Hope you’re all doing well. I myself am enjoying some down time up in the Swedish mountains (Åre, to be exact) and I’m trying to do as little as possible.
However, I couldn’t do absolutely nothing, so I decided to go through the past ten years of my life to see what I’ve been up to. So, I’ve just created a new section I call the Daily Itinerary where you can see every gig I’ve had over the last decade. I’ve also begun the arduous task of going through when I’ve been in the studio, whether it be recording sessions or songwriting. Of course, the later the date the more details I have. Before the age of the Goo-Cal I used analogue calendars and most of them got thrown in the trash last time I moved. Luckily, I’ve kept good track of when and where I’ve had all my gigs and saved it all on file so that part of the section is (hopefully) absolutely accurate.
The itinerary will be developed and expanded upon with links and more stuff eventually. The goal is for it to become as comprehensive as possible – more so than just a regular “Tour section”. I’m doing it mostly for my own sake obviously, but maybe some of you readers will find it interesting as well.
Next week I’m going back to Stockholm and business again. But now I’m going to enjoy the sunset on the balcony with a cold beer in my hand. 🙂
This weekend was a total blast. Two gigs on the big stage of both St. Gallen Open Air and Rheinkultur with Friska Viljor, with whom I haven’t had the opportunity to play with for a couple of years. Since I last played with them, they’ve put out two new records and grown very popular down in continental Europe. On Friday we flew down to Munich and got picked up by the designated driver, and drove down to Switzerland for the first show. It’s supposedly the most important festival to play in the country, and we had a great spot at 7.15 pm on the main stage. It was quite cool to step up on the same stage that Queens of the Stone Age were going to play the day after us. It was absolutely huge, and the crowd was around 15 000 when we played. I hadn’t played for a crowd that big since HappyPill opened up for KISS in 2008. Since I’d only had a couple of days to learn the 15 song set I was quite focused and not entirely able to enjoy the moment. But it didn’t matter much since the next gig was going to be even bigger!
Having only slept for two hours the night before (we had to leave for the airport at 4 am to catch the early morning flight to Munich) we called it a night quite early and went over to the Radisson to catch up on lost sleep. We also had a 600 km drive the next morning so we had to get up at 7 in order to make the 2 pm get-in time in Bonn. After a typical hotel breakfast buffet we hit the road an hour late and still managed to make it to Rheinkultur only 10 minutes late. With only about 1½ hours to showtime we quickly got the gear offloaded and up behind the stage. We got set up for the change-over in no time, so I had some time to enjoy the show of Greg Dulli with his Twilight Singers who had the spot before us. He’s a real legend in my book, and I’m a big fan of Afghan Whigs, so I was very happy to be able to see him live for the first time – from the side of the stage no less. I never got the chance to speak with him though, since we only had 15 minutes change-over time. When we got out on stage, we were greeted by 35-40 000 people (at least, that’s what the stage manager estimated the number to be). We had some difficulties getting all the instruments sounding on stage, so we had to cut a few songs off the set, unfortunately. However, when we got started it was all just extremely fun – the sound was a lot better than the night before, and with a gig the night before under my belt, I personally could enjoy the gig a lot more. It was the biggest gig ever for Friska Viljor, and for myself as well – beating the previous record of 20-25 000 at Stockholms Stadion at the KISS gig. It’s just the coolest thing you can experience as a musician – especially since a huge part of the audience was actually there for Friska Viljor and sang along in all the songs. It’s something that can’t really be compared with anything else, I assure you!
After the show we all got really drunk and I had the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I hope I get a chance to play with the band soon again.
Johan Bergqvist 