Yule tide coming

The Christmas season is drawing near. It’s been a weird autumn by Swedish measures, with spring-like weather and no snow anywhere – not even in the far north. It’s starting to get chillier now, but by this time everybody’s usually wearing long johns and knitted scarves to keep the cold out. I try to avoid the cold as much as I can if I can help it (unless I’m out in the ski slopes, but that’s about once a year around February/March). But what’s worst with the winter time in these parts is the darkness. The days are so short that you hardly get to get a glimpse of the sun before it descends again around 3 pm. It gets kind of depressing, and it’s got a bigger impact on me now than it did a few years ago. Just another of those things that gets tougher with age, huh?

In any case, I’ve had an eventful month with new releases from both The Genuine Fakes and Hong Faux. TGF’s Liner Notes has been well received and it’s now out on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify etc. If you’re interested we’ve posted a couple of reviews over at thegenuinefakes.com. We’ve completed about four songs by now for the next album and we’re going to continue working on it to make sure it gets out sometime before summer. Judging by what we’ve got so far, the album’s going to turn out better than we hoped, and it’s going to sound amazing!

The Hong Faux debut album The Crown that Wears the Head saw the light of day on Nov 16. We’ve yet to see if it’ll make any sort of impact. The goal is of course to create some sort of buzz and see if it can lead to a proper release on a fitting label – first in Sweden and then elsewhere. For now, it’s a vinyl exclusive and you can get it either by attending one of our shows or by ordering through our Bandcamp store. We recently signed a deal with management company Pironi here in Sweden, and we’re hopeful that our collaboration with them will take us to unprecedented heights. It’s the first management deal for me, personally, so that in itself feels like a great achievement. It feels like I’ve been very close with many projects before – including my solo project, but this is the first time I’ve managed to cross over and actually gotten someone on “the other side” hooked on a project to the point where they were ready to actually make a proper commitment. So, I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that next year will bring lots of great things to the table. I wouldn’t mind doing a tour with one of my own bands and doing the whole thing like it used to be done back in the heyday of the music business. It’s only wishful thinking at this point, but what’s different this time is that it actually seems feasible. Exciting times indeed!

Last week I lent my guitar skills to the Swedish pop wiz Vincent. My good friend Mattias Franzén (Miike Snow etc.) with whom I play with in the presently dormant project I Am the Flood (and who has also jumped in on keyboards in Nutmeg a few times) is in the band and he was kind enough to think of me when they needed a stand-in for their regular guitarist. Vincent is all over the pop charts here in Sweden and he’s a songwriter that I have the utmost respect for, so naturally I couldn’t turn down the chance to play with him. He broke through back in 2007 with the song “Don’t Hate on Me” and has a number of hits after that including “Miss Blue” and “Baby Hurricane”. He’s now out promoting his second album Godspeed. I’ve never played that kind of chart-oriented pop music before so it was a fun challenge for me. Mind you, the live versions don’t sound much like the recordings, performed, as they are, by a classic rock band set-up. But the approach to the music is a lot different than it is in a regular rock band. The sounds has more “air”, if you will, and with no distorted guitars to disguise any flaws you really have to be on your feet and know your shit in order to pull it off. But that’s fine with me, I think it’s that much more fun if it comes with a challenge! I hope I get the opportunity to do more shows with him and his great band next year.

Vincet at Metropol, me on the left

I write this from my old home town of Hultsfred down in Småland. I lived here between 2000 – 2005 while I was studying economics and music management. During that time I was involved with a Christmas show here in town, which added a sweet bonus to the student allowance in those days (and actually financed my debut album Throwaway Moments). This year the show has outgrown the city and is moving to a big place called Konsert & kongress in Linköping (which is one of the larger cities in Sweden). As it happens, they needed me back by the piano this year and so I’m back here now for a week of rehearsal before going to Linköping to do no less than ten “Golden Garden Christmas” shows. It’s great to hang with the guys in the band again – the line-up hasn’t changed much over past six years. So I’m going to spend the next few weeks working with this show, and hopefully getting some creative work done in the hotel room in the time between. Got some new Hong Faux riffs to write and some solo songs to arrange so no sleep ’til X-mas!

Autumn recap

I finally have some time to get you up to speed. Sorry for the lack of updates (as usual…).

I’ve had a really intense period, with lots of stuff going on in all areas of life. Not least in the area of music. Here’s a breakdown of recent events.

The Genuine Fakes have been awfully busy in the studio working on songs for the second album. We’re making headway, working through the songs one by one. By now we’re finished with tracking four songs, and so I’m mixing those tracks as we continue to track the rest. We’re way more efficient this time around than we were on the last album. We both know how we want the record to sound and we know how get there – we don’t need to go through the whole trial and error process once again.

On top of this, we thought it was time to revisit the old album sessions and go through those songs that ended up not getting included on The Striped Album. So, I sat down and remixed them and sent them off to Anders Hellgren (formerly of The Merrymakers) for mastering. The result became Liner Notes, and since 11 November you can stream it in its entirety over at Bandcamp, as well as buy it if you like. It will be out on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon etc. in time for Christmas.

In other news, Hong Faux is progressing at a pace I don’t think anyone in the band would’ve been able to predict. What started as a fun side-project just eighteen months ago is quickly starting to become a lot more than just that. Last week we signed a management deal with Pironi, who also represent Titiyo, Hästpojken, Le Kid, Sugarplum Fairy and a bunch of other well established Swedish acts. I’m pretty excited about all that’s happening, ’cause in all the years of hard work in different bands, no band has gotten this close to actually reaching out on a broader scale. As I wrote in the last blog post, we’ve put out a single and video, and in just two days we release our debut album The Crown that Wears the Head on vinyl via my own record label Pristine Music. It’ll be available exclusively on gigs and through Bandcamp (we take pre-orders now). We chose to hold off on the digital release for a while, just to see if we might be able to get some kind of deal with a record company with a bit more muscle. Hopefully that’s something that our new management can help us out with. Time will tell!

In any case, last week we made an appearance at Umeågalan in front of a couple of thousand people. We stood for the rock segment of the event, sort of the odd one out among acts such as Jill Johnson, Säkert! and Charlie Caper. It was a great oppportunity to showcase the new single though, and we did our utmost with the five minutes we had at our disposal. This week we’re doing two shows to celebrate the vinyl release – Scharinska in Umeå on Wednesday and Marie Laveau in Stockholm on Thursday. It’s free admittance to both shows, so if you’re in the neighborhood on any of these dates feel free to bring your friends and drop by. At the Stockholm show Strängen from Hellacopters will be deejaying, so it’s going to be a rawkin’ night More info about those shows at hongfaux.com.

One more thing – a couple of weeks ago I did a gig together with David Myhr. He had his first solo gig in Stockholm, and he asked me to join in on lead guitar and backing vocals. It was just the two of us in the intimate cellar space of Southside pub here in Stockholm. I’m a big fan of David’s and his upcoming solo debut is a fine piece of pop craftsmanship. Keep a look-out for it early next year!