Tell us about your tour vehicle. Any notable breakdown stories?
We have a Mercedes Sprinter that has 180,000 kilometers on it. Don’t know how much that is in miles, though. We recently had to fix the rear axle and the brakes on it. Just as we got to a venue last summer, the brake pads flew off the rear tires. 5 minutes before that, we were flying down the highway ?
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
Umm you don’t…
But we try to eat reasonably healthy as often as we can. Because you get too tired if you just go for the burger joints and the gas station food. So we try to look for good places to eat on the road. But that doesn’t always mean cheap, unfortunately.
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
That depends on which guitar I use and if it has a good setup. Recently I’ve been playing a lot on a custom-built tele-style guitar from a builder in Falkenberg here in Sweden named Jagge.
And I don’t tend to break a lot of strings these days. And I never change them if I don’t have to.
Where do you rehearse?
If we rehearse (which we don’t do a lot of) it’s in my studio just outside of my hometown Ludvika.
We might meet up a day or two before a tour and run through the songs. But when you do around 120 shows a year, rehearsals feel a little bit unnecessary.
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
Man, I don’t remember that at all haha.
I hardly remember the lyrics to my most recent songs… I often wish that I just played guitar or something. Because of my poor lyrical memory.
Describe your first gig.
My dad works at the post office, and they used to have these little parties once every summer, and one year, when I was 13, my friends and I got to play a couple of songs at that party.
It was nerve-wracking.
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
I have also worked as a mailman, and that’s really the only thing I’ve done except music. So I guess I have to say that. But I’m not very eager to go back to it though.
How has your music-related income changed over the past 5-10 years? What do you expect it to look like 5-10 years from now?
Yes, sure, it has. But for me it all depends on how much I’m willing to work and tour. Because, like most non-mainstream artists these days, streaming does not cut it for me.
I mean, you can hope something will shift in the industry that’ll make it more sustainable for smaller artists to do this, but I don’t really know what that’ll be right now. I guess we’ll have to wait and see..
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
A record deal is often just a bad bank loan.
If you can do it yourself, you should.
And work hard.