Thursday January 6 to February 25
Mark:
And we’re off. All packed and cleaned and out of the place by 11am and on the road to Stockholm. It barely takes any time at all to be on the motorway, and then this fast road will take us all the way there. Eight hours later we arrive. The apartment is up three flights of stairs, but this is nothing like the hostel situation we had in Berlin. It feels like a much shorter and more doable trip up and we’re soon done and all sorted. Set up at our new home for the next segment of whatever this is going to be.
So what is this going to be? Not much really. We have a look around but Stockholm feels like it really isn’t going to be anything worth playing so we decide we’re not even going to try. Instead, with the occasional excursion out we pretty much hunker down in the apartment waiting for Europe to open again. In that time we eventually recover fully from whatever was happening in Malmo and establish some kind of rehearsal pattern again but it takes a while.
Oh, and there’s the cold to get used to. The apartment’s fine, but venturing outside is a whole other thing. Some of the temperatures we encounter are the coldest I’ve ever experienced, with some days dipping below 14F (-10C) so into the double minus figures. Only a whole multitude of layers will see you through. But even then, when, one day, we bravely set off on something of a mild hike through the frozen local forest, we get to a stage where our legs are uncomfortably cold through our trousers. A common enough thing for Maja in these conditions, but something I’ve never experienced before. Night times – and are occasional forays out late on – could see drops of up to (down to) minus five fahrenheit (-20C). Quite ridiculous territory really, and not entirely fair. Maja takes all this in her stride. Literally, as she teaches me how to walk on frozen ground, which we have to do more often than not, especially as we often have vast fields to walk across. The trick is to kind of semi skate, or at least glide your feet forwards rather than lift them like you would when walking conventionally. It takes a little while, but I do somewhat get the hang of it and can at least pretend that I might belong here. A word on those fields. They get covered in snow, naturally enough. Then on a relatively mild day, that snow melts, totally waterlogging the place. But then, what is now water freezes and the whole vastness takes on the appearance of a frozen lake, or at the very least, a series of what now looks like frozen ponds. Amazing to look at and exhilarating to walk across, especially once you’ve mastered the art of the run and slide.
Back in the apartment, and once we manage to properly get back to it we really work on ourselves and take our overall performance to a whole new level. We also manage to add a few new songs. Within these is the one we’ve been wanting to have for a long time – Beanie Love. This is based on a set of lyrics we wrote in the first few weeks of London after we had just met, and based on a mad, surreal conversation we had during that time which inspired those lyrics. We have lyrics all over the place in a dozen notebooks and every now and then, some of them turn into songs or have parts of them turn up in songs. Well, in Berlin we got the Beanie lyrics out and did something with them that we really felt had potential. During this downtime in Stockholm, we dust them off again and have a look at what we did in Berlin and get it fully into shape. With that, Beanie Love is done. Another one to mention that comes up during this Stockholm period is Fire. This is one that will continue to grow for a little while, but the basis of it is all there in that first flush. Among other pokes into the waters, we manage to have one quite spectacular evening when we write eight to ten songs one after another in a burst of inspiration and improvisation. A look at this a few days later shows that while none of them are total keepers, there are some interesting and workable ideas that may well be looked at closer. How many of them, or how many of their component parts, will pop up into anything keepable we have no idea, but the adage of songwriting is certainly being followed. Just keep writing. Just do it and the likelihood is that two things will happen. Good parts and good songs will be produced if by just the sheer weight of numbers and the probability of statistics. The second is that by the very act of doing it, you will continue to get better. Songwriting is a skill like any other that gets better with practice. It is true that anyone can get lucky and come up with a great song at anytime but, to slightly paraphrase the wonderful words of legendary golfer Gary Player, the harder you practice, the luckier you get.
About that practice thing, we’ve really upped our game here and have been rehearsing in the most unforgiving manner – through headphones. This is kind of like what I’ve always imagined driving a super high performance car would be like. Get everything perfect, and boy does that thing fly and look super cool. But one little error and flying takes on a whole other meaning. Where we’re concerned, when everything is on and things sound good, it can be like listening to yourselves on the radio as you’re playing there in the moment. But conversely, if things are even slightly out in any way, boy do you know about it. And with everything going through our mixing desk into headphones, we’re also recording every rehearsal so are able to listen back. So even there, parts you thought might have sounded good, you sometimes discover really didn’t. Or, more to the point, don’t. We are putting the harshest of spotlights on ourselves here and really analysing and discovering so much. If you really, truly want to know where you are, and really truly want to up your level, there can be few better ways of doing it than this.
Into the last week of February and we’re coming to the end of our apartment’s availability just as Europe is tentatively starting to open up again. But at the same time, the Ukraine situation is showing real signs of deteriorating and we realise a Russian invasion could actually happen. So no way are we going east and driving towards a potential warzone. With that, we decide we’re not going to Prague which we’ve had in our plans since the beginning. We don’t want to return to Berlin, although while we’re here, a little word on that particular city. A few venues seem to have woken up as we’ve started to work our way into the new year, and have replied to our initial emails, sent before we left. They’re interested in hearing from us again the next time we’re there. Great. Add that to the little pile we’ve gathered of friendly Berlin venues. However, if we are to return, we don’t want to do that without having had a little more live experience first. We look at the map of western Europe and shortlist a few possibilities. After a little discussion, we settle on Hamburg. That’s it. We’re on again
