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...