Hey, guess what! Playing in a band must be the greatest thing there is. First of all it's the sheer joy of playing music together, when you've become one with the song and the guys playing it (if you get what I mean?). Then it's of course the social bit. I mean you share both good and bad times but what really separates the boys from the men, is touring. Being together 24/7 for a couple of weeks or maybe a month, requires lots of qualities of all members. It's under conditions like these, you really can see what the chemistry in the band is like.
During my years of playing, I've been on the road with 6 different bands. No band can be compared to the other. Some like to party, some like to soundcheck all the way up to the gig. Personally I prefer a combination of those two. The most easy going band up until now must have been Solid Blue. The attitude of both the music and the guys in the band was a little bit of a laugh. During our 5 year career, I can't remember that we argued even once and we played a lot. The gigs were mostly in pubs and rock clubs. We didn't even raise our voices once during our 10 nights in a row tour in England, despite the lack of sleep, the amount of booze and all the miles we drove. That tour might as well have been one of the most funny things I've done in my whole life. Highway Stars was like a machine. During the perod I was in the band, we did 3 or 4 gigs every week. It was a whole lotta partying, mostly becauze we always played at parties where everybody was drunk. It could be a 40 minute set in front of a packed and "Scandinavian drunk" audience at a nightclub, a ski resort, or why not one of those "Swedish summerparty cities" like Visby, Halmstad or Marstrand. We also did festivals, private (jet set) parties and the best thing of all, playing for companies and their employees. It was great money, spectacular shows and a hell of a party!
The early days of Spellbound was as I recalll it, controlled chaos. We were hardly 20 years old and we had the feeling that nothing, no one could stop us. I was wrong, I mean just as we released our first album "Breaking the spell" it was my time to join the Swedish army, which was compulsory back then. When I look back at it now, It was actually there and then we lost the game. If we would have had the right recordlabel behind us and if I wasn't doing the military service for 10 months, who knows what would have happened? Anyway, I'm very glad for those years. The massive amount of hours practising during those years, has really more than anything else made me the musician I am today. In 97 I joined The Flower Kings, at the same time as they were getting a lot more active. I have to say TFK is quite an extraordinary band. In all my years of playing, most of the time there's one guy (sometimes that guy has been me) or maybe a team of 2 lads, who's taking care of business so to speak. That could be anything, writing songs, deciding what covers to play, owning the bus and the P-a, booking and arranging stuff or just as I said, taking care of business. I mean everyone knows that TFK is Roines baby. Still TFK consists of 3 men with BIG egos, playing their instrument like a true virituoso and they're all very good producers as well. All that + a drummer and me. Quite a line-up don't you think? With this in mind, yes we discuss a lot, we disagree in a lot of things but at the same time, we've had lots of fun over the years and in fact I think all of our differences, is part of the reason of our success.
As you all probably know by now, for the moment I'm deeply involved in HFMC and I wouldn't change that for anything in the world. It's too early to tell but so far this has been like a dream. After a couple of years in the "back seat" I'm now back in the "drivers seat" again and up until now I've been loving every minute of it. If you find 4 musicians that'll do anything they can to help you realize your musical vision, these guys can't be anything but VERY good friends in my book. By now we've also done our first live shows and the answer those gigs gave me, is the fact that our chemistry works! In 2011 we'll be "moving in for the kill, the ultimate thrill". Hope to see you then dear friends!!!
As it is now, I don't have any blogs planned. Who knows, I might wake up someday with a lot of subjects that I wanna write about. The reason it took a while for me to finish this one, was that I wanted to do those gigs with HFMC first. Let me just make one thing clear before I leave you this time. I will keep you updated on a regular basis as usual, regarding, gigs, videos, news and other HFMC related things. Love to you all!!!
During my years of playing, I've been on the road with 6 different bands. No band can be compared to the other. Some like to party, some like to soundcheck all the way up to the gig. Personally I prefer a combination of those two. The most easy going band up until now must have been Solid Blue. The attitude of both the music and the guys in the band was a little bit of a laugh. During our 5 year career, I can't remember that we argued even once and we played a lot. The gigs were mostly in pubs and rock clubs. We didn't even raise our voices once during our 10 nights in a row tour in England, despite the lack of sleep, the amount of booze and all the miles we drove. That tour might as well have been one of the most funny things I've done in my whole life. Highway Stars was like a machine. During the perod I was in the band, we did 3 or 4 gigs every week. It was a whole lotta partying, mostly becauze we always played at parties where everybody was drunk. It could be a 40 minute set in front of a packed and "Scandinavian drunk" audience at a nightclub, a ski resort, or why not one of those "Swedish summerparty cities" like Visby, Halmstad or Marstrand. We also did festivals, private (jet set) parties and the best thing of all, playing for companies and their employees. It was great money, spectacular shows and a hell of a party!
The early days of Spellbound was as I recalll it, controlled chaos. We were hardly 20 years old and we had the feeling that nothing, no one could stop us. I was wrong, I mean just as we released our first album "Breaking the spell" it was my time to join the Swedish army, which was compulsory back then. When I look back at it now, It was actually there and then we lost the game. If we would have had the right recordlabel behind us and if I wasn't doing the military service for 10 months, who knows what would have happened? Anyway, I'm very glad for those years. The massive amount of hours practising during those years, has really more than anything else made me the musician I am today. In 97 I joined The Flower Kings, at the same time as they were getting a lot more active. I have to say TFK is quite an extraordinary band. In all my years of playing, most of the time there's one guy (sometimes that guy has been me) or maybe a team of 2 lads, who's taking care of business so to speak. That could be anything, writing songs, deciding what covers to play, owning the bus and the P-a, booking and arranging stuff or just as I said, taking care of business. I mean everyone knows that TFK is Roines baby. Still TFK consists of 3 men with BIG egos, playing their instrument like a true virituoso and they're all very good producers as well. All that + a drummer and me. Quite a line-up don't you think? With this in mind, yes we discuss a lot, we disagree in a lot of things but at the same time, we've had lots of fun over the years and in fact I think all of our differences, is part of the reason of our success.
As you all probably know by now, for the moment I'm deeply involved in HFMC and I wouldn't change that for anything in the world. It's too early to tell but so far this has been like a dream. After a couple of years in the "back seat" I'm now back in the "drivers seat" again and up until now I've been loving every minute of it. If you find 4 musicians that'll do anything they can to help you realize your musical vision, these guys can't be anything but VERY good friends in my book. By now we've also done our first live shows and the answer those gigs gave me, is the fact that our chemistry works! In 2011 we'll be "moving in for the kill, the ultimate thrill". Hope to see you then dear friends!!!
As it is now, I don't have any blogs planned. Who knows, I might wake up someday with a lot of subjects that I wanna write about. The reason it took a while for me to finish this one, was that I wanted to do those gigs with HFMC first. Let me just make one thing clear before I leave you this time. I will keep you updated on a regular basis as usual, regarding, gigs, videos, news and other HFMC related things. Love to you all!!!