Recording in the woods, The Church Of The Blue Nun in HKI and a first glance of Sweden

Marko Haavisto & Johan Forslund after our recordings

01/06

Tiring trip back to Helsinki where my car is parked. Decision is drawn to no more tour with VR (Finnish Railways). From today on there are no smokers rooms on their trains. New policy. Rubbish policy. You guys lost a customer. Ok, I know that's why you did it.

03/06
Picking up Johan Forslund in Helsinki who will be the soundguy for the recordings at our Mökki I've been planning for a long time now. Setting up our gear early afternoon. I'm amazed about the sound and as Marko Haavisto arrives we succeed in recording an intense version of "Reason", here in the backwoods of southern Finland.  I was trying to keep my expectations low on this session. There was merely two options - either it's going to work very well or it's not going to work at all. Apparently we did something right this first Monday of June 2013.


05/06

Weather is even hotter today - 30°C out on the cottage porch just before noon - and I'm driving down to Helsinki again. This time picking up my Church Of The Blue Nun compadre Robin van Velzen at Vantaa airport for what is going to be the first and only Church Of The Blue Nun appearance in Finland this year. Another interesting debut as we never rehearsed with cello player Ulla-Riikka Kuisma in full band line up. Turns out there is no reason to be concerned. She plays an amazing gig at Liberte in Kallio. In fact the whole thing went down in a most pleasant way.
Sami Kukka (heard him first time - a fucking great singer/songwriter) opens the evening. We're on second with a set that turns right away in some weird thing with a life of it's own. The three of us being just players in a game controlled by an invisible hand, directing us like puppets in an irresistible groove of it's own. A big hand once more to Ulla-Riikka who's cello playing was simply stunning.
Mikael H. & The Siberians are on last and finally get the crowd dancing. Good gig of their's as well, in fact more powerful than last time I saw them when we played Semifinal toghether years ago. A perfect evening to end a Finnish tour and a good beginning for the shows Robin and me are about to play the next days.

We've got two more days to spend at the cottage, taping new ideas, sitting in the sun, doing a short visit to Lahti to get Robin at least some little sight seeing. Just the evening before leaving, Finland finally get's it's share of rain. A lot of rain. While sitting on the porch watching thunderstorms and an impressive lot of water pouring down, an old elk hound, scared of the thunder joins our little round and is apparently not willing to leave anywhere. In a way this accomplishes the scenery - three tired old dogs on a porch staring into the pouring summer rain.

08/06

Boat from Turku to Stockholm. We off for the land of Epa-Traktor and Nödraket. Staying the night in Nykobing and learn a lot. Saturday night apparently every adult male in this Swedish town get's a US vintage car out and cruises the blocks of this small town in Sweden. Don't know if you get this in it's entirety: I mean every third vehicle is NO 50s or 60s cruiser. Part of this obviously much favoured ritual is, there is one guy driving, the rest of the passengers do their best to get seriously plastered. Successfully I assume recalling our observations.