Message from Johan:
Hey Frengers!
It´s actually my first time here on the Journalpage, so it´s almost as exciting for me as it is for you…..
We´ve just come back from a fantastic tour in Scandinavia, more precisely, Denmark, Finland and Norway. It started out in Aarhus where we played three more or less sold out shows back to back. It was a blast playing Aarhus again. It has been years since we last did a gig there and it seemed like the perfect place to kick of our tour.
After having conquered the Jutlandic capital, we saddled up and rode our horses to Copenhagen, the city we once called “home”. We were quite excited by the thought of playing in front of a completely sold out Vega two nights in a row… And yes we were not let down in any way. I can tell you all that it really shows that our album has gone gold here in Denmark. People went mental!!! It was maybe the best gigs we have ever done in Cph… The Home coming!
I have to let you all in on a little secret… After the second night our parents and friends threw us a surprise party…. A little bit overwhelming for us but never the less a nice, sweet, great surprise!!
We had one day off and on Monday the 12th we left harbour, heading for Helsinki, the pride of Finland. The Tavastia Klubi was to host our return to the Finnish capital. It´s a nice venue with a real rock club vibe to it. We were extremely satisfied to find that the 600 capacity club had sold out… Fucking hell we´re huge in Helsinki!! After another great gig, we hit town, more precisely the infamous Helsinki gay club.. We have to give a warm thanks to all the cool Finnish bands, guys and girls we got to meet that night… Helsinki on a Monday night… It (Hanoi) ROCKS!
The day after we left Finland behind us and tried to prepare ourselves for the mayhem of Count Grisnakk and his many Norwegian knights….. It was time for Oslo! Norway has been a favourite place of ours for a long time. Beautiful nature, beautiful women and great taste in music… Again we had a sold out night, it´s beginning to become a rather filthy habit with all these sold out gigs… Hmmmm…. We had a great time like always in this city of sin and of course we ended up at maybe the best bar in the whole of Scandinavia: “Mono Bar”.
That a city like Oslo can have so many cool rockbars and Copenhagen none… That makes you think?? Please make sure to have a Jägermeister or five whenever visiting the Mono Bar.
It was not easy to leave Oslo behind but we had Bergen calling for us! This was our second visit to the city where it always rains. The first time being our Norwegian raid with the Kent-boys last year… This time around we played in a real basement rock club. Nice and sweaty!
From Bergen we moved on to, well one of the prettiest places in Norway: Sognedal. Situated at the foot of three great mountains and overlooking the beautiful Sognedal Fjord, it´s a place of heavenly proportions. Of course, like last year, some of us had to do the naked “skinny dip” in the freezing fjord. Footage of this great NAKED Viking stunt could MAYBE surface on the web some time soon??! hhmmm…. We´ll see…
Playing Sognedal is a pretty unique experience. It´s a city of only 6000 inhabitants, 2000 of which are students, so to claim that the “Kids” rule the place is not far off! And as always we had a GOOOOD time… Even though I went to bed straight after the gig…. Okay…
The most exciting time of the whole tour was about to hit us!…. We left the screaming youth of Sognedal and continued our journey into the great, wild unknown… (“Fanfare”)
The drive from Sognedal to our next destination Trondheim, is an absolutely stunning drive! It´s all very small roads bending alongside the mountains. Around 6 am we crossed a mountain totally covered in meter high snow. I have never been to the moon but this kind of looked like it… I think??!
We ended our tour with a gig at the hottest (warmest) venue in all of Norway. It was jam packed with sweaty folks, singing and shouting along like their life depended on it… I think I said something like “this is the hottest club in the world”, (referring to their extreme indoor climate), and the crowd went “YEAHHH!!!” Old tricks like that always go down well….. That was the end of our Norwegian adventure..
Ahead of us now lies The Coopers and yet another UK stint…
I know it was a long story but bear with me Frengers, it was my first time here on “The Journal”
-Love Johan