2017: A year in the life of Billy Momo

It is with equal measures of amusement, trepidation and awe one looks back at a year that’s coming to an end. It always amazes me how we manage to cram such a shitload of events, emotions, logistics, memories and just… stuff into 365 days. 2017 was a fairly intense year for Billy Momo, and I will try to give a non-chronological overview of the highlights (and perhaps an occasional low point).

2017 saw the launch of both this very blog you’re reading right now, as well as our visual diary of sorts, MomoTV. With both of these outlets coming hot on the heels of our band documentary ”The dirt road to Seven Rivers Wild” (released in late 2016) this year has been the so far most informative for those who’d like to learn more about the band and its various members. Behind-the-scenes footage, on-the-road shenanigans, navel-gazing rants, we provided the tabloids with ample fodder for slaughter, and yet somehow the big headlines eluded us, again. But do not lose heart children, all that stuff is still available for you, so during the holidays you can binge the entire first season of MomoTV (to be continued in 2018) and read all the blog posts as well as watch the documentary. You will be a BM black belt by the end.

As always, we produced a few videos, including two projects in collaboration with Kola Productions for the songs ”Following me, following you” (Kola editing) and ”We need another shovel” (Kola production and editing), as well as a self-produced, and ultimately abandoned attempt at a video for ”Say you’re sorry” (we managed to find use for some of that footage elsewhere). We were very pleased with the two completed videos, and they are of course also available for you to watch at your leisure.

We played some nice venues in 2017, and made a lot of new friends.
Franskans Crêperie in Rörum, Österlen was an instant love affair for the band, and we played there three times over the course of the year. The late-nite post-show parties we threw there were pretty legendary too.

The Taube stage at Liseberg fun fair in Gothenburg was another nice gig for us, not only was the show a lot of fun and well received, but we also got to rock out with our cocks out (well, not really) on the various rides and had a great time.

We played another of our favorite joints once more, Plan B in Tranås, and we will be back there yet again in the spring of 2018, it’s always a great place to play. The same can be said for Stationen Scen & Konst in Bålsta, possibly the smallest venue we’ve ever played, but also one of the coziest and most intimate (the audience is literally right in your face, surrounding the band on three sides). Another memorable show was when we played a huge party at the old stadium in Stockholm. Perhaps the gig itself wasn’t that exceptional, but it was interesting that we had some real saloon-style fights breaking out in the audience, sort of making you wish for the chicken wire fence from the Blues Brothers.

We actually managed to win an award for ”Best street music act” at a festival in Askersund, having played our first real busking set. That was a real honor, considering some of the other competing acts.

We released a 3-song EP in the fall, ”Umbrellas, wings and magic things” for which we threw a little intimate release party at The Creak/Knarret, Barba’s new house doing double duty as our new recording facility, and is the place where we record the stuff you will see released during 2018. The construction of the studio is well documented in the MomoTV episodes, as well as some glimpses from our recording sessions there.

All this and more kept us pretty busy throughout the year. Add to that Barba moving house not just once, but twice (!) finally settling at The Creak, various love stories and debaucheries involving band members, plenty of drunken nights and parties where people’s personal belongings may or may not have been severely urinated upon, as well as the utter nightmare of seeing a clean-shaven Preacher Man, and you have plenty of drama going on as well.

Stay tuned for more music, videos and scandals coming up next year. Thanks for being with us during this one.

Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year to all you crazy kids in love out there!

/Gramps

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Keep shoveling…

We filmed this video mid October, on one of the last mild Swedish Autumn days. After shoveling, hacking, axing and smoking cigars and a pipe for two full days, our bodies were pushed to the limit. Preacher Man even chopped himself in the leg with the axe. And Barba and Gramps couldn’t really lift their arms the days following the video shoot. But, all for art, right?! In collaboration with the lovely people at the production company Kola Productions – this is the video for We Need Another Shovel. Hope you like it!

Brothers in arms

You know, I see my little brother almost every day. 

It wasn’t always like that, but these days we both live in the suburbs of Stockholm (albeit on different sides of the city), we have been working together since 2003, and oh, lest I forget, we also play in the same band. 

Siblings playing in the same band aren’t really that unusual. Ray and Dave Davies. Alex and Eddie Van Halen. Karen and Richard Carpenter. Malcolm and Angus Young. Duane and Gregg Allman. Ann and Nancy Wilson. Vinnie Paul and Dimebag Darrell. Not to mention the Staple Singers, the Jacksons and the Beach Boys. The list is endless when you start to think about it. 

Barba, as he is affectionately known within the ranks of Billy Momo, is five years younger than me, and growing up, we really didn’t hang out much due to that age difference.

In his between-song rants, Orren often relishes in pointing out my trailer park white trash credentials, as I married and had kids at a fairly young age (not to mention becoming a grandfather in my early 40s). This also meant that I was preoccupied with family life and being a dad at the same time that my brother grew into his rock’n’roll-lifestyle-era. And as my kids got older and more independent, and I became more ”accessible to frivolous social encounters and activities” as it were, that’s when he started a family and the responsible-dad-thing. We just always seemed to be out of phase, although we got along great whenever we’d see each other. 

We are both drummers, so we spent many years playing in different bands, never actually playing together. The first time that changed was when Barba started his RockSteadyEddie solo project, where he was the lead singer, and thus needed a drummer for live performance (he still played on the recordings). I was drafted for this task, and this was the first time we performed together. It was also the first time I played with Orren, who was the bass player then. It was not too long after this that Barba and Orren morphed into the early stages of Billy Momo. They started writing and recording songs, discovering a new direction different from anything they’d done before. In the beginning they played most of the instruments themselves, with auxiliary players added whenever needed. I was one of those players. And I played the drums with the band live from the very first gig, so I was the first +member added to the then-duo, nowadays a septet. Growing pains much..?

So, what’s it like to play in a band with your younger brother, especially as he is one of the two bandleaders, you ask? (Or maybe you don’t, but I’ll tell you anyway.)

In a seven-piece group where the dynamics pretty much resemble a dysfunctional family on a alcoholic binge anyway, with sibling rivalries, squabbles and inside jokes, the actual blood relations between Barba and myself doesn’t really seem too obvious. In fact, we are probably the two guys who argue the least among each other in the band. We both like to be on time, none of us is a snob in our tastes (although our tastes often diverge quite a lot from each other), and we are both pretty easy-going (out of the two of us, I’m the moody, difficult one).

One of the funny quirks is that initially we both found it really hard to do vocal harmonies together. Our voices have really similar timbres, and if the harmonies were tight (as they should be), it would be very difficult to differentiate between us, so much that we’d sometimes not know which parts we were singing! I’d find myself having to do a little pitch bend to find out which voice was me! Over time, we have learned how to tell ourselves apart a little better, but sometimes it’s still difficult. One of the band’s inside jokes is that the most pointless gag imaginable would be if I started to sing lead on a song instead of Barba, as most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

Barba is the organizer of the band, the disciplinarian father figure as well as the worrying mother, while the rest of us are the unruly kids driving him crazy. But that doesn’t mean that he’s boring and stiff. In fact, he’s one of the most fun guys I know to hang out with. If you’ve ever partied with Billy Momo, you are keenly aware that we all know how to have a good time. 

On a strictly personal note, while we have obviously been family our whole lives, it’s very precious to me to find that in our advancing years, my little brother is also one of my very best friends, and I love him like crazy. 

As today is his birthday I’ll raise a toast to the man who was happier than anyone else when the VHS era ended. Here’s to many more years of brotherhood and bandmatery! Cheers, little brother! Love ya!

/Gramps

Billy Momo’s been busy…

Really long time, and no hear from your favorite bearded band Billy Momo. There’s a reason. The band has been busy writing, recording, releasing new material. And some gigging as well. And shooting what will be a really cool video. For a brief catch-up of the latest months, begin with checking out MomoTV. You will find it all in there. And then some… Start from the beginning or skip through to your latest seen episode. Birgitta/management

The Fine Art of Assholery (and why you should never meet your heroes)

When I was very young I may have harbored some naïve illusions on the matter, but really, for most of my life I have been keenly aware that there is no automatic correlation between a great artistic talent and a great personality.

This is why I am generally very hesitant to meet the musicians who have been truly inspirational to me. It really shouldn’t matter, of course, but I know myself well enough to know that it would sully my love for their art if I met them and found them to be complete assholes.

Now, I know that many of them probably ARE assholes, but not having to witness it firsthand allows me to maintain my self-delusion and hypocrisy, which is convenient, since I would very much like to continue enjoying their music.

No person is just ONE thing, of course. Everyone understands that. Even the individuals that history and most of us who are not complete idiots would unanimously consider truly BAD PEOPLE (I don’t have to mention names here, do I?) probably had their agreeable moments and positive attributes. And those rare creatures who are considered ”good” by most people’s standards have their dark side and unflattering traits.
Profound and genuine assholery is not easily defined, and the line between just having a bad day and being a douche can be blurry sometimes.

But some people are just more consistently obnoxious, rude and mean than others, to the point where it is their standard approach in social situations, and this is where I feel we start to cross the aforementioned line. We all have some people like this in our lives. Toxic, caustic personalities, psychic and emotional vampires who drain us of joy, energy and passion. People who will always play the guilt trip card, giving unwarranted and/or unfair criticism about everything you do, or make you feel inadequate and/or inferior. Assholes.

In some cases we are dealing with clinical cases, where the individual in question actually is unable to be any other way, sociopathic personality disorder, malignant narcissism, etc. I won’t dwell on those individuals, as they are something other than the thing I wish to address here, I will just say that those people are the ones that you need to cut out of your life immediately and completely, because they will never be a good influence in your life, you can’t help them, and they sure as hell won’t help you, so stay the fuck away from them forever.

However, most assholes are just spoiled brats who need to have their asses kicked a little bit to get back in line. They’ve been getting too much rope, and got used to getting away with too much shit. Shorten the leash. What I mean by that is that you don’t need to put up with their behavior, and you have every right to let them know that you won’t.

Ladies know what I’m talking about. Chauvinist pigs who make inappropriate ”jokes” and use derogatory slurs about women are abundant and all over the place, and the world of music is no exception, unfortunately. We all know misogyny has been a widespread constant throughout the history of music. You’d think we should be way past that sort of caveman mentality by now, but unfortunately that is not the case.

And in every workplace, in every classroom and at every party, there is at least one bully who thrives on making other people miserable. Yes, THAT asshole.

The solution is not to return the favor in spades, further fueling the one-upmanship of assholery. Neither is acquiescence, because then you’re stuck with this sphincter’s behavior.
I think Jim Jefferies really nailed it on the head in the clip I’ve posted below. Check it out, it’s brilliant!

In my role as a working musician, I have come to the conclusion that life is way too short to deal and work with assholes. It takes up too much of my precious time, drains my energy and creative inspiration, and this is one of the many reasons why I’m so happy playing with the guys in Billy Momo. We are no saints, and we certainly have our moments of shitty attitudes and bad behavior, no doubt about that, but let me tell you, these guys I play with are good people. Friendly, approachable, and somewhat sane. This allows us to get on with the task at hand, which is making music, and having fun while doing so.
When doing the things you love, you shouldn’t have to put up with assholes, so don’t! And even more important, don’t be one!

Let’s be friendly, generous and kind, people! It’s the best gift we can give ourselves, and others.

I wish your perpetual bliss, all you crazy kids in love out there!

/Gramps

 

MomoTV – episode #5 – Following Me Following You

…in which we get a bit fashionista. And start a bar fight in a church…

MomoTV episode 4 – Cooking

In which we learn all about the best way to use quinoa. And will a frustrating situation turn The Head into Preacherman?

A different drum, crayfish and the-day-after-volumes.

Gramps. Photo: Christopher Anderzon. 

We have started recording a bunch of new songs lately, and you will no doubt see a lot of footage from this project on MomoTV in the weeks and months ahead. But here are some personal reflections after the first week of recording.

Each Billy Momo album has had its own approach and recording process. ’Ordinary Men’ was done very much as a duo with auxiliary musicians.

More of a band sound started to emerge with ’Drunktalk’, although it wasn’t quite there yet. And it was still largely put together one instrument at the time, the separated recording technique used by most smaller studios.

’Seven Rivers Wild’ was the first album recorded entirely as the seven-piece band that we had grown into, and we also started to record a little bit more as a live unit, with at least the rhythm section being recorded at the same time. It had happened on occasional tracks before, such as ”The Weekend”, but this time around that was the overall approach for most of the tracks. On SRW we also began experimenting with double drums on some songs, with me and Barba playing together on separate drum kits to get a lively, swampy feel to the grooves. With this approach we could also introduce more interesting sounds into the rhythm tracks, junkyard percussion, stacked cymbals and other sonic experiments. SRW was quite ambitious, a glossy, rich production, Billy goes Fleetwood Mac, almost. The final enhancement to this album was the amazing artwork, which made it ideal for the vinyl format.

But these days, we are living in a world where streaming services and downloading individual tracks constitute the norm, rather than oldskool album listening, where you with a sense of pride, joy and even duty listened all the way through the album you had just purchased (yes, there was a time when you paid money to the creators of the music in order to listen to it). Today… not so much. And so, why not try some different approaches to platforms and formats?

With this in mind, we are now experimenting with different approaches to recording, not necessarily working towards ”an album” as the desired end result. It might still end up being that, of course, but we try not to have that as a preconceived notion, but rather approach a handful of songs at the time, consider some creatively interesting method of recording them, and see what happens. They may be released as individual tracks, or as parts of a bigger, cohesive whole, but we’ll see what it is when we get there.

The first and most obvious difference this time around is that we have started to work in Barba’s new house, part of which has been converted into a recording facility (again, MomoTV will bring you up to speed on that) which gives the whole working environment a more homegrown feel, which suits the band perfectly.

During rehearsals in the past couple of years we often found that some really interesting things happened to the groove when we were playing at lower volume (the decision to turn it down was probably more due to hangovers than intentional improvements of musical nature, but hey!) and so we wanted to try recording some songs while playing softly and more delicately. So this has been a deliberate change for this particular batch of tunes. Oh, there are still some viscerally exciting, rambunctious, slamming beats going on (oh, man, you have noooo idea what you’re in for, people!), but there is a different sonic quality that comes out of drums and percussion when played slightly less forcefully, and the interplay between players gets more dynamic, so this we feel is a huge improvement.

Gramps. Photo: Christopher Anderzon. 

We are also expanding the idea of the junkyard percussion setups, with both myself and Preach having some deranged setups to work with. Trashcan lids, wooden crates, fucked up cymbal combinations with applied chains, drums filled with quinoa, and the list goes on. The Billy Momo sound is getting deeper, grittier and sweatier than ever. We can’t wait for you to hear these fucking songs!

The first week of collective recording finished on Friday (some individual overdub sessions proceeded over the weekend), and we had a traditional Swedish crayfish party on Friday night, right there in the studio! It was the usual Billy Momo joint, with way too much booze, and so, the drunktalk began, as expected. One member of the band kept insisting that most fears that people refer to as “phobias” are actually just a part of ones personal image and public relations-package, or something along those lines. The verdict from the jury is still pending on that one. And at some point during the wee hours of the morning, we hazily drifted into listening to terrible 90s Eurodance music (although some of us insisted it was FUCKING AWESOME!!!) and eventually some of us got wild and crazy behind the drum kit for a bit at 4:00 a.m.-ish, presumably to the immense enjoyment of the neighbors, but, you know, what price art, eh?

Stay tuned here and at Momo TV for continuous updates on the recording process.

Have a beautiful fall, all you crazy kids in love out there!

/Gramps

Recommended listening:

MomoTV – Episode #3 – Steady streaming

Fever pitch

Gramps. Photo: Christopher Anderzon.

Let me be absolutely crystal clear on this; tonsillitis sucks.
Now, I’m not going to start one of those mancold lamentations, which are ridiculous, but I actually had to cancel a gig this weekend due to illness, which is the first time ever for me. So that wasn’t fun.
Other than that, there’s really no point complaining, it is what it is, and you get to go on endless binges on HBO and Netflix, and as a horror fan I can tell you that watching scary movies with a 39°C fever (102°F) is very surreal and makes the experience even more unsettling, so that’s highly recommended.
One thing that always fascinated me about having a high fever and being stoned on painkillers are the dreams you have as you slip in and out of sleep in a daze. They can get truly bizarre at times, and I really wish I could record those dreams and watch them again later, there might be some amazing material for songs, books or movies in there. But at one point last night, I had an unbelievably lucid and meticulously detailed dream about making the arrangements for my own funeral, and let me tell you, I was on such a roll! I picked all the music I wanted performed, and the musicians I wanted to play, which people I wanted to invite, and some personal messages I wanted to leave for them. It was really awesome. I never wanted to have a depressing funeral, and the arrangement I came up with in my dream was just perfect for what I would like it to be when I eventually bite the Big One someday, so I decided that I would write down everything I could remember of the dream (which was most of it), and use that as a blueprint for the actual event. So, that was cool.
Anyway, I hope I’ll be back on my feet real soon, as we are about to start recording new material with Billy Momo in just a few days. Dreaming with a fever might be cool as shit, but playing the drums is not. This I know from experience.
The fever still lingers, so if this text seems even more rambling, incoherent and/or riddled with typos than usual, that might have something to do with it.

Take care, all you crazy kids in love out there.

/Gramps

Recommended listening: