Prelude Francis starts composing his own music at the age of 15. The first songs are catchy punkrock tunes and include vocals in different languages, hence the first band name: ‘Different Languages’ . Later on they release a first cd under the name of ‘Naked and famous: ‘Crazy People’. The band gets prizes at different rock rallies, gets to play different festivals and moves on to play support for The Scabs, Clouseau, Ann Clark, Gorki en Dog Eat Dog. After a few years the band splits up. In the mean time Francis forms the band ‘Jenny’s Enemy’ with Peter Van den Broeck. The band picks up some of the old work together with new material. ‘Blauw’ is a side project of Francis, Peter en Jan Ost. It brings easy listening acoustic music in Dutch. Francis moves on to record an album in Dutch: ‘Onderhuids’. This is a subtle story on (lost) friendship. He releases two singles as ‘Francis’: ‘Roots’ and ‘Tears of the sun’. After this Francis decides to form a new band. They play a mix of cover tunes and old songs he wrote: ‘Filthy 4’. After some years the band breaks up because of incompatible agendas. Filthy Horse The urge to write and record own material never fades away. Francis teams up with Peter again and they recruit youngster Dries Verhelst. They want to play folk but with an edge. At first they play standards and classics. They idea to play rock songs with a folky twist is not new. Francis likes folk and is especially intrigued by the Pogues. This can clearly be heard on their first album. To get the right sound they hire violin player Mathias Bynens. This gets things rolling. Unfortunately Mathias has to move to München for professional reasons. His spot gets filled by Yves ‘chap with the beard’ De Waele. The band takes an international turn when Dutchman Wouter Verhelst joins the band to play accordion and mandolin. ‘Filthy Horse’ is born! Ilse Van Dooren, Wouter’s partner and known as ‘Nightingale’ joins them to do backings on their first album.