Badmouth to release “T”

T - Part Three of H.A.T.E
T - Part Three of H.A.T.E
T - Part Three of H.A.T.E

I’m so happy to announce that “T – Part Three of H.A.T.E” will be recorded by Swedish hard rockers Badmouth. Badmouth released their latest album Heavy Metal Parking lot to much praise in September 2011. H.A.T.E is the mirror project to my L.O.V.E project, where 4 rock bands make their own versions of the songs from L.O.V.E. “T – Part Three of H.A.T.E” is the rock version of “V – Part Three of L.O.V.E” which you can find here!

Working with producer Chips Keisbye (The Hellacopters), Badmouth have spent the last few years raking up some a great track record. The quintet has been featured in top Swedish Rock magazine, Red Hot Rock, top British rock magazine Classic Rock and had their material covered by Bruce Dickinson on his 6Music Rock Show among others.

The band did a handful of European tours in 2009, opening for Kingdom Come, LA Guns and Pretty Boy Floyd and played shows with Sator, Zodiac Mindwarp and The Poodles among others.

Right now they’re backing up Gilby Clarke from Gun’s & Roses on his Sweden tour and I’m so looking forward to hear their versions of my songs.

Pledge for ‘V – Part Three of L.O.V.E’

V - Cover

It’s been amazing that I have received so much help, support and interest from my fans during the production of my two latest EPs. Thanks to YOU I have been able to record and release them, and for that I am eternally grateful!

Now it’s time for me to start making part three of the L.O.V.E saga and I need your help again. This time it will be a little bit different. For one I’m using Bandcamp instead of Pledgemusic and this time I have affixed packages to make it easier for you to choose your level of involvement. Like before, you’re very welcome to send me an email or comment below if you feel that something is missing amongst the items available to pledge for and I’ll be happy to include it. You will still receive updates from the project such as blogs, pics and videos.

The interesting thing about this project is that I have four different producers, the four guys that also happen to be in my backing band. They are all very talanted but they all have very different taste in music and I thought it would be interesting to see how they interpreted my songs if I gave them the chance.  ‘L’ was produced by my cello player Christian Hörgren and ‘O’ by my drummer Joakim Lundgren. We’re now down to ‘V’ and this time it’s my bass player Janne Manninen who produces the EP. His roots are more dance and electronica than the others and this EP will be very different from all my other stuff. But it’s still me doing the vocals and guitar and it’s all my songs, just in a new exciting suit.

So, go and check out the new design on the tees and posters and start choosing your pledge package. Go to the pledge site for more information about the different items and how to pledge. Thanks again for helping me out!

V - Cover
V - Cover

Concert in your home!

Have you ever dreamed of having your favorite independent artist perform a private concert just for you and your guests?

Starting in October 2011 I will do an extensive tour in the US. I’m now looking for people who would like to host a concert in their home.

Simply put, a House Concert is a private party, employing live original music, held in a private home, garden, civic center, church or other space under your exclusive control. There would need to be enough parking nearby and your neighbors should be cool. It would be a huge bummer if someone called the cops because of all the extra cars and people coming to your house. You should probably not do this if you live in a small apartment with a bunch of uptight neighbors, room mates or a cranky landlord.

You should be able to host a minimum of 10-15 people. It’s up to you to invite people and spread the word about the concert. You can choose for yourself if you just want to invite friends or if you want to advertise the concert publicly. You have to guarantee the artist a minimum of 10 paying guests. A $10-20 donation per guest should be paid to the performer and it’s also customary, but not required, to offer the artist a home cooked meal and a room for the night. A stage isn’t required, and the PA system will be provided by the artist.

Your home address will not be published on the web and we will negotiate from concert to concert if you would like to publish any contact information to you about the concert or if you wish assistance with promotion.

Contact us if you would be interested in hosting a concert or would like more information.

Here’s a preliminary tour route so you’ll know when we’ll be in your state.
If your state is not on the list and you want to host a concert please throw us an email anyway and we’ll consider your offer.

2011
December: Florida

2012
January: South Carolina, Georgia,
February: Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee

X-mas concert in Second Life

Even though I actually played World of Warcraft for a while, and have a lvl 60 gnome called Znorfia, I kind of feel like Penny in the Big Bang Theory when it comes to Second Life. But that makes it even funnier that I’m doing a live Christmas concert in Second Life.

I will be playing at “OneLove”, a wintry stage built especially for this event by Aallotar Takaaki. The Concert will take place this Thursday at 10pm Swedish time. The stage is at Iendi Laville (pronounce “jändi”) and Apollon Allen’s new sim Yadkin Valley, and is hosted by OneLove Events. OneLove Events is a new place in Second Life and is meant to be something for everyone.

One Love stage in Second Life, built for Sofia Talvik's X-mas concert
One Love stage in Second Life

I’m always intrigued by trying out new ways to spread my music so it’s exciting to do a show in Second Life.

I’m playing the same songs as I played at my Stockholm Christmas concert last week, so this is a way for all of you who missed that concert to see me (kind of) live no matter where you live. All proceeds from the concert will go directly to ECPAT for their campaign “Stop Sex Trafficking of Children and Young People”.

You will find the event through this link:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Yadkin%20Valley/185/192/1501

You can also read an interview with me about the concert here.

Merry Christmas and I’ll see you all in Second Life on Thursday!

Sofia Talvik as avatar in Second Life
My avatar in Second Life
Sofia Talvik stage in Second Life
Oh look! The party has already started!

The hard work of being an artist!

Sometimes everyones tired and grumpy...
Sometimes everyone's tired and grumpy...

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.

.. but most of the time it's great!
.. but most of the time it's great!

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

Just remember that it's a lot of hard work!
Just remember that it's a lot of hard work!