Sofia Talvik – Americana / Folk with Swedish Roots
Unmistakably Nordic in flavor, Sofia Talvik somehow still conforms to American interpretations of her own original music, a North Sea siren blending sparkle and melancholy, creating a special niche of folk music.
I’m spending a few days in Phoenix, AZ doing two gigs here. One is tonight January 10th at The Lost Leaf and the second is on Saturday at Obscura (Rips).
The Useless Critic, one of my fave blogs just published an exclusive interview with me about the tour, Arizona and life in general and later today at 6pm I’ll make an appearance on KWSS 106.7 on the show “Driving with Gass“, so tune in to listen here!
So you already know I’m somewhat of a sci-fi nerd, and even more of a zombie nerd. I’ve also been hooked on vampires since reading the Ann Rice books in my teens, or maybe even before that. When I was a little girl and was so afraid of them I put garlic in my bedroom window to keep them out.
Anyways I saw that someone had posted something about a Sci Fi convention in Stockholm this weekend, so I thought I’d check it out. I’ve never been to one and I figured I’d at least get a good laugh out of the trekkie-nerds (sorry guys, your moms did a great job on the costumes.. eh I mean uniforms).
So I went to their website and saw that they had actors from different sci-fi movies there (but since when is Faulty Towers and Allo’ Allo’ sci-fi??) and who doesn’t want to see Edward Furlong 20 years older? (Actually they did have Joe Flanigan from my favorite Stargate show, Stargate Atlantis, so that was kind of fun.)
At the convention I was surprised over how small it was, and that it all seemed to be about comic books, ugly t-shirts and action dolls. And I wondered if all the storm troopers where hired to walk around there or if they were visitors. And if they were hired, did they travel with the convention or did they hire new ones in each city the came to?
At one end of the convention you could be photographed with your fave sci-fi actors or you could buy their autographed pics for 200 SEK ($30). I was thinking of how I usually sell my albums for $10 at my gigs and wondered how it would go down to sell autographed pics for 3 times the price. It must be so weird for the poor fellas who once starred in this or that sci-fi movie to get these kinds of gigs, going to a cold and snowy Sweden to sit in a convention hall and sell their signed pictures.
But apart from people putting on blue make-up to look like avatars and nerdy guys with too tight Trekkie suits I actually met a friend of my hubby’s. He was part of the team that made a movie called “Psalm 21” (which I haven’t seen yet but look forward to seeing) and now they’re making a zombie movie called “Zone 261” that looks totally awesome!
I think Swedish movies usually are crap but I have high hopes for this one! So keep your eyes open!
Lots of people think it’s just glamour, travels and good times to be an artist. Even friends of mine tell me how great it must be for me to “get to” tour and travel so much. Even they don’t realize I pay for the tour myself most of the time and bringing a band is never cheap, you guys out there who have families know a couple of plane tickets tend to eat up your budget pretty fast.
I also get a lot of questions from up-and-coming artists wondering how to go about the business of starting a record label or how to promote their music. I always try to answer the best I can, but the short answer to all of this is “you have to work your ass off!”. Nothing comes for free in this business and no one will care about your music as much as you do, no matter what that manager/label/pr company is trying to tell you.
So I was very happy to stumble upon this great website where all of the stuff about being an artist and building your brand is collected in a fun and comprehensible way. This post today is mainly for all you artists and musicians out there, but you other guys can check out http://www.eventric.com/ as well (scroll down to featured articles), it’s a lot of fun reading and gives you an insight on all the things you need to know when you want to get out there with your music.Martin Atkins who is the guy sharing all these great tips really knows what he’s talking about!
One of the things that made me laugh was the post about why you need to learn screen printing as an artist. Why? So you can make your own merchandise of course. Just like I started doing a while back. All my tees are hand printed by me, check them out here: shop.sofiatalvik.com. So it’s just a lot of great advice there for all artists, no matter where you are in your career.
Here’s some fast links to my fave posts:
11 (of 27) Things Touring Bands Can Do NOW To Make a Difference
11 MORE (of 29) Tips Touring Bands Can Do Now To Make a Difference
10 Ideas For Making Your Show an Event
