nothing Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Sofia Talvik - Americana / Folk with Swedish Roots

December 30, 2011

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

This has been a great year with lots of stuff happening. I made 4 EP albums with 4 different producers, the wonderful guys in my backing band. And all of you chipped in and funded the releases so that we were able to finish the project. 4 ass-kicking metal bands did 4 ass-kicking cover albums of my EPs and one of them actually released a video too (or rather will release in a few days so I’m cheating by telling you now) Badmouth made a video of their cover of my song “To watch the bridges burn”, check it out here!

Throughout the year I have worked hard to get an artist visa to the US, and thanks again to my wonderful fans who helped out with house concert contracts and letters of recommendation I finally got my visa and packed my things and went to Florida in November. In December my big “Drivin’ & Dreaming tour” took off and I’ve now been all around Florida playing in different venues. One unexpected thing that I experienced is that I had at least a few loyal fans show up for every gig. I didn’t know there’s be so many of you!

Throughout the tour we’ve had the RV break down and fixed, nothing major yet thank God. We’ve been invited to have dinner with Greg and Michelle of The Refinery, Tampa, for southern shrimps and grits at Sian and Otis’ in St Petes and to stay the night in a really cool A frame cottage with Doris in Melrose to mention a few of all the lovely people we’ve encountered along the way.

It’s now time to say good bye to Florida and head up to South Carolina and Georgia for January. Many new experiences are to come, many new shows to be played. We’re heading into new states and a new year. In January my new album “The Owls Are Not What They Seem” will be released and I hope you will continue to support my tour as I go through America in my old RV – Drivin’ and Dreaming.

Happy New 2012

/Sofia

October 21, 2011October 21, 2011

Interview with Badmouth

We caught a few moments with Chris LeMon from Badmouth to hear what his thoughts about their new EP “T – Part Three of H.A.T.E” are. “T – Part Three of H.A.T.E” will be released November 1st and you can pre-listen and pre-order it here!

Hi Badmouth! You’re making “T – Part Three of H.A.T.E” would you start by telling us a little bit about your music and your band?
Badmouth started 4 years ago, we released our debut album in 2008 and our second album this summer, which is produced by Chips Kiesbye. When we got the offer to do this EP we just couldn’t resist, such a cool thing to be part of, so even though we just released the album we called Chips and he was up for it … Badmouth is rock’n’roll, its about having a good time, we are having a great time and we want the crowd to smile as they see us live, its all about the love for music …

You’re usually writing your own songs, so what did you think was the hardest part of making Sofia’s songs feel like your own?
Actually nothing was hard … haha … It’s great songs! The hardest one was “To watch the bridges burn” we had a different version going first but it was just strange … haha … but then we tried the way it is now and it sounds great! So it has only been a lot of fun!

Which one are you most happy with and why?
I guess it depends who you ask in the band, for me personally I would say Jonestown, I think the arrangement turned out great and it is truly a great song, but I also think Bridges turned out great in a different way, to me its a radio hit! I think it’s cool that all four songs turned out so different from each other so I would say I am really happy about all four ...

Rumor has it you’re on tour with Gilby Clarke from Guns & Roses, how did that come about?
Totally true, actually sitting in the tour bus right now on our way to the last show, it’s been a great tour, 8 shows in Sweden … Well, I also work as a booking agent and I booked this tour and Gilby needed a band and it wasn’t hard for me to suggest the best band to him 😉

Chris LeMon and Vinnie Sharp from Badmouth with Gilby Clarke

What’s your all time favorite tour memory?
There’s a lot, and some things that shouldn’t be mentioned here 😉 But right now I would say this tour, to be on a stage with Gilby Clarke is truly a dream come true!

Making rock music out of singer/songwriter tunes isn’t something bands do every day. What did you think about the experience and would you do it again?
I would love to do it again, this shows that good songs are good songs no matter which category you place them in … We actually said that if this EP becomes a hit we will have Sofia write our next album! 😉

What’s your recipe for success?
Be yourself and love what you do!

What’s in store for you this fall?
Well, the release of the EP is the next thing and we have a release party for it in Stockholm on November 4th at RoQ. As soon as we are back from the road we will start planning the next tour, the main goal is to play live as much as possible and get out the word of BADMOUTH!

Thanks for chatting with us, can you tell us your three favorite songs right now?
Thank you! Wow that’s difficult but right now I would say “Jonestown”, “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” (Badmouth) and “Tijuana Jail” (Gilby Clarke)

October 13, 2010August 27, 2011

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.

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!

March 25, 2009August 25, 2011

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!

November 16, 2008August 25, 2011

New video released

So you thought my last music video was retro with its 50’s theme? Well you aint seen nothing yet! This is the new video for my single “Clown” and this time I decided I would do it all by myself. So I did all the make-up and styling and filmed it (yes I used a camera stand). Then I cut it and edited it. But I’m not ready to throw away Jonas’ fabulous producer skills just yet, I did have him help me creating the “burn-out” effect on the last few frames of the vid 😉

This is the first music video I’ve ever made and the second video I’ve made..ever (you’ve probably seen the behind the scenes video to “My James Dean”). I was inspired by old pictures and the creepy sense of the circus that the TV series “Carnivale” captured so well. The entire video was shot in my bedroom (but I won’t do a Pamela just yet), and the fab hat and stick was borrowed from my friend Theresia, they used to belong to her grandpa..