A Southafrican bar in Lahti

24/05

Here we are. Back in Lahti at the Amazulu Bar. I assume the only Southafrican Kroeg in Finland. It's Friday night, a vague idea of summer in the air and the inevitable vintage cruisers are rolling down Vapauden Katu. Pillu ralli hour.
A good crowd throughout the whole gig and the longest gig so far on this tour. Playing three sets this evening. Just before the last one accidentally spilling my beer over the power plugs thus killing the pa. The last one works out unplugged possibly even better. A fantastic audience. Really love this place. Thanks Floris. Will come back.

Setlist Lahti

Volcano God
Silver
Saints
The Great Escape
Reason
Queen Of Switzerland
September Gurls
Miss Hertforshire

Icecubes
Penguins Of Notting Hill Gate
Evelyn Says
Good Friday
Highway Song
Crisis
All The Lights In This House
Kahden Viikon Mies
Diane

Floozy With An Uzi
Chelsea Embankment
Coma Girl
Lonesome Town


25/05

Day starts with bad news. Janne calls to tell me he has to cancel all the gigs we were supposed to play together. He's been to the doctor's and they booked him right away for a surgery next Tuesday. Not the nicest surprise (good news now that I'm writing this: all went well and he just needs two weeks rest for recovery). Means: complete change of plans. Means a lot of calls, e-mails whatsoever to let the venues/promoters know, find a way to to get there as Janne won't be driving as planned. This is getting adventurous. Not sure if i really enjoy this but it's as it is.
Off to Tampere for a rehearsal with Ulla-Riikka Kuisma who will be our Finnish cello player with Church Of The Blue Nun 5 June at Liberté in Helsinki.Turns out a good rehearsal and we later go for a little Tampere sightseeing and dinner. Besides the weather is just getting better and better. Summer apparently is really going at it. Doing again what I promised myself to avoid after the last time - get on the night train to Rovaniemi. Something like 8 hours staring at trees. Occasionally swamps. A lifechanging experience to say the least.

3:16, Sunday morning near Lapua

From Norrlandspölsa to Suisto Klubi

21/05
Woke up early, the lake covered in mist. Jumpstart myself with coffee at the nearby motel bar.Watching truck drivers having a break, boat owners chauffering their swimming sweethearts towards the lake shore which looks like dolphins on skateboards.

Stop for finding a cheap hotel in Nykobing, succeed and have a fantastic Swedish dish there. For vegetarians completely unsuitable, for people like me taylor made. You got to try this: Norrlandspölsa! Todays fiurther challenges include: rethink some arrangements and mentally prepare for the ferry to Turku. Usually the most annoying part of the trip.

Honestly. I'm a bit disappointed. Where have all those good times gone? A packed ferry, youngsters throwing up, the full array of Finnish society going bananas with the omnipresent slot machines, cheap alcohol, terrible dance bands, even worse troubadours in the so called rock bar aboard the infamous Stockholm-Turku line. None of it was there.
Apart from the quality of the musical performances it seems everything has dramatically changed. Fins tired of alcohol? Is this the end? Of Alko shops? Of Viking lines' booze cruises? Of the world as we know it? This spells "Disappointment" all along the line. On top of that I have to drive off the boat in reverse gear this time.
If I don't want to miss out on this part of the journey I'm afraid the next time I have to go via Estonia and take the Tallinn-Helsinki boat.
Arriving 7 am in the morning in Turku gives me a whole day of loitering around. Deciding not to go first thing for a pint I find myself doing an extensive walk around Ruissalo in the drizzeling rain. Seems funny that nowadays things like this are just ok for me to make an exciting day.

22/05

No real big expectations for the first tour gig on a Wednesday night in Turku. Yet this one turns out to be a fantastic evening. Jyrki Mäkelä of formerly 100 Million Martians fame opens the evening at Pikku-Torre with a most pleasant singer-songwriter set in best Nikki Sudden tradition. A small attentive audience came down to see the two Mäkeläs and I'm pleased to see some faces I've seen a year ago at my gig in Bar Kuka just around the corne. My set goes down nicely and get's a bit out of hand towards the end. Ending it playing "Lonesome Town" atop of a table and selling a surprising lot of cds after the show.
An enjoyable evening which ends with a last round in nearby Klubi with my fellow Mäkkelä, his wife Satu, Mikko and part of the audience. Staying the night at Mikko "Lappis" Lappalainen's (whom you might know of Finland's garage-blues heroes Boomhauer). Having breakfast down by the river in a place named Hundsvotti Satamakapaka. Off to Hämeenlinna.

23/05

Meeting Janne Westerlund at Suisto Klubi for our first common gig in Finland. A nice little venue with an extraordinary soundman. Probably the best live sound since playing Vienna in April. The new songs work out even better than yesterday and with a big smile Tommi the sound guy passes me a cd with a live cut of the full gig before I leave.You can hear my version of Grant Hart's /Hüsker Dü's "Diane" on soundcloud. A late night's drive through the rainy woods to our Mökki.

Locked up in Sweden - enroute to Finland

18/05/13
Listening to the first Drugstore album on the way. Almost forgot how good it is. And Dortmund lost. 1:2 against Hoffenheim. Homegame. Embarrassing. To say the least. Don't know if it was comforting enough to have Mäkkelä playing that evening for the football crazy people in that town but they seemed to like it anyway. Wasn't too bad for a first tour gig I'd say. Particularly as this one was the first one solo after mostly playing in duo lineup with Isi on double bass. Didn't stay for the party later on even though Martini the promoter did a fantastic DJ job. The jellyfish keeper wasn't home so I was allowed to stay at her flat. Almost like home. Missed the videos of the baby jellyfish though. Wise decision to skip the party as the drive to Lübeck the following day turned out to be exhausting enough without a hangover.

19/05/13
No bigger incidents in Lübeck. Listened to Turner Cody on the way there. Had a nice chat with Bobo, a small beer (well that's remarkable) and had a good night's sleep at one of the friendliest hostels for touring musicians, the Rucksack Hotel.

20/03/13
Leaving Lübeck early morning with Martin Newell's "Greatest Living Englishman" album guiding me along Denmark's Syd Motorvej. In case you start a psychedelic rock band and need a name this might be an appropriate one.
First really interesting moment was crossing Oresund bridge first time ever. Well, it's a bridge. Ok - it's a very big bridge. They charge you at the end of it something like 325 Danish crowns or the equivalent in Swedish crowns. I should have checked the content of my litztle beg with foreign currency. They do not accept Czech crowns. They made that very clear. Driving through Sweden is in fact quite nice. You are not allowed to go faster then 110 k most of the time so there is a lot of time to watch the landscape. But be cautious with their service stations. Stopped somewhere to get me a cuppa and couldn't get out. The waitress was sorry but slightly overchallenged with the technical
details of the situation. Had to wait for the next customer to join us staring through the door into the Swedish rain.

No... it was the left one

Good eight hours after leaving Lübeck/Germany I wound up in something pretty close to a kennel on a quiet little campsite near Gränna on the shore of lake Vättern. Lots of time here for running through some of the songs to be recorded next weekend, watch the varying qualities of Swedish rainfall and read James Ellroy. An excellent tour read by the way.

A close to perfect survival kit for Swedish campsites

On the go

To be honest, this is all getting a bit edgy. Still a bit knackered from playing the "Mäkkelä meets Wax Mannequin" hoedown on Friday (cheers guys - that was a fun night!) and the "Stadt aus Draht meets GoHo Hobos" on Saturday at Blaue Nacht in Nuernberg.
Only ten days until I have to hit the road for what I hope will be an at least warm tour. What makes it a bit disturbing for now are the plans of spending time in the studio with the GoHo Hobos, with Church Of The Blue Nun, playing a little festival gig on Saturday, djing with David tomorrow night in Bamberg, preparing for Bayerisches Fernsehen (public tv) who just told me yesterday they're going to do a special about Kioski and trying to sort out my car's broken axis, my everlasting trouble with tax authorities' deadlines, pre-producing the June issue of my radio show and about a hundred other more or less annoying, time consuming things...all prior to the tour. But hey - this can be done in ten days. Possibly without a nervous breakdown. Positive thinking.

Made for walking. Photo: Frank Johannes

Among the good things we can list the weather here. Looks as if summer just arrived intending to stay. Good. Hope it follows me up to Turku for my first tour gig on 22nd at Pikku-Torre. Another one is the fact my autumn tour dates start rolling in. This year it's going to be a long one indeed. Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, Catalonia, Netherlands (possibly), UK (definitely) and back
The 7" ep is slowly assuming shape, at least in theory so there is not too much more to do but record it and hope everything goes according to plan and that little thingy is here by the time touring starts in October.

As for the upcoming Finnish dates this will be an interesting thing particularly re. the Church Of The Blue Nun gig in Helsinki. First and apparently only Finnish COTBN gig  this year with Ulla-Riikka on cello. After leaving Finland there'll be a Mäkkelä's Trash Lounge gig in Växjö/Sweden with Robin van Velzen guesting (hmmm... or is this a COTBN show then?) and a Church Of The Blue Nun gig in Malmö which raises the question who is this Mäkkelä, who is that Church and do I have to be worried about being schizo?

Will try to keep a more decent tour diary on this trip than I did last time. Might work out as most of the time I'm on my own and writing keeps me from talking to myself.

All tour dates on Bandsintown bottom of this page.


 

Just a short update...

There is some pretty romantic old school underground feel to record with some bloke living in a factory building's basement with his studio gear, a fridge and a collection of surfboards in the south of Germany. That's what I'd call exclusive lifestyle. Impressed.
Isi Bass and me are opening for Wax Mannequin tonight at the Babylon in Fuerth. Also the autumn/winter tour dates seem to look like a tour ...