a note book from her jacket pocket, found the page she needed and then blew us away with this track! ‘Gradual Return’.
Michael and I back on the sofa and in the same dressing room we filmed Trixie in all those years ago. We had to celebrate with a beer!
Dry The River – Interview (2012)
The very first festival we attended as Rockstone Sessions was Parkpop in our home town The Hague. Parkpop is Europe’s biggest free festival and always has big name acts rocking their multiple stages with over 100,000 people watching. Our presenter Nadja Freeman (also front woman for Alcuna Wilds) interviewed the gentlemen from Dry The River and played an old kids game with them backstage. You might hear all of us behind the camera trying to hold our laugh in!
Rockstone Collaborations – Friends Of The Family // Rat&Frikk (2013)
A good friend of Rockstone, Robin Brock (Front man of Machine Makes Man), approached us for a project idea to work together with Haags Pop Centrum (HPC) a local initiative that works hard to give musical talent opportunities to grow and develop. They offer everything from rehearsal spaces, to venues for gigs and from grants to organising festivals in the city. Together with Robin and HPC we developed Rockstone Collaborations! The idea was to bring artists together from different genres, give them 4 hour studio time and ask them to combine their styles in a cover of a popular song from the charts. 3 weeks later we put them all on the biggest stage our our city at Paard van Troje. 8 shows with 16 bands! Here was our favourite of the night, a cover of Stromea with papaoutai
Alex Vargas (2013)
We took a big team to Songbird Festival (Rotterdam) in 2013 and filmed lots of sessions and interviews. One of the artists was Danish born Alex Vargas. He came to Rotterdam with his girlfriend to play a small gig at the festival and spent a few days in Holland enjoying the sights. “You might as well enjoy the city if the festival is paying for it, right?”, he said. He tuned his guitar and we set up our cameras in the big square outside of the festival, he filled in our Rockstone sticker, slapped it on his shoe and gave a bit of a clumsy introduction. Fortunately for us there was nothing clumsy about his performance. His voice and guitar play hypnotised us and everybody else that walked around. His session with us was nothing short of amazing! Probably the reason why he is our most watch session on our website and YouTube Channel.
Taymir (2013)
We met up with the Taymir boys on their last day in the studio when they were recording their debut album Phosphene. There was a rush to film the session because one of them had to leave for his holiday so we filmed at the first street bench we found and had to hurry! What’s funny is that Michael is scared of bees and right when we were filming one bee decided to tease him (you might notice the shaky camera near the end). Taymir very quickly became one of the hottest bands in The Netherlands and we had the pleasure of working together with them for almost 3 years after this session! Check out some of the other work we have done for them with the Rockstone Creatives including, video clips, studio sessions, and the famous ‘60 Seconds of Taymir‘.
Oscar Key Sung – Melbourne (2013)
Rockstone’s Fleur caught up with Oscar Key Sung in Melbourne, Australia. Not only is this an amazing session, it’s such an experience to film artists in the comfort of their own homes and countries! Rockstone goes international, ain’t that nice?
Nneka – Motel Mozaique (Rotterdam)
Everybody remembers Nneka from her famous track ‘Heartbeat‘ the remix by Chase&Status, but here she sang a song exclusively for Rockstone! So exclusive that it does not even has a name yet!
iET (2016)
This talented lady came to our office and her voice echoed through the whole building, to the point that we went and stood outside of the room so we can hear it better. She has such an amazing voice, we’re glad to have her on an acoustic session!
Newton Faulkner (2016)
Sometime a blast from the past gets in touch for a Rockstone Session! Everybody must remember Newton Faulkner from his hit ‘Dream Catch Me’. He is back with a slightly different look and in front of our cameras this time.
By now we have a huge collection of stickers with the name of alle the filmed artists on it. We’ve held on to them, framed them, and will cherish them forever. They mark the hard work, loads of festivals, traveling, fun with the team, and the effort of Rockstone trying to display new musical talent. Our collection and wall of fame of ‘Hello My Name is’ Stickers is growing as we speak and we’re not planning on stopping that process any time soon! 
Some Other Adventures We’ve Had
We upgraded our office!
We meet some celebrities on the way and even traded with Diplo for his tour egg!
We want to thank you all for always tuning into our site to check out the latest session, we love seeing how some of these artists grow and develop, so as long as there are great artists there will be Rockstone Sessions.
Michael and I would also like to thank all the people that have helped us over the years with everything we have done at Rockstone. It has been one hell of a journey so far and we are just getting started. So from the bottom of our hearts, a big thank you to all the people (past & present) that have helped us make this possible. You know who you are!
We would like to leave you with a playlist of some of our favourite sessions from the last years! Hit play and enjoy!