PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
I spoke to Finnish blues guitarist Erja Lyytinen to talk about her new live album and upcoming tour dates.
Your new album “Live in London” is due for release on 8th June. Why choose London to record it?
Well London is the centre of music in Europe isn’t it, and I’ve been coming to the UK for years now and feel we have a nice time and it’s always exciting to perform there because you guys have such a long history in pop music and rock and blues music. My first live album came out years ago and was called “Songs from the road” and I thought now would be a good time to make the next live recording, and maybe in England during our club tour in October. Then we were thinking which place to do it, and well, The 100 club, it’s a legendary place. So we picked that place and everything seemed to click that night, and now we’ve got “Live in London” in our hands.
It’s a venue that’s hosted gigs by a lot of big names over the years.
The Rolling Stones played there and other big names, but for me it was Son House’s “Delta blues spiritual” from 1970. I’ve listening to the recording but never thought that I’d be playing on the same stage. It’s nice to get to play these places where you have all this musical history.
Your show that was recorded for the album includes several Elmore James covers. Presumably you’re a big fan of his?
I always loved Elmore James’s style, he was a very raw strong singer and he played something amazing. His song “Dust my broom” that really caught my attention at the end of the 90s and from that I learnt to play slide guitar. I actually learnt to play open tunings from that song. It’s a cornerstone in my slide guitar history. I had this idea in my head for years that someday I wanted to make a raw blues album with plenty of slide guitar, so I thought maybe Elmore James then. So we did this album called “The sky is crying” the previous year and I was playing a lot of his songs while we were playing the UK clubs. Elmore’s songs fit me really well and they mix nicely with my own songs which feels great – maybe we achieved something. Sometimes it’s hard to cover someones songs and make them feel like your own.
When you first learnt to play guitar, was it always playing Blues, or did that come later?
The blues came later. My mother plays guitar, she plays bass, so music was always very central in my life. I started playing violin when I was seven years old. I went to the conservatory, I played for seven years and then I quit it when I became a teenager, and when I was fifteen I really started to get interested in my father’s guitar and started to play it. Later on the Blues started to interest me.
I went to lessons and the teachers were giving us lots of rock and jazz songs to learn but I was really searching for something else and I remember I saw this Ray Charles music video back in the days of VHS and he was doing “Georgia on my mind” and I went all goosebumps and thought “wow, I want to have to that same feeling”. There was something about the interpretation he had that really touched me, so it didn’t take too many days after that till I had my own blues band.
Is the blues very popular in Finland?
Is Blues popular anywhere really? I think it’s always been popular and there have been people who listen to blues records and go to concerts but it’s not like it’s in the charts. I think the interest is definitely growing in Finland. We just had here in Helsinki for the first time, the Finnish Blues awards which was a networking happening for the blues industry in Finland and we were giving prices for the musicians who had a long career, and just giving recognition to the people who have been working in Blues music here in Finland, so it’s definitely much closer to everyone than evere before. It’s the same thing in the UK, you guys seem to have another blues revival, you have a lot of these 20-something year olds playing the blues.
In your opinion, who are the top 5 blues guitar players of all time?
How to just have five? Wow. Well, I have to say Muddy Waters would be one of them. He made his country blues and he changed to the electric blues. Elmore James for me is the really big name. Sonny Landreth has a great old style which is really hard to cover, so he’s something really amazing. There’s nobody else like Derek Trucks, he’s got his own unique voice as well. Who to squeeze in as the fifth one? I’ll probably miss a lot of good ones, but I’ll say B.B. King, Rest in Peace. He had a long career and I hope I can have as long a career as he had. It’s hard to limit it to five.
You’re back in the UK next month playing at three festivals.
Yes we’re playing Linton Blues festival then we go up north to Durham and Cleesthorpes.
How different do you find festivals to playing your own shows?
I enjoy both. When you’re playing a festival you get to meet a lot of other musicians so behind the scenes there’s a lot of laughing, joking and meeting friends, and then when you have your own headline show you just concentrate on yourself and you have your own stage build, your own sound guy and things like that. That’s what I did here in Finland. We had a 24 gig concert hall tour and we could really emphasise how the setup looked on stage and we had our own lighting guy, so it’s different. The music is always the same – you play it for the audience who come to see the show and you always want to make the best night ever.
With festivals you often get a shorter set so it must be hard to decide which songs to cut out.
Yeah and you have to think about the time schedule as well. If you’re playing early in the day, say 4pm, you will probably change the set compared to playing late at night when people want to party, so you think about which songs will suit better.
You then come back to the UK in October for a headline tour followed by dates in Germany.
That’s going to be two and a half weeks of touring the UK which we’re really looking forward to, and we have a date in Scotland this time. I think we’re playing Edinburgh. It’s always nice to play in the UK. There’s so much traffic, but other than that, people are so lovely and you guys have good beer.
Are there plans yet for your next studio album?
I’ve been writing songs. My last studio album was a couple of years ago, “Forbidden fruit”, and since that I haven’t any studio album just containing my own music, so I’m really looking forward to going to the studio with the new songs, and we already tried some of the new songs, and will be trying some of them at the shows in June and of course the tour in October, so we will play them and listen to the feedback and see what people think of them. I’m hoping to get the new studio album out sometime early in 2016.
Do you write everything or are the members of your band involved?
Well my guitar player Davide Floreno, he’s been writing songs with me, we’ve done a few in these years together. I use co-writing partners – I’ve been working with Alan Darby, he’s written songs for Bonnie Raitt and Bonnie Tyler, and he’s a guitar player and producer so it’s easy working with him, but I write most of the songs by myself. I like coming up with stories and it’s pretty easy for me to come up with melodies. I think I am a pretty melody oriented kind of person and I like to use different chords and mix and match a lot in my music. I do like songwriting.
Do you start with the melody and develop the song from there?
It depends. Sometimes I might have just a guitar riff and I start to build the song on top of that, or I might have some kind of lyrical content and I start to work from there.
“Erja Lyytinen’s “Live in London” album is released by Tuohi Records on Monday June 8th. Erja has three festivals booked before her nationwide UK tour starts on the October 2nd at the Darlington Blues Club. Further info: www.erjalyytinen.com
LINTON FESTIVAL
Friday 19th June 2015
www.lintonfestival.com
DURHAM BLUES FESTIVAL
Saturday 20th June 2015
www.durhambluesfestival.co.uk
CLEETHORPES BLUES FESTIVAL
Sunday 21st June 2015
www.cleethorpesbluesfestival.co.uk
DARLINGTON, DARLINGTON BLUES CLUB
Friday 2nd October 2015
Box Office: 01325 363135
Book Online: www.darlington-r-n-b-club.co.uk
The Forum Music Centre, Borough Road, Darlington, Co. Durham, DL1 1SG
www.darlington-r-n-b-club.co.uk
SHEFFIELD, THE GREYSTONES
Saturday 3rd October 2015
Greystones Road, Sheffield S11 7BS
www.mygreystones.co.uk
BARNES, BULL’S HEAD
Monday 5th October 2015
Box Office: 0208 761 9078
Book Online: www.feenstra.co.uk
373 Lonsdale Road, Barnes, London SW13 9PY
www.feenstra.co.uk
WOLVERHAMPTON, ROBIN 2
Wednesday 7th October 2015
Box Office: 01902 401211
Book Online: www.therobin.co.uk
20-28 Mount Pleasant, Bilston, West Midlands WV14 7LJ
www.therobin.co.uk
EDINBURGH, VOODOO ROOMS
Thursday 8th October 2015
Box Office: 0131 556 7060
Book Online: www.ticketweb.co.uk
19a West Register Street, Edinburgh EH2 2AA
www.thevoodoorooms.com
KEIGHLEY, KEIGHLEY BLUES CLUB
Friday 9th October 2015
Box Office: 01535 600310
Book Online: www.keighleybluesclub.net
Hall Of Fame Bar, Royd Ings Avenue, Keighley, BD21 3RF
www.keighleybluesclub.net
OXFORD, HAVEN MUSIC CLUB
Monday 12th October 2015
Box Office: 01865 244516
Book Online: www.wegottickets
Bullingdon, 162 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1UE
www.havenclub.co.uk
EVESHAM, IRON ROAD
Wednesday 14th October 2015
Box Office: 07831338277
Book Online: www.wegottickets
The Railway Hotel, 140 High Street, WR114EJ
www.theironroad.sqwiz.co.uk
CHISLEHURST, BEAVERWOOD CLUB
Thursday 15th October 2015
Box Office: 0208 761 9078
Book Online: www.feenstra.co.uk
Chislehurst, Kent BR7 6HF
www.feenstra.co.uk
SUTTON, BOOM BOOM CLUB
Friday 16th October 2015
Box Office: 0208 761 9078
Book Online: www.feenstra.co.uk
Sutton, Surrey SM1 2EY
www.feenstra.co.uk
CHESTER, CHESTER BLUES FESTIVAL
Saturday 17th October 2015
Box Office: 01472 349222
Book Online: www.chesterbluesfestival.co.uk
1 Station Road, Chester, Cheshire West and Chester CH1 3DR
www.chesterbluesfestival.co.uk
FROME, FROME BLUES FESTIVAL
Sunday 18th October 2015
Box Office: 01472 349222
Book Online: www.fromebluesfestival.co.uk
Market Yard, Frome, Somerset BA11 1BE
www.fromebluesfestival.co.uk
