Life on the road with The Haircut Sessions.




A year and a half ago Matthew left his job at a hair saloon to travel the world in his camper van. After working in different hair salons for about twelve years he fulfilled his idea to combine work with traveling. Equipped with scissors and a guitar he travels around in his camper van giving personalized haircuts with The Haircut Sessions

 

“I’ve been cutting hair on mountain tops, in the snow, at student houses, farms, music venues, campsites, hostels, festivals, you name it..

I set up my haircut chair, my sign, some couches and pillows so people can gather, chill, jam and connect with each other while I offer donation based haircuts.”

haircut sessions

Photo by: Maria Kaarep
Photo by: Maria Kaarep

 

So far he has travelled with his van trough The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Switzerland and Germany. He has been in Australia for five months and just got back from a short trip to Lisbon.

What is your goal with the haircut session?
My dream is to get invited to awesome locations all over the world to gather people for haircut sessions.

haircut sessions

How du you get costumers?
When i’m backpacking I hang up signs in Hostels, at campsites or it just happens very randomly after a conversation. Like i’ve recently been cutting a girl’s hair right in front of a Hostel’s reception desk after she got back from a pub crawl.

When I’m in the Netherlands, I try to get into festivals and party’s. And you won’t believe it but I’m always busy at festivals. I’ve met so many good people, got lots of free food and I got a place to park my van for as long as the festival takes!

Sometimes I build a stage next to my haircut chair so I can play music in between or i can let people jam.

Now I often get messages from people who invite me for „Haircut Sessions”. They understand the concept, invite their friends, arrange a cool location, bring their instruments and they make sure there’s some beers. And I just put my chair down and have a good time. “

Photo by: Maria Kaarep
Photo by: Maria Kaarep

About the life on the road:
The first year of the trip was together with my ex-girlfriend Kirstyn and now i’m continuing alone. When i’m in my own country (The Netherlands) I ether sleep in my van or at friends places, but always on the move.

Besides haircuts, Kirstyn and I were a music duo named Little Warrior. We wrote music together, recorded an EP and played often at festivals where I was doing haircuts.

The first months of the van life trip started with playing lots of music on the streets till we found ourselves good enough to go and find gigs at bars, cafe’s and restaurants. We’ve been dumpster diving, asked for free food at markets and volunteered a bit to be able to live with the little money we made.

That grew to playing played gigs and playing at some beautiful festivals. We’ve even played on the radio in Australia and in The Netherlands.

haircut sessionshaircut sessions




What’s next ?
Everything in life changes all the time. Processing all the memories is the thing i’m struggling with the most while living this lifestyle.

As for now, I still make music but just as a form of expressions.

I’ll drive my van down to Portugal soon for a next chapter…

Follow his journey:
The Haircut Sessions on Facebook : thehaircutsessions
The Haircut Sessions on Instagram: thehaircutsessions






Comments

comments

Backpackerstory

Contribute your story and reach out to over 200.000 backpackers.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *