Doing only shows like this would be such a walk in the park! Jump in my car, drive 2h from my home in Stockholm to the festival area right outside Finspång in Rejmyre, pick up my badge and drive in backstage, park the car right behind main stage and unload my guitars. I could walk up on stage with my guitar case 2h after i left my apartment in Stockholm. But life isn't always this easy. Actually it never is.

 

After we had unloaded the car, we met up with the rest of the pack backstage in our dressingroom. Me and Peter went to the other stage and saw a few songs with Facebreaker, and then went over to our stage again to see how things were progressing. Quireboys just arrived and were about to start their show. We had lunch with Johan and then him and me went to see a few songs with Dream Evil on the other stage again. My old friend Fredrik Nordström in that band saw me standing next to the monitor console watching them, and he ran over to me to say hi and give me a big hug - in the middle of a song! He's such a nice guy :-)

 

As this was probably the last show of 2014 i celebrated by bringing my two best live guitars; the black/red and the red/black. Our show went fine, i did my very best, and the weather was perfect during our performance in 27 degrees. We had a lot of energy and a great deal of fun. After 8 years with this band it feels like most things we do is only routine and just "another day at the office" as we've been doing this so many times by now. Everyting sits in our muscle-memory. But i mean this in a good way, as when you don't have to focus all your energy on your playing, you can focus more on the show, what's going on around you on stage, and most of all what's going on out there among the audience.

 

After the show i met Kai Hansen of Unisonic again (haven't met him since we played together in 2012) and we had a quick chat right outside our dressingrooms before he brought Michael Kiske and the gang to enter the same stage. Later on I met with some old friends like Robert Karlsson, Timo Hagström, Anders Dahm, and a few others, but had a long and great chat with Lars Palmqvist. We have a history together, playing the same bands back in the days, but his dad was also my flute teacher when i was 12 and took dancing lessons together with his sister! We had many memories to share, but also updates on where we both were in life nowadays. It's about 23-24 years since we played together in Finspång before i moved to Stockholm, but when you meet like this again it feels like yesterday. Lars is now in the band Scar Symmetry but 24 years ago we were both in the band Brejndedd together with IT, where Lars had just replaced Dan Swanö. Those were the days :-)

 

But the biggest moments of this journey was that i had some of my best friends around, but then also my mum and dad, as well as almost all my siblings. Thoughout the years, they have never seen me play live and as we were in Finspång where they all live, this was the best chance they'll ever get. One of my sisters saw us on Sweden Rock Festival 2009, but all other siblings and my parents have never seen me. Interesting i had to turn 43 before that happened, hehe. We all met in the VIP bar afterwards and had a great time together, while i was trying out the KISS Destroyer Beer.

 

It was turning late and we were about to split, so we grabbed our bags and were heading for the car that was parked right behind the main stage. While we were walking that direction it suddenly struck my mind "Megadeth is playing now, and that normally means trouble". I was right. I was damn right. It didn't matter that we had the same all access pass as the Megadeth guys had, and it didn't matter that we had been playing the very same stage earlier that evening, we were still stopped by three persons guarding the area behind the stage informing us that "stage is closed". Situations like this can piss me off big-time and could easily become a big problem. I also saw that Megadeth's black shuttle-van that they arrived in were waiting for them to jump in right after the show, and was parked right in front of my car so we couldn't get anywhere. After a conversation between us in a somewhat distracted manner they let us pass and also moved Megadeth's shuttle. They probably realized that they would end up in even more trouble preventing me to get to my car and besides, they probably found out pretty quickly that we were not hangarounds who wanted to meet Megadeth... So we got away in the night and called it a rap.

 

Thank you Finspång for treating us well, and thank you for creating me.

Now i'll crawl back into my cave again.

 

//Michael