About

Wout Derksen

• Bass guitar
• Artwork

Wout ‘Wotje’ Derksen was born on the 27^th of August in the year 2000 in a place called Boxmeer in the province of North Brabant, that makes the bassist 20 years old. He grew up and still lives in a village called Mill which is also in the same province.
Since he was three years old he has been busy with being creative, this was mostly drawing and painting. To this day he still does this a lot. At the moment this is highlighted in the study Media Design that he has been following in the city of Nijmegen since 2018. The emphasis here lays on graphic design and give free rein to his creativity with programs like Photoshop and Illustrator. Before this study he finished the Lower General Secondary Education in 4 years and the Higher Education in 2 years. The first one placed in Mill and the other in a small city called Grave.

Wotje began making music when he was 16 years old, this started with two good friends who began playing guitar. One of these two friends and also childhood friend, Mitchel Kotkamp, the
lead-guitarist of Cage At Dusk. Wout liked it very much to see the other two playing guitar together and wanted to join them. He thought guitars and guitar-music were very interesting, but chose for the bass-guitar instead, because the other two were already playing the guitar, he thought it would be fun to start on the bass. In this way he was more unique in this small hobby-band that formed.

All of this started by playing covers from rock-bands that you will discover as a beginning rock musician, these were bands like AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Metallica and The Rolling Stones, and with that some songs that were on the radio, because everyone knows them.
In the beginning period of making music he came in contact with Jens Hendriks, the drummer, backing vocalist, producer and overall brain of Cage At Dusk. They met each other in the art-history lessons on the Higher Educational school in Grave. At this school they played music together during the lunchbreaks in the music classroom of the building. Jens on the drums or guitar and Wout on the bass, obviously. He asked Jens that he would like to play the drums with him and the two friends that played the guitar together in their hometown of Mill. They played together for a little while, but most of the group was interested in taking it one step further in music. Wout and Mitchel met Gijs, the singer and second guitarist of Cage At Dusk, through Jens.
The four musicians began covering 90s rock songs mostly, under a different name (Noise Gate). Later they began to write their own songs.

The music genres and bands that Wout listens to most of the time are: Grunge (Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden), Alternative rock (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Radiohead, Thrice), Progressive rock/metal (Tool, Dorje, Karnivool, The Ocean). Other artists/bands that he listens to a lot are Alter Bridge, Muse, Led Zeppelin, Navarone, Guns N’ Roses, Woodkid, Lamb Of God and Veil of Maya.

For the music of Cage At Dusk Wout has a number of bands where he has used the bass styles as a source of inspiration, these are mainly: Karnivool, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Queens of the Stone Age, Rage Against the Machine and a little bit of Tool and Guns N’ Roses.