 SPEARFISH - IN THE MEANTIME...  1. Please tell me a little bit about your musical background, your main influences. Well, you know I started with the guitar but switched to bass when I started my first band. Not surprising really, after hearing bassists like Geddy Lee, Gary Thain, Geezer Butler, Chris Squire etc. I was stuck! Jag did some demos in the early eighties with a band called Wizard of Oz. My first single I did with a band called Priority , we did by the way two singles. On the first one (Undercover) we had Svenne Hedlund from the swedish band Hep Stars as a producer. And we did some Swedish television at the time. And at that time I played quite a lot both with the Hep Stars and Svenne & Lotta . Wow, what fun memories. And I got the chance to play with the classic lineup, all but Benny Anderson(ABBA). I have also been playing other people's songs in cover bands. Then sometime in the mid-nineties Peter and I started Spearfish, and here we are. 2. Please describe this album in just one sentence. Well, it took a really, really long time to record. Ha-ha. 3. Please describe it again but with as many words as you want. The new album is called 'In The MeanTime '. The reason it took so long to record is that when we met our new drummer Marcus Höher few years ago we thought we start playing cover songs . But it was not long before we started writing original songs. Both Marcus and I had lots of song ideas, just waiting to be played. So we did a couple of demos before we decided to make a new Spearfish album. 4. Please tell me something about each song on the album. I can tell you a bit about the whole album. Since we have used the ideas that we have saved for quite a long time , I think you can hear a lot of our influences. Marcus had lots of good bits and pieces of songs recorded and it got me to start writing again . All three of us have a very broad taste in music. We have listened to each other's ideas and inputs without adding any prestige to it. We have also taken the help of two talented lyricist named Marcus Asplund Brattberg and Alyx Theresa Banks. The songs are very different from each other and this time we have an instumental song on the album, for the first time. Something I 've wanted to do for a long time. 5. Please tell me what equipment you used to record this album. what you are and have been using live. We have recorded this album at TekinkKompaniet Studios and we have been using Samplitude Pro X with RME micpreamps. Live and in the studio, we use the following. Guitars and Amps: Gibson Les Paul, PRS Single Cut, Fender Stratocaster, Fender Telecaster, Marshall -72, Hughes & Kettner Triamp, Vox AC 30. Basses and amps: Fender Jazz Bazz, Rickenbacker 4001, Ibanez SR 1500, Trace Elliot 15 combo. Drums and cymbals: Pearl, Zldjian, Paiste, Wincent sticks. Keyboards: YAMAHA EX-5, Roland Juno Di. 6. Do you plan to play this music live We have some ideas . After the release of last album, Area 605, we opened for Uriah Heep on their Scandinavian tour. Happy Days! We'll see what happens this time. 7.Please tell me about you co-operation with Jon English, how did you end up playing with him? Johannes Lindstöm at Sweden Rock Festival asked us if we wanted to play with him Jon. We have released two SPEARFISH albums at Sweden Rock Records some years ago, we worked a lot with Johannes back then. We released the album 'Affected by Time' there, and it was at the second album 'Back, For The Future' album where we had all this guest artists. There were people like Paul Dianno(Iron Maiden), Mick Box(Uriah Heep) , Manny Charlton(Nazareth) , Stefan Elmgren(Hammerfall), the guys from Demon etc. It's a double album. Disc 2 is a live recording with us from the Sweden Rock Festival where Svenne Hedlund(Hep Stars) is the guest artist. Hep Stars was huge in Sweden back in the sixties. They had a guy on keyboard named Benny Andersson, Benny later on formed the band ABBA. We had many guest artists on that record, but it was all great fun. So when Jon was asked to come to Sweden, Johannes contacted us. We played with him at SRF 2013 and it was filmed and recorded. It all ended up on the Swedish national radio a couple of times, and the entire concert is available on Jon English Black Label dvd box . So now we'll play with him at the Sweden Rock Festival again this year. We are really looking forward to it, becouse Jon is a REALLY , REALLY GREAT guy to work with !!!  We know that times are tough for the entire recording industry these days. It's hard to sell records. So my humble answer to your question is: To gather our best material , record it and release it. And hope that we reach out to as many people as possible. 9. How do you feel about the hard rock music scene of today? Good and bad. The hardrock music scene has always been a little bit of the underdog, but with the most loyal audience of them all, I think. It has never been played on the radio, but always attracted large audiences. And these days it has never been so easy to reach out with your music , thanks to the Internet. But the problem now is that there's so much music in the air. Maybe to much, it's easy to get lost out there. Ha-ha. 10. Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years? I really do not know. I will always keep on with music in some way, I hope. I have played various musical styles through the years. Folk music, variety shows and even tried to sing in the church choir, it was really, really fun. And it makes you happy when you hear bands that have played together for 30-40 years and still sounds great and delivers good new songs. At times they are even better now. Not to mention all the ladies and gentlemen in classical music, jazz and blues developed and getting better and better. I was doing some sports when I was younger, before I got hooked on music. And today I am thankful that I made the right choice. 11. In what way do you think your album is different from all the other hard rock albums that are being released every day ? It's really hard to do something revolutionary in music today. What we have done is we have written music in a style that we like to listen to ourselves. I can hear a lot of the sixtis, seventies and eighties in there. It is no rocket science, it's only rock n roll. Ha-ha. 12. Do you think that music will survive the current "everything for free" mentality and do you think that people in general care? So much has changed in the music industry. I remember when I bought vinyl records of such bands like Yes, Genesis, Uriah Heep, Rush etc. You could sit for hours and check the albumcover and read the inner sleeve. That feeling disappeared when the CD arrived. Everything went sooooo small. And now days, I do not know if the younger generation even know what I'm talking about. Ha-ha. But it will certainly be interesting to see if they can find a solution to this problem. 13. What are your future plans? Our good old friend Gunnar Sandborg is going to cut a SPEARFISH promo video for our new album 'In The MeanTime '. It will be out 19 june. And as I told you before, we'll play with Mr. Jon English at Sweden Rock Festival June 3 this summer . Then we'll see what happens after that. We have some stuff going on, but I can not tell you anything yet. Ha-ha. and please feel free to add whaterver you think is missing… That's all folks! |