We are in a train?

I didn’t remember it’s this easy traveling by train.Normally we drive to the airport with ten taxis in the morning traffic, gothrough check in, security check, boarding, safety demonstrations and if youhappen to sit on an exit seat, you gotta pack all your belongings up in thelockers. Train is so easy. It was sunny and very warm in Helsinki in themorning. The taxi to the central station took 8 minutes, and after total 20minutes from my home door, I was sitting in this iron tube with a warm cafélatte in my hand. Not bad. The trip to St. Petersburg takes three and a halfhours. We drive (do you “drive” with a train or is there some special word forit?) through Lahti and Pick up Timo, our lightning engineer from there. Hereally lives in Spain but today he comes from Finland’s Chicago.

The ride is so smooth. You have a lot of space around yourseat and you can walk around as much as you want. And you also see many thingsthough the train window that you would not see flying. And there’s arestaurant.

We play in St. Petersburg today and tomorrow we head toMoscow. I guess the train thing makes it easier to get into the country too.Russia is like USA in the matter of getting into the country with a lot of musicalgear. When you fly in to Russia, you obviously need to go through Moscow nomatter what’s your final destination. I heard that this time it should beeasier because of the train. In Moscow airport we usually wait for some stampsand papers for our travel documents for hours, now it should be quick & smooth.

Mr. Heikki Puhakainen is with us on key-boards on this tripbecause Osmo is attending the final TV broadcast of the Voice Of Finland. He’snot competing – he’s in the house band. It would be pretty cool if Osmo would bethere as one of the contestants. I bet they’d declare him as the winner afterthe first episodes I love watching Osmo on TV. He’s always so funny and coolespecially when they’re playing a rock show. There he’s allowed to do all the circusmoves and other things we always tell him not to. The stage is his

Heikki has obviously started a new life some time ago. Ihave not seen someone losing weight and getting in shape that fast. I remembertaking him to a kettle bell training last summer and honestly I didn’t believein his efforts too much. Now he looks like a model boy. He doesn’t drink at allanymore. I kind of miss the old party Heikki, but the same time I am super proudof him!! Changing your life is never easy and we all usually slip after a fewweeks and start to find excuses why we can’t make it. Not Heikki. Super Hessu!(Super Goofy in Finnish)

I’m gonna have to start filling in the Russian entry formsnow. It’s so cool that the little tour in Russia is finally happening!!!!

There’s no cigarette lounge in the train?? Well, we’llsurvive.

Samu

Here we go again!! It’s amazing how this trip just gets better and better. We’re right now driving towards Nuremberg, Germany to play a show near the city in Furth at the Stadhalle. We’re already over half way the tour and already today in Heilbronn I started kind of missing this trip and our little show on stage. Gotta enjoy it while it lasts. It’s all perfect even though the weather today was totally bad and I wasn’t able to go jogging. Snowing and stuff. You faces every night in front of us keeps the sun shining in this bus.

The boys are feeling way better now and everyone has recovered from the early tour’s party stuff and Amsterdam’s bars & cafes. Well, Sami had his birthday yesterday and of course we had to celebrate him in the night with Riku. The other guys were sleeping. We just drank a few bottles of wine (Sami vodka), ate some cake and we listened to Brad Paisley’s whole career through. And hugged each other half naked the whole time. Sweet <3 I LOVE Brad Paisley. We listened to his music every day when we did our road trip in the US with Sami last year. Today I bought Brad’s “American Saturday Night” album to Riku too. His face was smiling so big last night at the guitar parts so I wanted to surprise him with music. It’s so cool you can so easily gift albums on iTunes.

Now the boys are listening to some deep deep jazz in the lower lounge of the bus. Iäm sitting in the back of the lounge writing my little words for you and behaving here as if I understand the challenging jazz chords and stuff. They’ll buy me jamming along (See picture, only on SA Facebook)

Tomorrow is the last show of our Saxophone player Aleksi Ahoniemi. Roope, a guy from Finland will come to Zurich on Thursday for the show and this means we need to train the new kid fully to the set. He’ll be fine. It’s so sad that one of the soldiers is already leaving the battle. I love my job and this band more than words can describe and one of the main reasons are the great folks you meet on these trips. It’s gonna be as bit touchy on stage tomorrow on 6-0 when he blows his last solo for us this spring.

I guess we’ve had almost ten cakes already from the fans among all other great presents. You should realize that if we are super fat in a few weeks, it’s also your fault. We just can’t stop eating all these goodies. YUMMYYYY

Thank you all for the great moments again and see the rest of you soon! I will have a glass of wine now and smoke one last cigarette next to driver-boy Frank. I hope they can fix me a gym tomorrow in Furth on Nuremberg. I’d need that.

Good night everyone.

Dr. Haber and his Big Bad Big Band Boys!

PS: Tomorrow our ice hockey team Helsinki IFK have the most important game of the season. Cross your fingers, toes, parents, kids, animals and what every you may!!!! I’ll have an ice hockey studio with live feed from Finland somewhere with at least Riku, who is also HIFK fanatic and believer. A great soul

Here we go again. We’re enjoying the last bus drive between the shows this time. Tomorrow is the last show on this trip with these 9 guys on stage and I’m not sure if I’m happy about it. Today at the back stage in Prague I felt like hugging everyone around me because I can feel the farewell close.

Riku, Raul, Jay, Osmo, Markus, Roope and Tero are talking about food additives in the lower lounge. About all the stuff they put in our food and drinks to make them last longer in our fridges. Earlier we talked about the international oil companies and how they destroy countries and populations all over the planet only for their profit. The change is huge from two weeks ago. Everyone was partying half naked and running around the bus singing Sinatra songs. I liked that too but I guess these serious discussions on the “last drive” work too. A few bottles of wine and deep stuff The great show and the great crowd in Prague Czech Republic made the boys sentimental.

Manager Mikko, Photographer Anna, Tour manager Basty and Sami are sleeping in their bunks already. I don’t know the situation in the crew / Superscar bus. Guess their discussions are closer to the belt level. I’m alone with my laptop in the front with driver Frank.

I just wanted to thank you all for the great evenings again before getting on stage tomorrow for the last time with this setup in Dresden, Germany. I heard the show is also sold out!! After Dresden we’ll drive to Frankfurt for a few days to rehearse our “even bigger band set” together with the full HR3 Big Band orchestra. We’ll have Wednesday off, rehearsals on Thursday and Friday and on Saturday we’ll play two shows with the super-size-big band. That’ll be fun! I don’t know how dead I will be after two shows in one night, but who cares. After that we’ll have a few days off before we hit the studio hills in Hollola Finland.

As always we will have our little voting of the best show, audience, venue / arena, catering and backstage. We’ll definitely have difficulties selecting them this time since every day has been like a dream come true, but we’ll do our thing anyway. I’ll announce the results in my blog.

I am so tired but so happy. Thank you all for the whole treat!!! Love & Hugs & Kisses!!!!

Samu

PS: Our horn players Jay and Tero have found a brand new life…

Here we go again!! It’s amazing how this trip just gets better and better. We’re right now driving towards Nuremberg, Germany to play a show near the city in Furth at the Stadhalle. We’re already over half way the tour and already today in Heilbronn I started kind of missing this trip and our little show on stage. Gotta enjoy it while it lasts. It’s all perfect even though the weather today was totally bad and I wasn’t able to go jogging. Snowing and stuff. You faces every night in front of us keeps the sun shining in this bus.

The boys are feeling way better now and everyone has recovered from the early tour’s party stuff and Amsterdam’s bars & cafes. Well, Sami had his birthday yesterday and of course we had to celebrate him in the night with Riku. The other guys were sleeping. We just drank a few bottles of wine (Sami vodka), ate some cake and we listened to Brad Paisley’s whole career through. And hugged each other half naked the whole time. Sweet

Now the boys are listening to some deep deep jazz in the lower lounge of the bus. Iäm sitting in the back of the lounge writing my little words for you and behaving here as if I understand the challenging jazz chords and stuff. They’ll buy me jamming along (See picture, only on SA Facebook)

Tomorrow is the last show of our Saxophone player Aleksi Ahoniemi. Roope, a guy from Finland will come to Zurich on Thursday for the show and this means we need to train the new kid fully to the set. He’ll be fine. It’s so sad that one of the soldiers is already leaving the battle. I love my job and this band more than words can describe and one of the main reasons are the great folks you meet on these trips. It’s gonna be as bit touchy on stage tomorrow on 6-0 when he blows his last solo for us this spring.

I guess we’ve had almost ten cakes already from the fans among all other great presents. You should realize that if we are super fat in a few weeks, it’s also your fault. We just can’t stop eating all these goodies. YUMMYYYY

Thank you all for the great moments again and see the rest of you soon! I will have a glass of wine now and smoke one last cigarette next to driver-boy Frank. I hope they can fix me a gym tomorrow in Furth on Nuremberg. I’d need that.

Good night everyone.

Dr. Haber and his Big Bad Big Band Boys!

PS: Tomorrow our ice hockey team Helsinki IFK have the most important game of the season. Cross your fingers, toes, parents, kids, animals and what every you may!!!! I’ll have an ice hockey studio with live feed from Finland somewhere with at least Riku, who is also HIFK fanatic and believer. A great soul

Finally! I am sitting in a plane heading south from cold cold Helsinki with the band & crew guys. The wakeup was quite a shock this morning. On Friday it was still sunny and a couple of Celsius above zero. The morning was bright today too, but the temperature had fallen down to -15 in the night. I slept bad because the tour thoughts didn’t let me sleep too much but the walk to my car in the morning really woke me up.

We started the Big band shows in Finland already a few weeks ago and I must say we were very positively surprised. The first shows (in Lahti & Turku) were for seated audiences but still I was amazed how much fun it was. Especially those two nights I was super nervous. We all were. Even though we had rehearsed pretty well, there are so many things we all need to remember on stage and even for the sound guys and other crewmembers the night is a double challenge. And of course I had nightmares of the crowd reacting to the new arrangements. Helsinki was the third show and also the first “standing audience” and I must say it worked even better. It’s always a stress playing in your hometown because all your friends and family are there. But that was the night I fell in love with the set 110%. I have sometimes complained about Finnish crowds being passive and not too loud, but this time, in all three cities, we were blown away by the reaction.

So… Now we hit our first European dates in Germany, Holland, Austria, Switzerland and Czech Republic. It’ll be a month driving the caravan of two double decker busses and trucks all over the place. The first show is already today in Kiel, in northern Germany.

A lot of folks and fans have asked me if there’s a dress code at the shows. We should have thought about that earlier, so no, you come as you are. Sure it’ll make us happy if we see some cool gangsta suits in the crowd.

The crew and our support Finnish band Superscar travel with one bus and we share the (better;) bus with musicians only. This trip will be a total excursion to Tero’s, Jay’s, Markus’ and Aleksi’s soul. If there’s one great way of getting to know a person, it’s spending time with them on tour. You’ll know exactly who snores, who stays up the latest, who steals your shoes when they go out for a cigarette and who always forgets to close the bathroom door and it bangs annoyingly when the bus drives at night.

Between the shows we have been actually pretty active in studio too. I just counted that we have 32 songs already fully or half recorded with the guys and it wouldn’t be a miracle if there’d be an album out late this year. There’s some very cool stuff. I juts played Osmo a new song called “I Can Break Your Heart” and by the look in his eyes and his moshing head we are on the right track. Actually I’m listening to it now myself and damn it ROCKS!!!!!!!!!

Last week I was in Stockholm writing songs with a few trusted friends Peter, Carl and Sharon. We actually wrote “Angels On A Rampage” with Sharon and Carl three years ago and I gotta say I am very happy again for what came out at the sessions. Sharon is finally coming to see our show, for the first time, in Berlin and that makes me nervous in the good way.

I love to write songs mostly alone, but these joint sessions are a very great way of challenging yourself and of course you learn a lot from every person you work with. The day usually starts with a quick coffee at 10 AM and then we just write a song. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s just something you can listen to later on for fun, but it’s always fun and you never know when a hit could happen. Usually after we write the lyrics and melodies down, we have lunch and afterwards I stay with the “tracker” making the “one day demo” so there’s something to listen to. This is very much fun too. I can play all the guitars, bass and stuff I want and actually even some drums. Electric drums though… And if anything sounds and feels good with me performing the instruments, it’s a good sign. Then you ad Raul, Riku and Sami in studio to the track and VOILA!

I was first against these sessions but especially after doing full three weeks of them in Los Angeles in 2010 I have started to like them. When you co-write, I guess it kind of awakes your creative part of the brain. Last week, after working in the studios for the whole day, I had this strange mood in the evenings for writing lyrics. Good.

After the Berlin show tomorrow, I will stay in Berlin for our day off to meet the Universal folks together with our management. I know some of the UNI-guys already but it’ll be great getting to know who we’re gonna work with on the next steps of Sunrise Avenue. It’s kind of nice being with only one label now. The last album was shared between EMI and Universal, but now that Universal bought EMI, it’s gonna hopefully be even easier for us since we’re handled through one office. I do miss the Emi folks a lot and I really hope many of them will find new jobs at the Universal organization or somewhere else. It’s so bad when you’ve been working with some people for years (us since 2006) and you gotta leave some of them behind. We would not be here without the determined work and the huge hearts of Uli, Julia, Daniel, Kerstin, Andy and all the others. But we gotta move on and look ahead. Business is business.

But now it’s time to dress up and get ready for the night. Tonight is our first chance on this trip to prove our Theory. The Big Band Theory.

Samu

PS. Remember we record all the shows again. The loudest crowd might end up on an album, a Big band Theory Album. Muahahhahha

Sunrise Avenue kennen Sie, oder? Das sind die, die mit “Fairytale Gone Bad” nicht nur einen gigantischen Hit hatten, sondern auch noch regelmäßig in allen Radios der Nation zu hören sind. Und die, die spätestens mit “Hollywood Hills” bewiesen haben, dass sie alles andere als eine Eintagsfliege sind. Und das sind die, die 2012 in der Kategorie “Gruppe Rock/Pop International” für den ECHO nominiert waren. Erinnern Sie sich? Gut! Dann denken Sie sich jetzt die krachenden Gitarren und das treibende Schlagzeug weg und ersetzen Sie diese Instrumente durch Saxophone, Trompeten, Posaunen und was eine Bigband sonst noch so im Sortiment hat. Das wird es nämlich sein, was Sunrise Avenue und die hr-Bigband beim Hessentag 2013 in Kassel präsentieren werden.

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Tomorrow is the night when we shoot the fireworks and drink champagne with our loved ones to celebrate the New Year again. For me, the days between the Christmas eve and New Year’s eve have always been this kind of a cooling down period when I look back at the year behind and I take a look at what I and we got from it.

Quite a year it was again. We released our latest album “Out Of Style” already in the beginning of 2011 and 2012 was actually all about enjoying those songs together with all the wonderful folks everywhere we went. There are new “normal” band shows booked already for next year, especially in the summer, so we haven’t seen all of that yet.

In 2012 we also sold our 1.000.000th album and that makes me super proud and happy. I must admit the million-album level was something I sometimes dreamed of years ago and now that we’ve reached it, we don’t need to look at the sales numbers any longer. Thank you, every single one of you who have taken part in making my secret dream come true!!

2012 we also had a chance to really start recording new music in studio again. It’ll still take time to finish all the songs and we still need to write a few new ones, but I’d say we are 65 % done with it. There are some VERY great songs I’d already love to share with you all but I better stay patient. It’s been so cool again having all the time we need for the creative process and there has been no pressure from our labels or management. We used to be signed to two major labels (Universal and EMI) before, but now that Universal bought EMI, we need to make sure that our “home team” in all the countries is set and ready for the release before we shoot the music out. I guess all this could be done until the end of the summer 2013 and if all goes well, our next baby could see the daylight before Christmas 2013. If all goes well…;)

The only alarming thing about the new album is, that it has no project name yet. Could that be a bad thing??? We gotta figure something out before the spring. I’ve been calling it “Yellow snow” (for some strange reason) on my iTunes library, but that can’t be it I’ll hopefully get an idea again at the gym some day or while I’m in a shower at some point. Or tonight at Sami’s place at the NY celebration together with Sami after he’s had his 7th whisky.

In February 2013 we will finally start our Big band Theory Tour. It feels as if we’ve been preparing ourselves for that special trip for ages and I just can’t wait to hit the road with the funny looking horns and flutes. It has made us very happy how well the tickets have been selling and I bet we’ll have lots of fun together in a few months.

Before the Big band Theory Tour, we’ll have some beach time at some different locations very much south from home. I’ll also make a short trip to the Alps with my snowboard and some friends. After these events we should be full of strength and fit for the challenges and enjoyment ahead as we hit the road again.

So… I guess I’m trying to thank you all again for the great year almost behind. I don’t believe in wishes or magic too much, but I wish you all have a great New Year’s Eve and that 2013 will be even better than the one before for every single one of you.

I’ll go to gym now for the last time in 2012. After that I pack my fireworks, some drinks and champagne bottles and head to Sami’s place for the party. I wish you could all be there.

Hugs and kisses and a happy New Year!

Samu and his Big Band boys

PS. Don’t eat the yellow snow!!

PPS: Remember to use eye protection this midnight!!!

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

We hope you’ve all been nice and you all get lots and lost of presents and great moments tonight with your loved ones.