Ein frohes neues Jahr 2013

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.

Big Band Tour 2013 is soon here! Well, in few months but now is good time to share and like our official tour poster. Remember to ask Santa Claus to bring your ticket

Na das haben sich die Jungs auch verdient <3

Between writing new tracks and Big Band Tour rehearsals it’s a must to relax with some fast cars. Check out new Need For Speed!

Ahhhh… It’s five weeks since I enjoyed this sofa the last time and damn it feels good!!! The best coffee machine in the world (Jura Switzerland – Impressa J9), the world’s best newspaper (Helsingin Sanomat) and only myself. No appointments or duties the whole day. Ahhh… Yes, the weather is pretty cold, but actually the fresh autumn air fits my mood today pretty well.

We had a very nice trip to Germany with the boys and our photographer Anna last week. We played three great shows in little arenas and also played a few songs at the DTM motor race in Hockenheim and a few acoustic songs at the Radio 7 charity gala, where we also received the Best International Band- Award! Not too bad.

I was super jet-lagged the whole trip since we were in the USA with our drummer Sami the last three weeks, but now that I finally was able to sleep one night properly in my own bed, the world seems pretty ok again. Our manager Muskeli-Mikko will pick me up for gym in 50 minutes. We’ll see how that goes after a 4-week break. This will be the end of my Bacon-Burger-Budweiser-diet. Tomorrow it’ll hurt…;) The last night party with the future super band My First Band in Neu-Ulm wasn’t the greatest preparation for this week’s new healthy life style.

Thank you all so much for being there again for us. I had difficulties holding my tears on all the three stages. Especially on the last night in Neu-Ulm, the songs Hollywood Hills and Sweet Symphony nearly killed me. It’s been an amazing two years touring with the new album with you all and we don’t know if those were the last shows of the year. I hope not. It’s quite cool thinking about early 2011 when we were about to release Hollywood Hills as the first single of the new album. Amazing things happened after that and that’s mostly because of you lovely people

So, now we will keep on recording and producing our next album. It’s hard to say when it will be released, but it seems as if the musical side could be all done until the end of June 2013 and then if we just get all other parts of the puzzle together, the new songs could see the daylight after the summer. There’s absolutely no rush. There is also the situation with EMI and Universal Music and we need to make sure our partly new team is 110 % together before we hit the gas again. There are already some very cool songs half way produced and I’d love the play them to you all already now. But maybe we’ll wait

The Big band Theory Tour 2013

In the spring next year, we’ll have a new kind of a tour. We have hired some extra musicians and rearranged the songs in a new “Big-Band” form. The shows start in February in Finland and I guess we’ll keep going at least until the end of March. We haven’t quite agreed on everyone’s outfits yet, but I was positively surprised that all the guys in the gang, even the new soldiers, were able to make the tie and they had pretty good looking suits etc. I don’t know if a suit would be too hot for the stage – we’ll see. This all doesn’t mean that we’re any more grown-up than before. Raul, Riku, Osmo and Sami will still have all the childish stupid jokes, just like before.

Musically the Big Band concept gives us great new ways of enjoying our songs. At the moment it seems as if there will be at least 3 horns, percussions, maybe cello and some other instruments on stage. Around ten guys on stage – I wonder how we fit. No girls!!!

I just listened to some of the recordings from the rehearsals this morning and some of them are even better to me than the original tracks. Or maybe it’s just because it feels fresh after playing the album versions for some time now. The mood of the show will be closer to the Acoustic tours we’ve done in the past. More relaxed and more “easy going.” Sure there will be a lot of rock and roll, but in a more natural way. And again we’ll record all the shows, so be careful with what you say or scream in the crowd.

Manager-Muskeli-Mikko will be behind my door in a few minutes, so I better get ready.

Thank you for the great week again and enjoy the colorful autumn everyone!! I will put my David Hasselhoff sweatshirt on now…

Hugs,

Samu

PS: Don’t worry. It’s not me playing the horns on the BB tour…;)

PPS. Thank you Station Music in Jettingen, Germany for the new great guitars. I have been looking for a Gibson 137 Custom for years and now I finally have one at home

Best International Band. Thank you ♥

Seht selbst. Sehr schön

-> Big Band Tour

‘We have a Theory. A Big Band Theory.

‘Nach unserer Europa Tournee mit dem ursprünglichen Band Setup und einigen Akustik-Shows wollten wir 2013 mal etwas total anderes ausprobieren.

‘Wir haben eine Big Band eingeladen, die Bühne mit uns zu teilen. Nach den ersten Proben kann ich nur sagen, dass der Frühling 2013 sehr viel Spaß machen wird. Es ist unglaublich, wie die schon bekannten Sunrise Avenue Songs klingen, nachdem wir sie für eine Weile in den “Frank Sinatra” Ofen gesteckt haben.

‘Ich hoffe nur, dass alle Sunrise Avenue Bandmitglieder wissen, wie man eine Krawatte bindet…’

The Big Band Theory Tour 2013:

02.03.2013 – Kiel, Sparkassen-Arena-Kiel
03.03.2013 – Berlin, Columbiahalle
05.03.2013 – Braunschweig, Stadthalle
06.03.2013 – Bremen, Pier 2
07.03.2013 – Essen, Grugahalle
11.03.2013 – Heilbronn, Festhalle Harmonie
12.03.2013 – Fürth, Stadthalle
15.03.2013 – München, TonHalle
19.03.2013 – Dresden, Eventwerk

Tickets sichern

Venue to our gig in Saarbrücken at 17th October has change to Garage!
It’s only less than week for the last shows in Germany this year, make sure you have bought your ticket in advance. See you soon

“No Matter What The Say” feat Samu nun als CD und Download verfügbar.
Anbei noch 4 Videos

Follow Your Instinct — No Matter What They Say (f… – MyVideo

(To get the best out of this blog, listen to “Long Way Out – Sunrise Avenue. Ooops… It’ll be out somewhere next year…. Sorry)

Here we are. Project album #4 is moving forward pretty well and it all sounds and seems extremely great. We have recorded six songs for the next album already and as we go back home tomorrow evening, I bet the total number of tracks will be seven. Honestly, it sounds better than ever before.

The Petrax studio in Hollola, Finland is absolutely our favorite place to make music. The good thing this time is that I went through some 30-40 songs & song ideas with our dear producer Jukka Immonen already weeks before coming to the recording sessions and therefore we have plenty of stuff to work with. Usually I have a strong feeling of the song candidates and for example with Hollywood Hills I can say I kind of knew it would work very well with the band. But sometimes the producer, who still is an outsider and has fresh ears for our ideas and last night Jukka showed us the importance if this side of the selecting job.

As I presented him our new ideas in the summer, there was this one song called “A Long Way Out” and I wasn’t sure about that one at all. Still like all the ideas and songs, I played it to him with an acoustic guitar and he fell in love with it. I thought it would be too typical in a way but Jukka had a vision immediately. Last night as we started figuring out how the song should sound I was still not sure at all. Now that I am listening to it, there is no question in my mind. Sounds amazing!!!

So, one more evening plus tomorrow afternoon it’s all about Hollola Hills and then we head back home to fly to Switzerland for the very last festival show this year in Schupfart. Ok, there’s an Ice hockey game between our Helsinki IFK snd SaiPa in the evening and I might tell the guys I’ll go write some lyrics downstairs and I’ll be hiding down there watching the game while they’re working their asses off… Muahahaha

The rest of the year doesn’t look too busy and that is pretty cool. We will have plenty of time to work with our next long play. We will have three weeks off starting next Monday and after the little holiday we will have energy for the last arena shows of 2012 in Germany. Actually I think these will be the last arena / club shows in Central Europe with the Out Of Style Tour, so you better get your tickets. (Paid commercial There will hopefully be some shows in Russia too after the German run, but besides those, the rest will be time to create new stuff.

I just love being here in Hollola. They’ve had all the farm stuff and animals here before but now they even got little sheep. It’s the coolest thing to feed those hairy little things on the way to the dinner or breakfast at the main building. There’s this vase with some “sheep food” and I don’t know how fat the little guys will be after this week. It just breaks your heart when the little hair balls run to you like little dogs when they see us approaching their spot and I guess we give them a bit o much to eat. One of them is black of course.

I had the pleasure to work with this American hip hop group called Follow Your Instinct (F.Y.I.) since march. They approached me from the states and asked me to write and perform a chorus to their song. Now the video is out and the single “No Matter What They Say” (first of their album) will be out in the end of September. There’s bunch of other cool guys featuring on the album, like Snoop Dog, Etc. Check them out here

http://www.facebook.com/OfficialFollowYourInstinct

They are very nice guys and girls and I wish them all the best. I wonder if I get to perform with them some day. Since they already got a guy called Viper in the band, the only Hip Hop name left for me was “The All-Mighty DIPER.” Our manager Mikko was with us at the video shoot too and he ended up on the clip as well. I guess it’s pretty typical to have the whole gang there in the yo-yo-business. Mikko shall be called “G-Mike” from now on. Seriously!

I just love the freshness of September. And I just love my life right now.

I hope you’re all doing great!

Hugs,

Samu

Süße Schafbilder dazu gibts übrigens hier