About touring and being sick

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Hi!

I´ve been touring with several bands the last month, and had lots of fun. First I did a nice tour with a new band called Somethin´ Else. I went on to play a couple of gigs and record a new album in Stockholm with Jupiter & Jonas Kullhammar, and the recording went really well. I guess the record will come out next year some time. It was a lot of fun to get back with that group, because we´ve been touring a lot and released three albums, so it´s a pretty tight combo.

I´ve also been touring in Norway with the Håvard Stubø Quartet, and the music was really developing as we went along. Exhausting but fun – I guess that pretty much sums up the last month for me. On top of everything, there was at least one person sick with the god damn swine flu in every band all the time. For some reason, I didn´t catch the swine flu, but I managed to catch a nasty, longlasting case of diarrhea instead. Very practical when you´re touring…

The TLQ is working on next year´s plans – we´ve set dates for rehearsals and for recording of our debut full-length album. Actually, we´ll soon meet in Gothenburg to rehearse, and that´s going to be lots of fun, since I haven´t seen the guys since the summer tour ended! We´re also planning tour dates and fishing for next season. We´ll keep you guys posted!

This time, I might just take the guys to some of my really secret places… In return, Joona might show the rest of the band some of his insane curve casts, Fredrik might share some of his incredible seatrout skills, and Tapani might let us in on the deeper secrets of the Super Tinseli. Let´s see.

Painting and cooking in Gbg

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I have been painting a little bit; it was a while ago now! In the beginning it went really bad, and a destroyed paper after paper in furious anger. After a while, I started to get the hang of it. Will continue and see what will come. I uploaded some of the latest paintings. I think that daily practice will pay of!

Today it is Sunday and I’m having two friends for dinner. One of them is Prince, the bass player from South Africa. He was supposed to fly home yesterday but he didn’t find his passport (!). The other one is Leon, an old friend to me who is very hard to please when it comes to cooking. But this time it is cool, I have already planned what to cook! We are going to start up with a very nice swede soup, not Swedish but basically made of the rout fruit swede. After that is says calf schnitzel, roasted root fruits with fresh herbs and a sauce made of mushrooms from the forest and red wine. And the dessert… well, have not planned that yet, lets see! As I am a friendly man/boy/santa/trout/drummer, I am now going to share the nice recipe on the soup! Ingredients:

A generous piece of butter

Some olive oil

One big onion

One swede (about 500 – 600 gr.)

Some garlic

Cream, 3 dl (real crème, not the fake ones!)

White wine, 2 dl

About 6 dl water

Black pepper

Broth after the amount of juice

A small piece of fresh chili

The soup is very easy to make! Do like this:

  1. Take a big pot with a belonging lid…
  2. Put butter and olive oil in the pot
  3. Shell the onion and the swede and chop in big pieces
  4. Put on the heat under the pot, not to hot and mot to warm!
  5. Add the onion and the garlic after the butter has melt
  6. Wait 5 minutes
  7. Add the swede and put the wine on top of it!
  8. Raise the temperature and let the wine reduce
  9. Add water, cream, pepper, chili and broth – place the lid on the pot. Lower the heat!
  10. Let it boil in about 25 minutes. Meanwhile you can read, run or tie some flies (nothing else!)
  11. Take a blender and blend the substance in the pot.
  12. Taste and add what is needed in order to make it rich. If the thick soup feels a bit “thin”, I mean the taste of it… then add some (not much) scratched Muscat nut (is that the right word?) and taste again.
  13. When you eat, it can be nice to squeeze some fresh lime over the soup. Enjoy!

One Last Fishing Trip Before The Winter Is Here

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The winter comes and goes. Last week it was about minus 3 degrees, this week its 10 degrees warmer. Strange but true. It’s hard to make the right choise when it comes to the clothes. To warm clothes – you’ll end up as a melting cheese. Very often a gorgonzola. To thin jacket and you will freeze to ice if it is a cold day. I have to get a thermometer! Anyway,  Joona and I went to a beautiful little lake close to the town. We were lucky since the weather was perfect. Not to cold and not to warm and the sun was shining. Otherwise it almost always is raining or snowing here during the cold period of the year. The snow is by the way quite rare now because of what…? yea, you were right: the global warming. Let’s stop it together, shall we!? Back to the fishing trip: Joona caught two and I only one… he is the winner! Joona – Fredrik, 2 – 1. But of course, fishing is not a competition. You can’t compete when it comes to fishing, the same goes for music! My fish was by the way much smaller than Joona smallest one! But I don’t care. It felt only nice and so on. Yeea! When Joona got his sekund trout – Ahhh, what a feeling! Pure and true joy.

We had a small accident also. I cut me on my scary knife. Håvard did the same thing with the same knife, during our tour. This knife is impossible to lock and it is very sharp. When I fish, I often forget how to use my brain. Yesterday I simply put the knife in my left pocket. After a while I was searching for something, deep down in the pocket, and sliced up my hand. Shit happens! A friendly guy gave me some paper, Joona got another trout and we all were happy!

1. Gigs 2. Fishing 3. Workout

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1. This month has been pretty busy with lots of gigs around Sweden. I’ve been touring with Anna Lundqvist Quartet on a CD release tour, and this week we had a couple of gigs with Anders Hagberg’s new quartet. Anders is a Swedish flute/sax giant who masters an incredible amount of different wind instruments. He had for instance a gigantic contrabass flute that sounds totally amazing! We finished our mini tour yesterday at jazz club Nefertiti in Gothenburg. A full house and a really nice evening!

Anders playing for the fishAnders and the big flute

2. It’s been quiet on the fishing front. Now as the touring will ease up a bit I might have to take a trip or two before it gets too cold (and the ice puts an end on the fly fishing season). Maybe some rainbow trout or (and) pike fishing…

3. I have also started training for the “Göteborgsvarvet” half marathon race, a huge running party in may, with about 60 000 runners. Me and Fredrik are among them, and will run in a J&FF tour tempo and try to win the competition before the Kenyans. When it comes to training, I’m looking forward to joining Fredrik on his “devil’s round”, a killer track that only few people ever manage to  run through (but Fredrik runs it twice every morning before breakfast).

Today I went to the gym with my friend Anders (a jazz drummer who is  inevitably becoming a flyfishing-maniac). The gym is located in the same building as my local fishing store. Fortunately the shop was closed today, and instead of spending lots of money on fly fishing gear we managed to do some workout.Drum-Anders posing by the gym

Playing and fly fishing in Gothenburg

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I have been rehearsing and playing with a nice band the last week. Great players the whole bunch! The bass player (he can swing) is from South Africa and he has the hippest name I’ve ever heard: Prince Bulo! The other guys, David Beck (pi.), Eric Arellano (ten.sax.), Markus Ahlberg (trb.) and I have had a really good time and we will also record some stuff the next weekend. You will hear more of this band later. In our JFF band, Tight Lines Quartet, we have now decided when to record our first full-length album. It will be quite soon. That will be the bomb!

But right now though, except from the great music and so on,  it is not so fun. A cruel period of the year has just started. I have my reasons and will now tell you why…

The autumn in Gothenburg is here. Well, it’s almost winter actually. For a fly fisher, this is a tough time! I feel the taste of the reel hard life, so hard that I can compare my self with guys like Arnold Swartzenager and Djingis Khan. This is stuff you don’t joke about. If you, dear reader, are smiling when you read the introduction of this little blogg post, stop at once! The weather outside my window is grey, slimy and cold. If the snow will come, it will immediately melt and all my shoes will break. Joonas shoes will also break. But this is just some small details about my situation. The really heavy problem is this: It’s not allowed to fish for sea trout during this half of the year!! Can you believe that! Well, I know it is for a good reason but it’s still heartbreaking! Tears are dripping from my face and down in the big beard where they stop and take rest for a while. I realized that there is only one thing left to do (maybe you’ve heard about this thing before): Indoor fishing! I put my fly rod together in my kitchen and made some quick casts. It felt good. The casting stroke was still there! I made some more casts just to make sure not to fail when the trout was supposed to show up. I have seen it many times in my kitchen but I never had the time to get the rod those times. But now… There it was, in the middle of my kitchen, slowly sipping banana flies from the floor. My hands began to shake. The trout was very close now but it did not see me, I was hiding behind my beard. With shaky hands I tied on a small banana fly imitation and started to cast. The fly landed 1 meter from the trout. Wait, wait… wait… It refused the fly! Aaaaahhh. One more cast. Now the cast was perfect. The fly was very close to the oven and the trout was heading in that direction. Bam – it is on! Strong fish, I can tell! I was fighting the big trout for about 40 minutes until it started to loose power, finally I got it in my hands. Beautiful! This one is joining for dinner!

Photo competition winner Announced!

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Winner of “The coolest fishing photo” competition Announced!

Eetu Myöhänen with his friend Janne Väyrynen from Finland took a photo that convinced the Jazz & Fly Fishing team with a funny mood and a different angle to all the thousands of fishing photos we’ve seen so far.

High angle and a big smile! Congratz Eetu ja Janne!

Winner of the coolest fishing photo

Eetu and Janne won the gift card to Helsinki Spey Clave Webshop > www.helsinkispeyclave.com

Check the story behind the photo from the “competitions” tab!

Two good things

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Hi!

I´d like to present two of my favourite products at the moment. One is a fishing fly, and the other is a record:

Ismopuppan

This superfly is made by Ismo Hyvärinen, an expert fly fisherman based in Kiruna. It is made of balsa wood, epoxy glue and plastic, and it imitates a swimming Caddis pupa – an easy prey for a hungry trout, arctic char or grayling. During this summer´s tour, the Ismopuppa again proved its deadliness on numerous occations. The caddis-feeding fish simply cannot resist this excellent imitation! And, best of all, due to the high build quality and the durable materials, you can take hundreds of fish without ruining the fly. You can only order it from Ismo Hyvärinen himself – it is pretty expensive, but well worth the money! (NB! Beware of the fake Ismopuppas that you can find on the the market – they´re not as good as the real McCoy)

Oddjob Sumo

This record came out last year, and I´ve listended to it a lot, especially when driving – it´s a fantastic album for those long drives. Strong playing, excellent songwriting, and a fat vintage sound – what more could you ask for? Highly recommended! Click here for some free sounds from Oddjob.

A couple of concerts – and a couple of fishing trips

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I´ve been to some really good concerts in Oslo the last couple of weeks. The first one was with a trio called The Thing, and the venue was Victoria. The band consists of the hard-hitting swede Mads Gustafsson on saxophones (this guy can make the saxophone sound like a wounded T-Rex!), and the well known Norwegian power duo Ingebrigt Håker flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love on bass and drums, respectively. The Thing plays loud free jazz, and their repertoire is really varied – classic rock songs mixed with lesser known jazz pieces and other stuff, all treated very freely and with ferocious energy. I´ve heard this trio several times, but never enjoyed them as much as I did on this occasion. The music had much more dynamics than the previous concerts I´ve heard with them – perhaps in part because of the relatively spacious venue? Anyway – a really good concert.

The other concert I´d like to mention was an in-store mini concert with Swedish singer-songwriter Folke at Platekompaniet Oslo City. This music is by no means jazz, but rather classic singer-songwriter stuff more related to folk music and the music of Vincent Gallo. But that´s besides the point – good music is good music, no matter what genre it belongs to. The short session featured beautiful tunes and strong playing, and despite (or because of?) the totally unplugged setting, the power of the music really came through. Highly recommended!

I´ve done some fishing, too: A couple of trips to the lakes of Nordmarka, just outside of Oslo. Typical autumn fishing – slow action, but beautiful scenery. The many lakes in Nordmarka all hold brown trout, and some of them can have decent fishing at times – of course it´s never as good as the fishing we had on this summer´s tour, but still it´s pretty good for being so close to a big city. I caught some small trout on the first trip, lost a good one, and my friend (the excellent bassplayer Roger Arntzen) and I had a really good time. On my second trip I brought a real Nordmarka expert, Vegard Veberg, with me to see if I could pick up some of the secret tricks of the trade. Fishing in these dense forest landscapes is quite different from the Lapland/mountain fishing I normally do, so I really needed some expert advise to get confident with this style of fly fishing. Vegard is not only an expert fly fisherman, but also an accomplished writer and photographer. And, sure enough, Vegard managed to catch a pretty good Nordmarka trout on a small, black dry fly – it was around 750 g. I caught nothing, but picked up quite a few tips for future trips. Great fun!

Pimp-my-Rhodes

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I envy the guitar players, sax players, trumpet players etc. They can always carry their instrument on the tours. Even Tapani carried his double bass on the JFF tour (it filled half the bus but it was there). With the pianos it’s different. Sometimes you get to play a beautiful Steinway grand and fall in love with it, but in some cases you get an old piece of furniture that once was a  piano, filled with mouse crap and tons of dust. Carrying an acoustic piano on tours is out of the question, at least if the gigs are on distant locations up north.

That’s why I had my old beloved Rhodes Mark I electric piano on the tour. It’s like a big coffin, weighs a ton and is a nightmare to carry, but sounds great (that’s the old 70’s sound from Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea etc…). And it looks good, too!

Years ago I bought a “leopard-skin” piece of cloth that I put on the lid. A touch of personality, or bad taste maybe. This decoration was left on the instrument, until somewhere between Kilpisjärvi and Tromsö I got this idea: it has to be a trout skin decorating the Rhodes! So I had to catch a big trout, take a photo on the skin and press it on a canvas. Leopard was hip in the 90s, but this is 2009, the year of Jazz and Fly Fishing.

So the following day when the fish were rising I had a good feeling about getting my Rhodes-trophy trout. It had to be a trout with a silvery tone with black dots, not one of those red-brown beauties. It had to match the black and white keys, naturally. Finally the fish with the right color accepted my mayfly-imitation and minutes later a nice Norwegian trout was landed. I took a  photo on the beautiful skin and sent it for printing. After the tour there was a package waiting for me at home. My trout skin had arrived.

So I replaced the old leopard with the new trout. I’m very happy with the result. Never seen anything like it! It’s just the smell that’s not quite right…