Last Exit Honigschleuder. Mäkkelä teilt sich mit.

Is mal wieder Sommer geworden und gemerkt habe ich es erst an dem Wochenende mit den Auftritten in Berlin und auf dem famosen TFF in Rudolstadt. War ziemlich warm. Letzteres ein wirklich ausgesprochen schönes Festival nur leider für per Auto anreisende Musiker ziemlich kostspielig. Innenstadtangelegenheit mit ziemlich sparsamem Parkplatzangebot. Dafür jede Menge Feuerwehreinfahrten. Teure Einfahrten. Sei's drum. Der Grund dieser Mail ist ein anderer. Bevor sowas ähnliches wie eine kurze Sommer-Starre einzutreten im Begriff ist wird es noch einen Mäkkelä Solo-Auftritt im Rahmen eines kleinen aber sehr, sehr feinen Festivals geben. Da alle anderen auftretenden Acts wirklich ausgesprochen gut sind versteige ich mich hier das Ding allerwärmstens zu empfehlen.

Kommenden Freitag (übermorgen) in München. Kunstpavillon im alten Botanischen Garden. Das fLOWRES-Festival.

Alle wichtigen Informationen dazu unter den beiden folgenden Links.

Geht hin! Ist gut!

Mäkkelä


http://www.wasgehtheuteab.de/muenchen/82450-Die-Honigschleuder-party-im-fLOWRES-am-25-07-2014

https://www.facebook.com/events/295217237319123/?ref=22



Ach ja. Hier im Blog stehts noch nicht. Höchste Zeit vielleicht auch dafür. Die letztjährige auf 300 Stück limitierte 7" ep "Single Of The Year" ist mittlerweile (während meiner Tour dort) auch in Finnland veröffentlicht worden. Allerdings mit einer anderen B-Seite und einem andersfarbigen Cover.

Tracklist Version Finnland: A1 Crisis, A2 The Great Escape, B1 Tramontana, B2 Good Friday
Tracklist Version Deutschland:  Tracklist: A1 Crisis, A2 The Great Escape, B1 Reason, B2 Highway Song

Hier mal beide Varianten zum gucken. Erhältlich auf meinen Konzerten, auf http://maekkelae.bandcamp.com/ oder - zumindest theoretisch - im Plattenladen Deiner Wahl.

Hiljaiset Levyt (FIN).

9pm Records (D). Limited Edition.

Bis dann mal die Tage bei einem der Konzerte....

Mäkkelä

www.maekkelae.com

Leaving for the sunny shores of England.

I do deeply regret me being a bit on the slow side with keeping the tour blog. I would really love to say I'm a lazy bastard which is the reason for not being more relieable with spreading my tour dates, writing newsletters and stuff. The terrifying truth is: i completely lost track of it because of playing too many gigs recently. And honestly: I'm not touring Catalonia and waste my precious time sitting somewhere writing if I can be eating delicious food instead. Not to mention the red wine. Sorry for being that selfish.

Well, but then again rather late than never. Setting out for a little UK tour tomorrow which includes first time gigs in Yorkshire and  even further up north.

Here are all the dates, more regular updates on gigs, new releases and life in general can be found on my facebook site, website and occasionally the tourblog.

A quick one before logging out: there is a new 7" ep (four tracks) out on 9pm Records (available primarily on my gigs titled "Single Of The Year") and Dec 18 will see the launch of a music video directed by yong German actor/director Tim Steinheimer. Might be worth checking Maekkelae's facebook around that date. They'll put it up on vimeo around that time. So the least I can do is to unveil a moment of the exhausting workdays with that video thingy....
Luv,
Maekkelae

Maekkelae on Facebook
The Blog
Maekkelae.com

29/11/13 UK-Hertford, Corn Exchange (Mäkkelä solo)
30/11/13 UK, St Albans, Empire Records (afternoon recordstore gig/Mäkkelä solo)
30/11/13 UK-Hitchin, The Victoria (Mäkkelä solo + The Trailer Trash Orchestra)
01/12/13 UK-Leeds, Full Circle (Mäkkelä solo)
02/12/13 UK-Newcastle, The Bridge Folk Club’s open mic (Mäkkelä solo)
03/12/13 UK-Sheffield, The Greystones (Mäkkelä solo + Derrin Nauendorf & Band)
04/12/13 UK-St Albans, The Boot (Mäkkelä solo)
05/12/13 UK-Wakefield, Esquires Coffee House (Mäkkelä solo)
18/12/13 D-Nuernberg, MuZ Club (Mäkkelä feat. Isi + Phil Shoenfelt & Pavel Cingl) Official German record release show & video launch party!

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.

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.


 

Previously unreleased song online

Hiho!

My favourite British cowboys at Trashville put this up. An amazing, free compilation! Have a listen! Good stuff.

Few things have to be mentioned here: Mr. Robin van Velzen played the Banjo, Stefan Nast-Kolb the accordion and my Hobo buddy Michael Stroell recorded this song. If you ever get to Brighton don't forget to have a pint at the Northern Lights.

And even more good news. I'm more than pleased to announce that the upcoming shows in Vienna and Munich are going to be with the amazing Isi Roessler on upright bass. The second gig she did with me last Monday was nothing less than a blinder! There are some quite nice pics on Konstantin Himonakis' facebook page.

Mutuo Arts Centre, Barcelona

Hei,

so finally I've got it up here as well.Really love this little live video they shot down in Barcelona. Enjoy!

MUTUO Live Recordings: Mäkkelä's Trash Lounge - Good friday from Mutuo Centro de Arte on Vimeo.
MÄKKELÄ'S TRASH LOUNGE - Good Friday

Live performance at MUTUO Centro de Arte

Artist's page:
http://maekkelae.bandcamp.com/

Credits:
Audio: Lucas Rojas Martinez
Video: Robin Lambrecht

For more visit:
http://www.mutuocentro.com

The coast, the photographer, the day common sense disappeared

We did this on our last year's tour and apparently Mr Clark Nova and me weren't that much of a pain in the neck even though it was the last couple of gigs then. Frank Johannes, an old friend and fantastic photographer accompanied us on the last days of our tour in 2011 and just captured everything that was to capture. On stage, off-stage, backstage, stage of losing it. The result was an amazing documentary in black and white of the daily routine of a singer-songwriter tour in Germany. When Frank heard of us being on tour again he invited himself for a short three day stint including our gigs in Berlin, Kiel and Hamburg. The latter most likely because of the lamb's head soup that became a tradition for us in a Turkish restaurant opposite side of Nachthafen, the place we played this year the third time.

Our tour photographer, Frank

Only seen a few of his shots of this trip so far and they were really amazing. Looking pretty much forward to what's coming there. I think there is a preview on his web magazine BRUNO.

We kicked off in Berlin's King Kong Klub with a decent gig being filmed by Frank's crew and continued to Kiel. Not that much of a drive and with Hamburg the next day (just an hour away) we had enough time to do some sightseeing. Well, there isn't really a lot to see in Kiel, to be honest. They got a pool with seals in it of which we spotted a head for about 30 seconds, a rowing club called KKK and a lot of water.

Seal in Kiel. Shy.

We skipped Clark's suggestion for visiting two big junkyards even though he was pretty enthusiastic about it. Understandable. We're talking about a guy who watches tractor videos on YouTube first thing in the morning. Instead had some local food containing a lot of meat and cabbage before setting off to Hamburg.

After 24 hours travelling in this company I had a remarkable moment in Hamburg waiting for our venue to open. Sat in a bar with Clark and Frank and literally saw my common sense disappear. It just stood in front of me waving me friendly good bye. Gone. Still trying to figure out if I miss it. Here we are.


Good gig at Nachthafen Hamburg though.

Back to Berlin to drop off our photographer and spend an off day there. Been to the pictures to watch ther new Bond. Loved it. Went for a drink at Fabelhaft Bar where we met Erin Lang and her friend Iggy and had a nice chat about particularly whales. Tour is sort of picking up speed.

Next stop Unnersdorf near Bad Staffelstein in northern Bavaria. Always weird here. A great audience anyway and it's a special thing to meet Norbert, the owner. He keeps an old guitar in his kitchen and plays the blues there which is probably the most appropriate thing to do in the solitude of winter nights in a place as remote as this.

Frankonian food. Quite rich. Might be healthy too.

While writing this mails came in with information about new gigs on this tour. Clark Nova and me will have a last one on 1 December in Biel (Switzerland) at the Biotop, I'll do another solo gig in the UK on 13 December in Winsford at the De Bees Music Bar.

Regular updates you'll find on facebook. On top of that a lot of more or less intelligent comments and remarks on what's hapening on this tour.

Budapest to Brighton; Part I

It's an ever surprising thing going on tour. Surprises around the corner wherever you're heading. Good and bad. This time for the last big bit of my 2010 tour it began with a nice one.
Few days before leaving for the 1st tourdate in Vienna word reached me that Tobias the cello player managed to sort out a gig in Budapest on pretty short notice. A students club named CDFÜ somewhere downtown. No big money but who cares - Vienna's just two hours away (well...) and I haven't played Budapest. That's the terrible thing - you've got always a good chance to lure me to whatever remote place for a show if it sounds exotic enough for me...

The other thing is I'm most of the time not really careful in checking out distances. In fact Vienna Budapest is really not a very long drive. The motorway bit. The tricky part starts once the motorway through, most of the time not very exciting Hungarian landscape, ends. Those last 2 km to the appartment address on the Buda side of river Danube town took me another good hour. A 60 minute nightmare of roadworks and oneways. Once I figured out where to turn left: no left turn possible. Ok, let's go ahead take the next one but there won't be a next one left. Instead a bridge you have to cross to find just three km further a chance to U-turn illegally but still turn. And no, I'm not going to get into details about the car park situation. To look at it in a positive way: it prepares you in a most decent way for places like Vienna and Brussels. Both towns yet to come on this tour.

The CDFÜ turned out to be a nice little students bar on the Pest side of town. Reminded me of some places I played in Czech Republik back in the early 90s. Not a big crowd, mostly students, but a very attentive one. Good first gig with Tobias doing a great job on his cello. Had my first few Palinkas. Think they were ok. Gonna leave it to this. Even though they told me the real stuff is the homemade one served in 2 l plastic bottles. Scary.

The next day left us enough time for a good deal of sight-seeing. Sunny, warm Budapest with ticket machines giving out tram tickets and change on a random basis. Have to say I'm still impressed. Everything is remarkably huge. Wonderful buildings a lot of them pretty run down though. Can't remember the names of the places we've seen but it's been great. Well, there was the giant market hall. Bought me dried hot chilli peppers as a souvenir. Remembered them few days later in Graz when rubbing my eyes after rummaging in my bag and inadvertantly sticking my fingers into what turned out to be the open plastic bag with the peppers.

Vienna, 17/11/2010

2nd gig and it already feels like being on the road for a week. Been looking forward to Vienna. My 2nd gig here after playing the Cafe Concerto in 2005 on the Penguins Tour.
When arriving a little late after getting lost in Vienna (nope - no gps or road map on us) first person we ran into was good old Ibrahim from Basel whom I haven't seen in ages. Probably since my last gig at the Wagenmeister/Basel. We went for a drink and some food with him after a terribly long soundcheck. The Cafe Carina else is a great venue. Good stage size, good pa, situated in an arch right under the train tracks. We played a maybe even better gig than in Budapest. Actually it was pretty wild for a Maekkelae gig... The basically pleasant mood in the venue changed short time after the gig when some guys started a fight there which got a bit out of hands. Managed to save our gear and left in time. Got lost with Ibrahim, his girlfriend and some of Tobias fellow students from Budapest at the Cafe Concerto.

I was particularly amazed about THE FAN. A lady showed up who happened to turn out my friends Dirk and Britta's new neighbour. She knew only my version of "Volcano God" (propably from MySpace) which was good enough a reason for her to see the gig. Must have done something right with this song.

Next morning we picked up Tobias wife Orsi at the station and had breakfast at the Cafe Jelinek (the definitely most wonderful coffee house in Vienna). Time for them to go for a tour of the Vienna museums and me to leave for Graz after this. Shame these were the only two shows we had the chance to play together. Liked them a lot.

Here's the Link to my Facebook page with some songs to listen to...

recordrelease gig

I've given up on predicting audiences in this town. One can advertise a gig properly months ahead here and end up with an audience of 5 being mildly interested in a wonderful concert AND there is nights like yesterday. Three days prior to the recordshop gig first e-mails that we'll do a FIVE song concert (!) in a recordshop on a Friday night and it turns out to be a packed room with a wonderful, enthusiastic audience.
Joined in on one of Robin van Velzen's songs, started my set with Martin Newell's "Goodnight Country Girl", then "Church Of The Blue Nun" (sort of the single's flipside) and ended the gig with "Miss Hertfordshire" with Robin on the mandolin. For the encore there was Chilton's "September Gurls" and Roy Harper's "Another Day". In a way it couldn't have been a better way to celebrate the release of the single. Only thing is: I'm still a bit irritated that it's not physically there. But this is apparently the way things are now. Seems as if we got to get used to this.


If you want to purchase this lovely cluster of ones and nils go straight to iTunes and find it there. Strange that particularly this really worked out...

Looking forward to the coming gigs...

m