LA and the giant sandwich

I played at the dinner that A&R Worldwide and the Swedish Consulate held yesterday. (A big thank you to the organizers for having me, it was a great honour!) It was nothing like I had expected. I thought it was going to be more of a networking thing, where people would mingle and talk while I stood in a corner singing. Instead there were a hundred seated people, totally quiet, just looking at me. I got so nervous I thought my knees would shake me off the planet! But I got through it and then Kristin, Peter and Warren took me to the Troubador.
I’m going home today so I’m having my last american sandwich…

…which is basically a sandwich monster. I bought one yeaterday, so this is actually the left over half of that one. I can’t imagine why they want to overstuff their sandwiches like this.

I’m actually so glad I’m going home today. First of all since I get to go home to Jonas, second because my ears hurt from all the english. It gets kind of intense after a while, and I think the phrases I’ve used most during these two weeks have been:
“That’s cool”
“That’s awsome”
“That’s a good thing”

and of course “Thank you so much” which I am also saying now to you guys for following my tour blog. I hope you got to see one of my showcases in Austin, where I had my lovely band with me (I missed you guys so much yesterday). Good by America!

Emergency update!!!

So I’ve spent my first night here in LA. Me and Warren met up with his lovely friend Kristin and she took us to the Hotel Café where a bunch of people played live. It was awsome but I was a partypooper and wanted to get some sleep. Anyway, when we were about to leave I spotted Aqualung in the audience. I managed to work up some nerves to speak to him, and he seemed to think I was some annoying fan (which I am). But there were like a couple of showcases at SXSW that I didn’t want to miss and one of them was Aqualung’s. I only managed to stay for a few songs but he was really good. I joked to my cellist Christian that Aqualung could be his gay little brother (I don’t even know if he’s gay, and if he would read this he would probably hate me) they do look a little bit alike.. just check this out:

aqualung
Aqualung
chris
Chris


Beautiful Bass

It’s been a hectic week to say the least. I decided to skip one of the songs for the album (as everybody thought it was horrible except me, haha) and had to choose and record a new one. I decided for yet another song with the word “shoe” in the lyrics and probably will have to rename the entire album to “shoes” now 🙂 .We decided not to put Baby, eeerr I mean Anders, in the corner anymore (as he was forced to be there during the recordings of the last album, that studio simply wasn’t big enough for him and his bass) so we even gave him his own room this time. Check out the video here:

[flv:/video/recordingbass.flv 320 240]

I’m nothing but truly impressed of the way he nailed all these songs in just six hours. We rehearsed a few of them for the gig at Landet and the radio gig last week but there were several he never heard before and he did brilliantly! Even the song “Holding your hand” which he renamed “the Zappa-song” because of all the half times hidden in it. Being unrehearsed may not be the ultimate way of doing it but I must say it does add a kind of nerv that you don’t get if you know the songs too well.

Anyway, next week we’ll be recording Marcus and his guitars, yep he’ll be doing both acustic and electric this time. And I’ll record the last song for the album (no shoes in that one), which I have to do in the studio where we recorded the bass, because I have to play and sing at the same time.

In the meantime, listen to a sample from “I won the first price tonight”

take care now and I’ll see you all next week.

The studio
Me as the true technician.. press "rec" press "stop"... Jonas, behind the camera, did all the real work.
No wonder we had to give Anders a bigger room, we couldn't even fit him into one frame...
It's a kind of magic: the other halft of Anders
Now here's the big picture! With a bit of a distance we managed to get all of him. Isn't it beautiful, well it sure sounds beautiful!