“I think it’s disrespectful, honestly, to try to mimic the real traditional blues. I’m a white girl from Europe, so I play my own stuff.”

— Eef

Eef the “Tall Dutch girl” splits her time between several bands and a small business

By Steve Graham

A leading Colorado blues artist has had many titles, but just one name: Eef.

For 11 years, she has been driving Eef and the Blues Express, an acclaimed funky blues mainstay on the local scene. She has been a small business owner for even longer. And that job followed a globe-trotting career in computers.

The bubbly female blues singer also plays in a Bonnie Raitt cover band and in duet gigs with Stacy Turpenoff. The pair has a show this Friday in Golden.

Eef launched both her technology and music careers in her native Netherlands, working for Hewlett-Packard and joining a Top 40 cover band. While she was having fun and finding local fame singing Madonna covers, she had a passion for the blues.

“That’s what spoke to me,” she said, lamenting that she couldn’t find other Dutch blues musicians.

She moved stateside — to Connecticut, then Fort Collins — for HP jobs, and started finding local blues musicians to jam with. She found some more regular gigs and ended up as a permanent member of the Mike Kaylor Band. After Kaylor left, she found herself reluctantly taking lead on both guitar and vocals.

“That was my first step into fronting a band, and that eventually became Eef and the Blues Express,” she said.

The band officially debuted in 2010, and after some lineup changes in the early years, the five members haven’t changed for five years.

Eef also plays rhythm guitar and sings for Nick of Time, a Bonnie Raitt cover band, and she has stripped-down duo gigs with Stacey Turpenoff.

Eef will perform with Stacey Turpenoff at 6 p.m. Friday, Nov. 12, at Rolling Hills Country Club in Golden.

Eef and the Blues Express was selected to play at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis, and was a semi-finalist in 2017. The group has also opened for major blues acts such as Coco Montoya and Tommy Castro, and won local blues awards. Eef is well-known in the scene as “the tall Dutch girl with the red guitar,” and an accomplished modern blues artist.

She calls the band’s funky style “Eef Blues,” and steers away from playing traditional blues.

“I wasn’t born in Mississippi. I think it’s disrespectful, honestly, to try to mimic the real traditional blues,” she said. “I’m a white girl from Europe, so I play my own stuff.”

In between blues sets, Eef makes sandwiches and strong coffee, and sells Dutch cheeses, licorice, chocolates and more out of a cozy storefront in northwest Denver. Dubbel Dutch opened in 2003, and is a combination deli, coffee shop and specialty grocery store.

Eef started importing Dutch food while living in Fort Collins, mostly to satisfy her cravings for the flavors of home. She created a website to resell her bulk orders, but quickly had more customers rummaging through her home inventory than her digital store.

“Not a lot of people bought online back then, so they would come down to my basement where I had it stored,” she said. “The Dutch people, they wanted the food.”

At work, she was getting burned out despite surviving multiple reorganizations and rounds of layoffs at HP, so she decided to turn the website into a shop.

She started searching for a brick-and-mortar storefront in the Denver area to capture a larger customer base — both Dutch and Dutch-curious. She said she happened upon her retail space at Lowell and 50th by accident while driving to a gig at a longtime northwest Denver blues bar.

“I was on my way to Ziggy’s as a musician, so I took Lowell up and missed 38th and kept on driving,” Eef said. “I ended up here on 50th and saw this ‘for rent’ sign written on the window.”

She said she didn’t even realize the space was just a block from Regis University.

“It was by chance,” she said. “I like to live my life that way.”

She said Regis students and staff drive business during the school year. Foot traffic and Dutch tourists keep the store even busier in the summer.

Her shop’s hours of “10ish to 6ish” six days a week reflect her easygoing spirit. She is relaxed, funny and jovial in person, despite juggling several bands, a business and a family.