Midsummer Nights

So, it was the Midsummer in Finland. The longest day of the year. Forests full of drunk people. Lakes floating with dead bodies. Rock festivals in the middle of nowhere. Like Nummirock at Nummijärvi, Kauhajoki. It's only 130km or so from Tampere, but still in the middle of nowhere. It's a nice festival though and a really nice site too. Two years ago we played as a last band of the first day on the beach stage and had one of our most memorable concerts with lots of people dancing and the sun on the horizon already getting back up. This year we were playing in a tent on Thursday which wasn't technically even festival day yet. Only two bands on the bill, us and Heavy Metal Perse again.

On Friday morning we had a flight booked to Germany and we had to be at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport around 7.00-7.30. So we had rented an old Finnish tour bus to take us to Nummirock and back so that we could have some sleep in the bus during the night instead of just sitting is our usual van. The bus with Jonne left helsinki at 14.00 so it was expected in Tampere around 16.00. Cane came to my place by "proletarian tube" and we drove to Pirkkala to wait the bus. We bought some alcohol on our way there. A bit before 17 we were finally on our way to Kauhajoki.

At Nummirock we parked the bus near the venue and spent the evening by meeting friends, enjoying the weather and whatever. We didn't have much to do before the show since Heavy Metal Perse had done the soundcheck and the audience was already in so we basically just waited our showtime which was 23.30. We started quite close to that time I think. The set list was basically the same that we've been doing the whole summer. This time we did all the songs though since we had all the time in the world and didn't have to drop anything. The running order was a bit strange though since Jonne was his usual self and accidentally skipped a song or two and decided to just add them in the end of the set. At some point of the show Jonne broke a string and did the rest of the show with a spare guitar. Not a big problem.

The main thing on Thursday was not the band though, it was the audience. The tent was packed and the response we got was overwhelming. Possibly the best audience we've ever had in Finland. The previous Nummirock was great but this was even more. Maybe the slightly more intimate tent did it. Anyway, excellent. Thank you.

We were using partially HMP's backline. I think we were supposed to help them with that after the show. I guess we didn't. I never do that, but I expected someone else from us to do that. I guess no one showed up. Sorry.

I went to swim after the show. It was cold. Freezing cold. Something like 2 centimetres cold. I mean, it isn't a big one to start with but that was already ridiculous.

In the middle of the night we started our journey to Helsinki. We seemed to have some problems finding our way. I was drunk and tired and decided to get some sleep on the couch. I wake after a few hours only to notice that once again our bus is broken. This time on a highway a few kilometres before Hämeenlinna, still about 100km to Helsinki-Vantaa. We are in a real hurry this time. The driver manages to reach a friend of his who drives from Hämeenlinna to pick us up with a van that someone said was Turisas'. We managed to get to the airport in time, barely. At least we didn't have to wait long.

For some reason the flight was quite unpleasant. I am usually so tired in the planes that I fall asleep immediately after boarding but this time I couldn't sleep at all. Juho was complaining the same. There was something wrong with the plane.

Anyway, once again Luftwaff... hansa brought us to Frankfurt, Germany. That airport is almost as familiar as Helsinki-Vantaa already. We packed ourselves in a van where Matte had reserved some beer and liquer but I wanted Fiskeman so we stopped at Esso to get some Vodka and Fisherman's Friends. They had a beautiful 1974-75 Ford Granada Coupé Ghia on display. I used to have even more beautiful 1973 model myself. Nostalgic.

The drive to the festival was as usual. Matte driving, Paukku sitting next to him and others in the back complaining.
- "Turn the music up!"
- "It's too fucking hot in here!"
- "Turn the music up!"
- "Open the window, they are smoking again!"
- "Turn the music up!"

We drove to the festival area from the main gate, passed the camping site and started wondering where the hell is the festival. We were in the middle of the field with no sign of Queens Of Metal. It turned out that we should have taken tight left turn right after the entrance. We found the festival after all. It was quite nice location. An open field in the middle of a small forest. Only one stage, beer tent area, some merchandise booths, some discount CDs which I of course had to buy. Some Glenn Hughes and Chris Caffery.

We were already hungry so we went to get some food. They told us not to come there. They just presented us with some options and asked what we'd like to get and then in a few minutes they brought big trays of food to our backstage room. Great service and good food for all the meat eaters and myself.


We were the headliners, show time at 23.40, so we had plenty of time to do nothing. Jonne was of course changing strings and Paukku was fixing the broken cables, checking out the guitarist's new Engl preamps and other stuff and I was getting bored. We couldn't really drink because it was still hours till show time, so I went through all the CD shops, merchandise booths and even tried to watch some other bands which I don't really do that often. At least one of them was quite memorable: Grail Knights. They were dressed, let's say interestingly, they had some extra actors on the stage and a 30 centimetres high green castle. Talk about Spinal Tap. But honestly, they were good. Good melodies and great vocal harmonies.

Finally we decided to head to the hotel that was about 15 minutes drive away. Some of us went to get some sleep but most of us were there just to escape the constant noise that you always have in the background at the festivals. We basically just sat in the backyard's terrace and had a few cold beers. Sabaton was there also for a while until they had to leave to play their show. We got back to the festival area at 22.15.

The show itself went quite smoothly. Same set as the day before, but this time in the "correct" order. Probably the longest "Ii Lea Voibmi" ever. The audience seemed a bit tired after over 12 hours of festival but it was still really nice to be on the stage.

After the show I gave some of our red wine to Sabaton. We have 8 bottles of it on our catering rider and I am the only one who drinks that. Well, Hittavainen does too. And others too if that's all there is left. Anyway, share the wealth.

After a short rest we heard Manowar's "Hail And Kill" from somewhere and then some Accept and decided to check that out. It turned out that there was still a party going on in the beer tent so we headed there for a while. Had a few drinks, signed some autographs, posed for pictures and left back to the hotel. There most of us went already to bed but Hittis and Cane came to our room for a nightcap. Matson started snoring almost immediately but we stayed up for a while chatting.

We got up at 9.00, Matson went for breakfast which I decided to skip. I took a shower instead and at 10.00 we started our journey back to Frankfurt. We decided to leave some of our heavier stuff to Matte since we are going back in 5 days anyway. Would be stupid to pay for the overweight and not even use that stuff at home!

I finally got home in Tampere at 20.15 on Saturday. I took a quick shower and guess what. I went back to Nummirock with the girlfriend, got extremely drunk and annoyed everybody.

Say (Swiss) cheese!

The story continues. So we were on our way to Switzerland to spend our day off. We landed in Zürich and immediately in the terminal mixed three bags of the Fisherman's Friends with Jonne's bottle. We started our journey in a festival's van to Langenthal where our hotel was. The 60% vodka didn't go down that well. It burned the throat. At first. Then it started to taste better. Suddenly the journey wasn't so boring after all. The two hours went quite easily.

In Langenthal we decided that we should head directly to the festival in Huttwil to eat and see the bands as well. The festival was taking place in an icehall. We didn't know about it before but when we couldn't find our stage anywhere someone told us that the second stage was outside in an icehockey rink. At that point it didn't really bother us anymore. We settled in our dressing room, mixed another litre of Fiskeman, got food from the catering and the fridge in the catering area was full of cold beer. The weather was nice so we parked ourselves on an outdoor table.

My memories from the evening are not that good. We met a lot of people. Old friends (5th or 6th or 7th time in the country), new friends, fans, whoever. I don't really remember that many of them. Don't blame the alcohol though. I never remember anyone. I went to see Opeth, didn't really care. I enjoy the band occasionally from the CD but live they don't really give much for me. Matson went to see Avantasia and I believe he actually enjoyed that.

The next clear memories I have are from the next morning, when I wake up in the hotel room. I spent a moment thinking if I should go for a breakfast but decide no. Sleeping is good every now and then. At one point during the day I send an SMS to home just to say that I'm still alive. Then I call Matson to ask when we are supposed to get to the venue. At 16.00. So I finally get up from the bed around 15 and go to shower. Suddenly I hear a huge banging from the door. It's Paukku with his "nice" wake up call. He tells me that we're leaving in 15 minutes.
- "Wasn't that supposed be at 16."
- "Yes, it WAS. You have 15 minutes."

The festival's second stage had an interesting lineup: a local band, Korpiklaani, Eluveitie and Ensiferum. 3 out of 5 Paganfest bands and I was wearing a Moonsorrow hoodie so it was almost 4 out of 5. Lots of familiar faces and music around us then. I was nice seeing all them again. It's funny how you actually miss people even if you don't realize that. You just understand that when you meet them again. Quite soon after we met Eluveitie Rafi told me the news about him and his brother Sevan leaving the band. That was a surprise. I've always though that they would never leave. They are quite integral part of the band, at least that's how it seems to an outsider, so I wonder if the band will ever find good replacements for them. I really hope they do though.

We sort of shared a dressing room with Ensiferum. The rooms were separate but we had common showers and toilet. Mahi, who seems to be responsible for their merchandise among other things, asked if we know anything about the merchandise or if we have someone to sell ours since they were told that they have to have their own one. On the other hand we were told that the festival will be selling our merch as well. After some talk with the festival people we understood that we need someone to sell merch for both bands. I contacted an old friend Melanie who I think was anyway coming to sell Eluveitie stuff and she agreed to do us as well. Well, not "do us" in the dirty meaning of that, you perverts. Thanks, Mel and girls. We'll probably never pay you back.

The weather wasn't so beautiful anymore. Maybe 15 degrees and raining. Stage of course had a roof but the rain came from the front so the first few metres of stage were wet. We should've hung our backdrop in front of the stage. The new backdrop was maybe a bit too big for that stage. It filled the whole back from left to right, top to bottom and there even was a metre extra hanging below the stage. The changeover times were quite generous, an hour. The idea was I guess that when indoor band stops the next outdoor band starts. I usually play without any shoes. Of course I always check beforehand if the stage is good enough for that. Splinters are not nice. This time I decided to go without shoes again. I was maybe a small mistake. It was freezing and I ended having a piece of metal in my foot.

Except for the freezing water, the show was good as usual. We've always had a really good crowd in Switzerland. I don't know if that's the case with every band in Switzerland but for us it's always been really good. Already on our first show there in August 2005 when we basically sucked. The show went on as usual. No big surprises in the set. We did "Palovana" though which has quite often been the first one to be left out if we have had to cut the set shorter. Matson had a small accident. I believe it was in the end of the first song when I saw something strange on the stage. Matson's splash symbal was rolling on the stage. It didn't matter really. During the second song someone fixed that with a new stand.

After the show I took the shower as usual and got dressed. The catering rider alcohol was put into good use. I even noticed the icehockey team's stereo system so that we could listen to the Kiss bootlegs Matson got in Sweden. They were crap. I realized that the stereo system had an RCA inputs in the back and since Paukku always has all kinds of cables with him we managed to hook up Cane's iPod to the stereos. 3500 songs in random. Excellent. All the rest decided to go to eat but Cane, Hittis and myself were already having such a good time drinking and listening to music that we decided to pass that, since we knew that we wouldn't have the same feeling again after eating! That's called experience.

We met two record company guys as well. We mostly talked about the Paganfest tour that we did and about the possible US tour later this year. There's been a lot of talk about that and it seems that we are basically wanted there, but as for now it looks like it's not going to happen this year. I am not sure if the Paganfest II or whatever they call it will happen, but we won't be part of it. Let's see that again in 2009.

On Friday there was two bands that I was interested to see at least a bit. I used to like Queensrÿche during "Rage For Order" and "Operation: Mindcrime" era, but sort of lost my interest after that. Europe was the other one I wanted to see. I hate how everybody always remember them from the horrible "Final Countdown" and no one seems to know that were a really good heavy rock band on their first two albums: the self-titled and "Wings Of Tomorrow". Joey Tempest is a great singer and John Norum is a brilliant guitarist as was his temporary (6 years!) replacement Kee Marcello. Crap. I am old.
Anyway I actually managed to see both bands. Not entire shows but enough to form an opinion on them. I can't remember what it was. I also saw Eluveitie and Ensiferum but I already had an opinion on them.

The evening went quite well. We saw some bands, met friends, drank a bit and had fun. It was really relaxing to be with all the familiar faces again. Although Merlin poured his entire drink on my lap but you can't really be angry at a lovable person like him.

Next morning it was again a drive back to Zürich airport. We are a bit difficult group for the check-in personnel since it's a group of 8, we have usually 15 pieces of luggage to cargo bay which weights way more than we are allowed to have and some of the boxes weight more than one person is allowed to lift. Once again we tried to do it the easy way and asked from a lady there guiding people if there's a group check-in somewhere: "No, get in the line."
After about a half an hour wait we get to the check-in and the lady asks us why didn't we use the group check-in! Fucken sie offen, bitte! That's German for fuck off. She was really nice though. Guided us to the check-in and everything. And charged 500€ for the extra weight.

The plane was about 40 minutes late in leaving and about an hour late in arriving. For some reason the luggage was delayed at the airport for another 30 minutes so our driver, the world famous "You may have seen this man on TV!" punk bassist Lahti had to wait really long. Not our fault. We stopped at the first gas station in Keimola (or is it Gaymola) and Tuomas and myself got some cider. Traveling is nicer that way.

Sauna Open Air was going on in Tampere at that weekend. Me and the lady tried to go to Inferno metal bar later in the evening but the line was like a hundred metres long drunk snake. Then we went to Sputnik but they had a note on the door: "We've moved". We went to the new Sputnik but it just wasn't the same anymore. Screw you hippies! I'm going home.

Heja Sverige!

I should pay more attention to our concert dates. I knew that we had two shows coming up in Sweden and in Switzerland but I automatically thought they were something like Friday and Saturday. It's never good to go to your boss and ask vacation like this:
- "I need a few days off."
- "Starting when?"
- "Tomorrow."
He's a cool person though and understands music so off we were to Sweden early on Wednesday morning. We still had all our gear in the van so we didn't have much to pick up. As usual we got the rest in the van and we met Jonne again at the airport. The plane was supposed to leave from Helsinki-Vantaa at about 10 something but it was late and arrived to Copenhagen, Denmark late as well and our manager who we were supposed to meet there had already left. Two cars from the festival were waiting us there and soon we were on our way to Sölvesborg, Sweden. The ride was about two hours with one stop. Luckily we had some alcohol with us.

Sweden Rock is a brilliant festival. 5 or 6 stages around the huge open field and a great restaurant to feed the bands. Excellent people with excellent equipment. And the weather was brilliant as well. We were playing on the "Sweden stage" which I think was the third largest. We had plenty of time before our show so we put some beer on ice and checked the area. There was already a band playing on another stage and there was maybe 50 people watching so it didn't promise much for our show, since we were going to be the first band on our stage. Me and Matson (as usual) went to check the merchandise and CD stores as well. Surprisingly I didn't buy anything! Is my obsession with CDs healing?

Sweden Rock was the first show to feature our new huge 10m x 6m backdrop. It was supposed to be made of this really light material but it wasn't. It weights like hell, at least 20kg, which isn't really good because we are always struggling with overweight costs at the airports even without it. We will again have weekends this summer when we have four separate flights. For example with SAS that would be 4 x 20kg x 10€/kg = 800€. 800 fucking euros just to get the backdrop to the festivals!

Our showtime was late afternoon at 17.00. Surprisingly the Swedes and everyone else as well started to gather in front of our stage and when the intro started we heard this big roar from the audience and knew that it was going to be good. And it was. There were thousands of people, fists up in the air and lots of Korpiklaani shirts as well. We had a really good time on the stage. It's easy with an audience like that. A small problem was that Matson was complaining that Jonne was skipping songs in the set list which he accidentally sometimes really does. It's a problem for Matson since he may already have a click set for the tempo of a different song. I couldn't understand his complaints because we followed the written set list perfectly. It turned out that Matson himself had the wrong set list. After the show we had the signing sessions at the Sweden Rock Store and there was also quite a lot of Swedes to see us. Maybe Sweden isn't THAT bad for us after all.

A bit later in the evening some of us, like myself, drove to the hotel to drop our gear there and then headed back to the festival site again to catch some shows. The hotel was the same one as last year. A really nice one but something like 35-minute drive from the festival. At festival site we had an excellent dinner at the restaurant, got rid of the rest of our alcohol, watched some shows, but for example I didn't really find any of the bands that interesting. Earlier in the afternoon father of two members of all-girl-band Fourever http://www.fourevernet.com came to meet us at the backstage. We met already on the Rock at Sea -cruise where we both played as well. He told us to come and see the girls playing again at the festival but I for example couldn't even locate that stage. Not that I even tried that hard. Some of us saw at least a bit of their show. We'll have another chance again at Master Of Rock in Czech Republic.

I think we all got a bit tired and even bored and we actually took an early shuttle bus to the hotel at 24.00. It wasn't easy to get ALL the members out of the bus but we managed. We had a pickup arranged to 9 in the morning. I wake up to Matson's telephone alarm and head for the shower. After the shower I actually checked the time and it's only a bit over 7. What the hell?
- "Matti, what time is it?"
- "8.15. Why?"
- "Did you realize that Sweden has a different time?"
- "Yes and I even changed my clock that way!"
- "How about the telephone?"
- "Oh, I did forget that."

Well, we were up anyway so it was time for breakfast. At the breakfast we learn that the pick up had been moved to 8.15. Matte said that he had told us all that last night. No one remembered. The pick up was late anyway so it didn't really matter.

We headed then back to Copenhagen to catch a flight to Zürich, Switzerland. Of course we also headed to the tax free shop. There I realized that we actually could get stuff tax free because we were indeed heading out of the EU. So I got a litre of vodka and eight bags of Fisherman's Friend and Jonne got a litre of 60% Koskenkorva Vodka. We WERE having a day off, you see. Excellent.

To be continued...

Finnish tour = 2 gigs

So, after a weeks rest(?) it was time to head for the two Finnish shows with Skyclad(UK) and Heavy Metal Perse(FIN). The first gig was in Turku on Friday, May 30. I was at work on Friday and couldn't leave before 14.30. Some of the backline was supposed be ours so the crew consisting of Paukku and Tuomas and three band members were leaving already earlier since they had to be there at 17.00. That meant that I would have to drive myself which is never good. I like driving but it's not really good with the gigs because then you can't really drink. On Friday Paukku told me that we were not going to do soundcheck on Friday anyway and for example Jonne had promised to be at the venue at 21.00 so I really didn't have to hurry to Turku.

I finally arrived to Turku around 19.00 just to find the angry Korpiklaani crew doing all the work without any venue crew members around. I carried my stuff in anyway and changed quick "hellos" with Skyclad. The crew didn't need me there to lean on anything so I drove to hotel in the city centre. Actually I didn't go in to the hotel, I just left my car there to wait for the morning. It was time for a drink. I got some wine from the liquer store and a bag full of Strongbow and started the journey back to the venue. It did take a while since it included some drinking on the banks of river Aurajoki.

A few words about the venue, S-Osis. I don't really know who owns or runs it and I am too lazy to find out. It is located at the university area and the name comes from either "Satakuntalais-Hämäläinen osakunta" or "Savo-Karjalaisen osakunta" or both so I guess it is or at least has been run by the university students. Finnish word "osakunta" is something like "student society" in English. I believe the venue can hold something like 300 people, but I think that would already be quite uncomfortable. The venue is basically nice, but definitely not my favourite because of a really, really small stage and the lack of shower. Fresh air during the show would be a nice bonus as well.

The Finnish band Heavy Metal Perse started the evening and got the crowd going quite well. I didn't really watch them though. I was concentrating on drinking and talking with old and new friends. The music sounded like 1980's metal, a bit Maiden-like. We started around 22.30 if I remember correctly. I wasn't really following a clock. The set was pretty much the same as in Romania except that we skipped one or two songs in the end again just to get Skyclad on the stage sooner. The stage was so small that I for example was practically invisible to most of the audience except the ones at the side of the stage. My main audience was our monitor tech Tuomas "Saatanan Risuparta" Vahtera. He brought me more "Fiskeman" from the backstage during the show so it was good anyway.

Yes, the monitors! The monitor desk war our FOH engineer's own. Paukku was understandably quite angry about that as well since it was meant to be used in the live recording which now didn't happen just because someone failed to provide a monitor desk! So, there will not be "No Sleep 'til Turku" live album from Korpiklaani.

The attendance was around 170 + the guests etc. That was pretty good I think. One thing that I don't really understand is that quite many people actually left after our set and Skyclad played to a smaller audience. I mean, I understand if you are a fan of Korpiklaani and we were the main reason to be there but I for example would have stayed to see Skyclad as well since they are always entertaining even if you are not really a big fan of theirs. This time however I didn't really watch them since I started to be quite drunk. So drunk in fact, that I have only very little memories of my trip to the hotel, but I do remember having a small rest on the grass next to the Turku Cathedral...

The morning after. Headache. Terrible headache. We had to leave the hotel before 12.00. I was out before that but one certain member was once again quite difficult to get out of the bed and I think it went a bit longer than 12.00. Paukku and the van were not there so I went for breakfast. I decided to get something that is originally from Turku, so I went to get a veggie hamburger from Hesburger. Afterwards when we got the group together we drove to S-Osis again to load the gear. We still were not in a hurry to get to Helsinki so I drove back to the centre and went shoe shopping. Or was it a record store? Well, I bought a couple of Kiss and Ozzy 7" singles so you can figure that out. And finally Blackfoot's "Highway Song Live" on CD. And some other stuff as well. I definitely should ban myself from the record stores for a while. During the past three weeks I've bought at least 20 CDs. Several Johnny Cash albums, 5 or 6 Annihilators...

The idea was to be at the next venue Gloria, Helsinki around 17.00 again. I left Turku around 14 something. The road between the two cities is one of the main routes in Finland but I had never before driven that. Strange. Then again it wasn't that interesting anyway. Although there was a sign saying "Meijerimuseo" and I though that would be interesting. "Meijerimuseo" is "Dairy museum" in English. The word "Meijeri" in Finnish can be used to describe really big boobs so I though that I would find some huge knockers there, but then I was informed that it wasn't the case so I passed the museum. I don't like milk.

Gloria is right in the city centre on Pieni Roobertinkatu. I don't know about the capacity, but it's a lot bigger and in many ways better than S-Osis. Go check out the website and the pictures http://nk.hel.fi/gloria/ This time I believe the crew was happy too and so was Skyclad. They seemed to be generally happy about the sudden upgrade in the venue department.

In Gloria we did a soundcheck too but without Cane. He was in a family member's graduation party and didn't manage to get there in time. As everyone in the business knows, being a musician on tour is mostly waiting. I still had some wine left from Friday so I started with that, sitting on a nearby church stairs watching the locals. For some reason the wine just didn't go down that well anymore. It was also getting a bit chilly outside when the sun was going down so I headed back to the venue. The whole evening was basically just sitting at the backstage. Skyclad even wanted us to headline so the evening was really long. Well, at least Markus from Moonsorrow came for a beer and brought me the hoodie he promised me two months ago...

The set list was again the same as usual but this time it was played entirely to the last note including the encores "Let's Drink" and the inevitable "Ii Lea Voibmi". We had a really good audience. It was somewhere between 250-300, which was a disappointment for the organizers but we had a great time. I think we had the biggest polka circle I've ever seen. I was a bit tired though and wasn't really enjoying it as much as I should have but it was good anyway. I made a really stupid mistake in the spot that I never fail, which isn't really good for the live recording, but at least we recorded it. Let's see if we will ever use that anywhere. Maybe Paukku will use it to calm us down when we start thinking too much of ourselves. Like the infamous Swiss live recording from August 2005...

This time I remember a lot more from the journey to the hotel. We were already getting asleep when Hittavainen decided to go out and get a kebab. Matson ordered one too and as a joke I told him to get me some falafel as well. He did. I was already sleeping when they woke me up to eat. Great service.

Apart from the drive back home, that is pretty much our Finnish tour. Next stop is Sweden Rock in just three days on Wednesday and then Rocksound Festival in Switzerland on Friday.