After a few weeks of practising, planning, dancing and auditions I had to follow a dream I have had for awhile. One of the greatest guitarists I know has played with Abba, Electric Banana Band, Ted Gärdestad and others. I love the way he plays: He puts a lot of feeling into the strings and out comes the greatest sound of passionated tunes, often improvised. Without minding wich key to play in, cause he can play almost everything in any key. The way he composes his music is like fine art cause he uses the different chords in his very own way and often I can´t know which way the tunes will end up.

His name is Janne Schaffer.

My friend Martin knows him since he met him some years ago to follow his musical career. so Martin called and asked if we could see him and a few days later we sat on a café and listened to the stories of his touring-life. It was an adventure to hear about and at the end Janne and I gave eachother our records. I told him that I really would love to play with him. Some days later he called me and said that he liked my songs and wanted to have a ”jam” with me.

It was a great thing for me that I would get play with such a great musical model! Some days after calling me he was here in my apartment. He brought a really really big guitar amplifier and a lot of pedals. I couldn’t even lift the amplifier!  We brought all the heavy stuff from the taxi to the apartement and started to unpack it. (He had some flight patches on it becuase he flew the day before). And then we started to play. He could play anything in any key and it just felt great!

I asked if he wanted scores for the songs and he said that he likes to use his ear and just improvise it. And he did it great! we played some of my songs and some Ted Gärdestad and I had some favourites  from his record that we played. And all the time he kept impovising with a great feeling in every tune! Then (during the dinner) we listened to his latest record containing songs he composed for a film with Lasse Åberg that will come out on Christmas day. The cd contained other songs too from other films. Most of the songs composed by him but some weren’t and I could tell which of them that he had done.

Then we ended the evening and we carried away all the heavy stuff back to the taxi. It was a great night!
One of the best songs that he plays (accoring to my opinion) is ””Brusa högre lilla å” : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5_DmWPiyR8

Mum´s wedding was like a fairytale! Everybody thought that it was like a musical because my whole family sang. I sang, played the piano, and the cross flute. My brother´s sang too and played the guitar. And the bride and groom sang their vowes with their own lyrics. Afterwards we had a dinner where we continued the singing and dancing. A really great night! I am quite exhausted now. To sing at my mums wedding was the greatest thing I´ve ever done (now I can do whatever without being nervous . A lot of kind people came afterwords and said really kind things about it and that was really nice. Now I´m looking forward to some fun projects with the music. And like always I´m not gonna tell about anything before it happens.

On Saturday my mum will get married. It will be a wedding full of music of course since both me and my brothers are musicians. tonight we practised piano, bas, guitar, singing and parts. My mum and her coming husband will also sing so we help them with their parts too. It´s just like in the movies when the big families sing toghether.
It´s so strange that I feel quite nervous bout this (thinking of all teh performances I´ve done before) but I guess it´s because it´s my own mums wedding. I composed two of the songs and one of them is in Swedish. That´s unusual cause I almost always write lyrics in english. But I´m really looking forward to it. Wish me luck!

Woke up quite early for a Saturday. I´m on my way to go and have a meeting with 2 producers. It will be interesting to see if we can create something together in the future. I´m in a hurry so – I´ll write more later!

I really feel that I´ve progressed a lot as an artist. My attributes are more clear, my approach also, my goals are quite defined and my songs got a lot of good response. I will keep composing songs in July when people are on vaccation. There is also another item I have to work on – this website. My webmaster Daniel Olsvenne is going to help me make it more suitable and cool. I will take moore pics for the new design. Here is two pics that I took with my photographer Tibor Lacatos a few weeks ago.

This Monday I had an interesting meeting again with my artist coach Micke Nystedt. He is really dedicated as he helps me. We had discussions about my audience, my image as an artist and record labels. We also prepered for meetings with people in the music business. We made a list with a lot of questions that I want to have an answer to from competent music people. Micke also has a lot of knowledge from the musicbusiness as he worked on the radio station RIX FM, as a promotor on EVA REcords and as a judge on Fame Factory. Therefor he has a lot of good advice for me about where to put the effort as an artist. One thing that he really made me realize is how important it is to know how to promote myself as an artist both when it comes to my image and my goals. Goals are really important to get there, and of course a plan for it. That´s what we mainly do and every time we take a big step forward. Once again, I am so glad to have Micke as a support and I see a big developement with this coaching.

I have started to see an artistcoach. His name is Micke Nystedt. He ask me questions about my music, my goals, my image and others. He makes me ”face myself” and it´s quite scary but really really good. We have had 2 meetings. The first time he asked a lot of questions and told me things about setting goals and others. The second time we made up a plan for my goals and he gave me some homework too. He also made me think a lot about who I want to be as an artist and why. It´s very interesting and I find it more exhaustive than going to the psychologist becuase I associate my music with myself. We have already reached far in our process to the goal and now I have to be focused and go for it. But I love to do it so it will be mostly fun hard work. Next meeting Micke will listen to some of my new songs. I will play them by the piano and I really look forward to it. To communicate with music feels more natural than with words sometimes….. I think everybody should go to Micke to face themselves, he is really good! AND I really believe that this is the right way to reach my dreams.

It´s time to take som new photos again. On Sunday I will go with the photografer Tibor Lakatos, who took all the pics on my website and my webmaster Daniel Olsvenne will be there too. The point with this project is to create a new style that you will see soon. We´ll see if it works.

Next Sunday I have a concert in Nyköping. I will be solist on a Bluegrass concert. I still don´t know 100 percent what to play/sing but I will figure it out this weekend.
Maybe I´ll write something new. That´s the fun part of being an artist.