Rikard Sjöblom's Gungfly - Att För Barn Som Tror På Sagor Läsa Högt När Kvällen Kommer (2018)

So far I’ve been able to go on a tour with Gungfly in Holland in January, supporting Kayak. When we got home from there I started working on what is to become the next album. We’re booked to play Night of the Prog festival in beautiful Loreley, Germany with both Big Big Train and Gungfly in July this summer. Before that we’re playing Gothenburg with Gungfly in April… to be continued!

2017:
In early 2017 I was working in the backing band for a theatrical production that the local steel mill (!!) Sandvik put on in Örebro and it took up most of January. After that it was time to approve the masters for “On Her Journey to the Sun” which was going into production in late February. More gigs with Ulf Nilsson and Linda Varg as they released a single together and booked a tour called “Sing Me a Lullaby tour” so Petter, Rasmus and I went on the road as their backing band through the summer. I also played some more shows with Hasse Bruniusson Plays the Music of Samla Mammas Manna (We’ll just refer to that as HBPTMOSMM for future reference .

“On Her Journey to the Sun” was released in May and it got a great reception and actually later on ended up on quite a lot of top ten lists for 2017 across the internet, as did the two albums by Big Big Train. In the end of the summer I went to England to perform three sold out shows at Cadogan Hall with Big Big Train and we started in good fashion by rehearsing for about a week at Real World Studios once more. The shows were great fun and it was filmed for a future live release. When I got back home I started writing new songs for Gungfly but waited with recording. The last period of 2017 was instead spent playing a dinner show at a place called Flustret in Uppsala, Sweden. Four shows per week through second half of November and most of December.

2016:
“The Unbendable Sleep” was released in February and it received a great reception. I was booked to do a solo acoustic tour in England together with Anima Mundi, but their visas didn’t come through, so I ended up doing just one show in England that year – in Swindon of all places! Fun thing though was that my mates from Big Big Train joined me and Rachel Hall played violin on several songs, David sang (Beardfish’s “Dark Poet” for instance) with me and we also did a Big Big Train song.

My family moved to a house in Sandviken outside of Gävle in March. I had written quite a lot of new Beardfish songs that we were planning to record in the early summer, but when we started rehearsing we noticed that something was off, and it just wasn’t working. After about a month (which seemed like a lifetime) of discussions back and forth we decided to call it quits and end the band. This was a really, tough decision for us, but we didn’t want to start changing members and stuff. Beardfish was the four of us (plus Martin Borgh on keyboards during the last year) and we didn’t want it any other way. Because of this I started recording the leftover Beardfish songs on my own, signed to InsideOut Music and started working on what was to become “On Her Journey to the Sun” with Gungfly. We played Uppsala Progressive Rock Festival and that was just days after Beardfish had officially split up, so a lot of people were coming up and talking about it. On this festival I played twice, I also played the music of Samla Mammas Manna together with original drummer Hasse Bruniusson, bassist Håkan Almqvist and Roine Stolt of The Flower Kings on guitar – Great fun!

I was invited to come and play in Chicago at the Progtoberfest with Gungfly and decided to do it as a trio with Petter and Rasmus Diamant and book some more shows. Ray Loboda, Jim Robinson and Jon P Yarger helped out with this and they also suggested we’d bring company: Mattias Olsson and David Lundberg aka Necromonkey. Together we travelled around the east coast of USA for about a week and had a great time. This was also an opportunity to try out several of the new songs, including “Of the Orb”, “He Held an Axe” and “On Her Journey to the Sun” so when I got back I continued the process of recording the album. At the same time I was recording my parts for the new Big Big Train album as well, which actually turned into two albums called “Grimspound” and “The Second Brightest Star”. We also visited Milan, Italy with the Gungfly trio.

2015:
Beardfish toured with Neal Morse Band in Europe and we released our latest album “+4626-COMFORTZONE”, played quite a lot of shows with Linda Varg, backing her up with acoustic guitar and backing vocals mainly. Went back to England to play three shows at King’s Place in London with Big Big Train (after rehearsing at Real World for about a week) and it was incredible! After I got back I was so hyped up to record some stuff on my own again so I locked myself in the studio and continued recording the stuff I had started in 2014 and it was so much fun that I was basically finished after a month. Greg Spawton of Big Big Train asked if I wanted to come over and play an acoustic show in Cumbria in at the Charlie and Kathleen Dunnery Children’s Foundation, a yearly benefit show hosted by Francis Dunnery from It Bites. Fantastic event and this year’s special guest was none other than Robert Plant who played a great set of his songs. The day of the concert starts off with a sponsored walk around Lake Cumbria and while doing this 3,5 h walk I was talking for quite a while with Chris Topham who runs a vinyl-only record label called Plane Groovy. We started talking about my new solo venture and he was interested in releasing the LP if I released the CD myself.

2014:
Villemo’s younger brother was born and we named him Tage. Lots of gigs with lots of different projects, started working for singer/songwriters Ulf Nilsson and Linda Varg. I was contacted by Big Big Train, they asked me if I was interested in coming over to England and Real World Studios to play with them. They wanted to start playing live again after a 17-year hiatus from the stage and needed some extra people, among them someone who could do guitars, keys and backing vocals. I was honored and said yes pretty much immediately. They were gonna record a DVD (later turned out to be Blu Ray only) of the process and gigs were also planned for 2015. I also started working on some new solo material (“Under Northern Skies” and “Rhyme and Reason” which both ended up on 2016’s “The Unbendable Sleep”.

Track List:
01. Brackan (4:13)
02. Knappmannen (4:50)
03. Flocken (3:58)
04. Skogen (9:37)
05. Himlen Ramlar Ner (6:43)
06. Graningeklubben (5:08)
07. Kojan (3:29)
08. Jag Kan Se Runt Hörn (4:31)
09. Ett Rum Fullt av Speglar (3:37)
10. Dit Far Man Ensam (7:15)

Line-up / Musicians:
Rikard Sjöblom (vocals, guitars and keys)
Petter Diamant (drums)
Rasmus Diamant (bass)
Sverker Magnusson (keys)
Martin Borgh (keys)
David Zackrisson (guitar)

More Music in My Blog
Follow My RSS Channel