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Samu's Blog 2015 auf Englisch

Blog from 04. Mai 2015

Samu

Greetings from Barcelona

I just love this city! This is the place where we filmed our very first music video “Fairytale Gone Bad” in 2006 and this is also the city where I did most of the idiotic stuff when I was at my 20’s. Here we had the idea of our sex shop back in the days with my friend. This is also the only town is Spain where we ever played with Sunrise Avenue. My Favorite city in Southern Europe, a great place to do crazy things.

But this time I’m actually doing something smart in here…
“The Band” or “Die Band” in German is a very cool music show. Twenty young musicians (boys and girls) live together in this extremely cool house with swimming pools and stuff and their job is to hang out in Barcelona with me and my gang for a couple of months and to make music and play live shows. They are twenty players in the beginning but in the end they will be only five, the winning band. They will get a record deal and make tours after the show is over. My job is to be the musical big brother for them / their friend / driver of their beer-taxi and of course I’m the host of the show.

When they offered me this job, I loved the idea right away. However, we had to be clear with two things before I’d sing the deal 1) It can’t be like Big Brother. I hate that shit when people are being filmed having a shower 2) The musicians must be good. REALLY good. Otherwise I would not do it.

Well, here we are. It’s not Big Brother at all. The only ones filming the stuff half naked are the musicians themselves, but what do you expect when you put youngsters living rock star life together in a cool sunny city with all the clubs around them. And how good are the players… Well, just open your TVs in June. We have had so much fun here and the only downside is that the musicians’ house is even cooler than my hotel suite. My ego can’t take it ;) If I were a young musician without a band, I’d definitely join this show if I only could.

Now that I have this new TV thing out this year, I will NOT do the Voice Of Germany. I thought about it for a long time, but I really decided to make this summer a bit nicer and easier to myself. This summer I really want to enjoy the festival shows with Sunrise Avenue and I want to spend the days and weeks between on the beach and at my summerhouse. Call me lazy, It’s my life hahahah ;)

Words are not strong enough to say how thankful I am for the opportunity I had with the The Voice Of Germany. I learned so much about myself and I met amazing people, probably more than ever before in such short time. I can never thank director Arschkrokodil-Karsten, Talpa-Tim PRO7-Wolfgang&Danieland many others enough for taking the huge risk putting me on that red chair even though my German skills were on a newborn level. It’s amazing what the whole thing did to Sunrise Avenue and to myself as a human being. And I must confess I will miss doing the show. When the new season is running in October, I’llprobably sit in the crowd with fake mustache and sunglasses pretending I’m just some random guy from Mönchengladbach. And thinking I’d wanna be there too. Have fun with the old & new coaches and good luck to the new talents and jury members. You will have the time of your lives!

So… It’s less than two weeks until we switch on our Sunrise amplifiers in Helsinki and start the tour. I just can’t wait. I haven’t seen the band guys for a long time and after a little breath break it feels great getting back together. This summer will be only about music and sun. And beer and eating pizza. Ok, ok management, I will do jogging and gym too. But not too much.

See you all in Helsinki on the 16th of May. Playing the sold-out Helsinki IFK Arena has always been my biggest dream. Now it’s only12 days away. I just listened to the last band rehearsal recordings from last December by the swimming pool this morning and I felt like I was flying.
Big love & hugs and see you all soon!

I WANNA GET TO THE FUNKY TOWN!!!!!!

Samu

#dieband #thevoiceofgermany #sunriseavenue #Barcelona #HIFK#IFK #Helsinki #Barcelona



Blog from 18. Mai 2015

Samu

Tour Start in Helsinki

I could actually post an empty page. Words are not enough to describe last weekend. We have never been as nervous and excited as on Saturday in Helsinki and I don’t remember having that much emotion ever on stage before. When you have all your relatives, families, friends and neighbors watching the show after a six month break, it kind of felt like we were being sent to outer space without space suits. I don’t remember anything about the first three songs. I don’t know if any of this makes sense to you, but I’m trying to say we are super thankful for the night. We just felt something we had never felt before. Everything was perfect. Thank you <3

I have also been a fan of Tommy Lindgren on stage even since his band “Don Johnson Big Band” released their breakthrough single “One Mc - One Delay.” I offered Tommy a feature job on our album already with PopGasm in 2009 but now it finally worked out. I hope Tommy can and will travel with us to a couple dates this summer outside Finland too.

I arrived in Barcelona last night where we continue filming “Die Band.” I must admit the after party was very hard on Saturday and this day has still been a bit shaky. I’m not twenty years old anymore and I need a couple of days to recover from a big afterparty. However, I need to be fresh, a role model to the young musicians at the TV show. Not a drunk old Finnish man;) Don’t try this at home unless you’re 18 or more.

We will shoot stuff here until Friday when I’ll fly to Hannover, Germany to meet my Band boys again. We play the one and only show with the amazing symphonic orchestra on Saturday and we need to rehearse everything with the people with strings and stuff. The coolest conductor, Mr.Ludwig Wicki will be the boss of the band again, just like in Lucerne last year. I love being on stage with him. He reminds me a bit of Dortor E. Brown from “Backto the future” movies. In a good way. He is creative and crazy and always super professional and positive and that is always a good combination. We love the orchestra shows. It’s a shame it’s the only one this summer. We could imagine making a full tour with the violins and cellos some day, who knows… The challenge now is that we have just practiced the rock show with the guys and all those show details are deep in our heads. Now we need to remove all that from our minds and get ready for a totally new thing again. Quite a challenge. But we love challenges.

After Hannover I will return to Barcelona for the final week of the TV shootings. And then I will miss Barcelona like hell. It’s amazing how cool the city actually is. It just gets cleaner and safer each year and the restaurants and clubs just get better and better.

On Saturday the 30th I will fly to Wiesen, Austria to play the first Austrian show with my boys in a long long time. As I have said many years ago, “The Austrian Audience Never Fails”, but this time we’re gonna need their full support and love to get to the Helsinki home arena emotion level. Our Danish brothers Carpark North will not be with us in Wiesen, but they’ll be with us most of the summer. It’s just s cool what they do on stage. They’re a group you could call a F**king tight rock trio. Keep your eyes and ears open for their upcoming fall tour, and for their new single this summer. Check them out on iTunes or Spotify or where ever.

We’re so glad to have the CNP boys with us, but there’s something that’s bothering me. They didn’t arrive to the official after party last night. We need to find out if the Danish boys can party too… If they can’t.. Learn they must. And learn they will. Keep your eyes and ears open for their upcoming fall tour, and for their new single this summer.

Huge thanx for the Helsinki experience everyone and see you all soon. I will dive into my bed now and I’ll put the Sunrise Avenue symphonic orchestra album playing on my speaker while I sleep. Maybe that helps me remember the arrangements.

Good night everyone, wherever you are and see you all very soon!

HuGS HugS hUGS <3

Samu



Blog from 19. Juni 2015

HapaHaber

Good morning Munich

Even though we have played six summer shows already this year, it really doesn’t feel like summer yet. In Romania it was super warm, but everywhere else the summer is still just a daydream. Luckily all the crowds have been hot and loud, so that helps us of course ;) It’s supposed to be midsummer this weekend, so please Mr. Weatherman, do your job! We wanna get sunburned…

We’re playing the legendary Königsplatz in Munich today and just thinking about the crowd and the place makes me feel warm. Sold out 21.000 people singing and celebrating with us... Doesn’t matter if it’s minus 340 Celsius and raining, we’ll be sweating our asses off on stage. It’s gonna be huge and alot of fun.

Tomorrow we will fly to Leipzig for a show there and on Sunday back here to play the second Munich show. Doesn’t sound too bad. Actually the rest of the summer will be only about rock ’n’ roll. We played two times with the symphonic orchestra this year, once in Hannover and once in Helsinki, but the rest of the summer 2015 will be just good old school rock shows.

We started the orchestra shows last year in Switzerland, in Lucerne. And especially after the two shows this summer, we decided that we have to do more of them. So we decided to do more shows with our own orchestra next year and the tickets for the first two shows (Leipzig & Munich) will be out this weekend. This time we will build our own orchestra, the “Wonderland Orchestra.” There’s still nine months to plan everything, but all we know is that we want to bring the best parts of the stuff we did last year in Lucerne and also some little things from the Big Band tour with us and the evening will bea huge explosion. Isn’t Sunrise Avenue just a cool thing? We can do the traditional rock shows, Big Band tours, Acoustic tours and even stuff with a huge orchestra. There will be a lot of people on stage and even some featuring artists perhaps. We will build the show and the orchestra after the summer and when the snow is still on the ground in Finland next spring, we’ll hit the road with our own big super-gang. I
magine that this whole Sunrise Avenue thing started ten years ago with the dream about finding our way to Wonderland some day. And now we’re gonna be touring with our own Wonderland Orchestra. Dreams do come true people…

Another thing that makes me really happy today is that our friend Niila is finally releasing his first EP and he is also joining us on stage tonight & tomorrow as the first act. I met Niila seven years ago in Helsinki. In the beginning I didn’t take him too seriously since his music was a bit “ too much out of style.” But for some reason I promised to do my best to help him out with the music business stuff. I really liked his voice and him as a person; I guess that’s why.

The first years I just borrowed him microphones and guitars (I hope I get them back someday…) and we used to sit in my car listening to his demos or we had cappuccinos at my favorite café, Café Ursula in Helsinki talking about life, music and the songs we both write. He was also one of the very first people to hear the Hollywood Hills demo in 2010 before we released it. He gave it thumbs up.

Then a couple of years ago we were able to open a few doors for him to studios in Stockholm, London and Berlin and he wrote a hundred songs and demos all over the place. And his music just got better and better with each trip. And now after 100.000 coffees and 43567890 glasses of red wine together, he is ready to present his music to you at a few shows with Sunrise Avenue this summer. And there will be more shows without us of course. Seven years is a long time to wait for something to happen, but now he will have the chance to try his wings in the dirty music business. I respect his patience and hard work so much. I know how hard it can be to take the first steps into this beautiful mess. Now it’s time to release the dude with his guitar. Or my guitars, but anyways hahaha ;) I will feel super excited today when he walks on stage. I can just imagine how he’s gonna feel. Good luck bro <3

Check out Niila’s stuff at facebook.com/niilamusic
And our Danish Car Park North- bothers will join us again today. If you missed them in Helsinki, come check out their show too. They really rocked the house at the first show we had together. So you all better check out all the bands tonight. But don’t forget the last band ;)

Hugs and see you tonight,

Samu



Blog from 28. August 2015

Samu

End of the summer

We are flying with our little Cessna Citation Jet from Dublin Ireland to Friedrichshafen Germany. We decided to enjoy this last festival week fully with the guys and after the Mannheim show we took our plane and flew to Amsterdam for a couple days. Then we flew back to Hamburg to play the last show together with Niila and Car Park North and now we’ve been recharging our batteries in Dublin for two days. What a city! My friend Rea “Reiska” Garvey was right. This city is full of music and relaxed great folks, although it “rains every F**king day” as the locals say. It was the very first time for us all in Ireland but definitely not the last. We even had the chance to see the fantastic “Once” musical at the legendary Olympia Theatre last night. I had tears in my eyes at least 29 times. Go check it out if you can.

Thank you Niila & gang and the Danish Car Park North dudes for unforgettable moments this summer on and off stage. Both gangs will be rocking more shows this year and my solid plan is to see both of them at least once in a smaller club before Christmas. And thank you all for such a warm welcome for both acts every night. Every time we have someone supporting us, the supporters say after the show or the tour that we have the coolest and most welcoming crowd they’ve ever seen. Cant say how much we respect that. 

Both groups mean a lot to me. Niila has been my “little brother” for years and we’ve been building his thing together slowly but steadily. And I’ve been a fan of Car Park North for years. When I got the email about the possible support bands for summer 2015, I didn’t believe my eyes when I saw them as one of the available ones. I didn’t have to think too long…

Check out the dates and stuff for both gangs here:

Niila http://niilamusic.com

CPN http://www.carparknorth.com

The last two shows, today in Sigmaringen (Ger) and tomorrow in Arbon (Sui), are the last shows of 2015. It’s been quite a summer. We’ve enjoyed bigger crowds than ever before and the production guys & crew boys have worked like angels all the way. Last year right before the first show I twisted my ankle and then I feared the shows might have been cancelled, but this summer nothing bad or challenging really happened and if you don’t count a couple of lamps and Co2 cannons that didn’t work properly at a few shows, it has all been better than perfect. And you all have made our evenings like heaven singing and dancing with us every single song - rain or shine. Thank you <3 Actually one of the coolest things during the show is trying to read the signs you hold in the air. It’s sometimes super hard to see them, especially in the dark (especially the small print), but I have laughed my ass of many times ;) Of course so that you don’t see it ;) Keep doing that!

It’s also been a crazy summer with the weather. In the beginning it was quite cold even for us Finnish boys.  I remember the talks at the backstage before the Munich shows, for example, about how many shirts should we bring with us on stage to keep us warm. It’s always a bit of a challenge when you sweat a bit on stage and the evening gets colder towards the end. Then you might start feeling cold. Then after June Europe just got hotter than hot. There were same talks again before the shows, but this time it was about surviving the heat. I remember Sami coming to me in Freiburg behind the stage during Osmo’s keyboard jamming-solo saying he can’t see his snare drum well anymore. It was so hot and we felt we were boiling. I was worried he might fall off his chair at the end. I can just imagine how hard and hot it must have been for you. You were all super brave standing and waiting there through the heat and the cold. I hope the security guys gave you some water, shelter and love.

There’s one thing I never understood. If you come to the field already as they open the doors at 4PM, you might end up staying there for 8-10 hours if you enjoy the night until the very end. There are no toilets by the first row, so… How does it work???

After this weekend we will first take some time off from each other and then we will really start planning the spring tour. Of course we have a good game plan already what we’re gonna do with our Wonderland Orchestra, but now we will start putting the little pieces together and also start practicing. We have done many kinds of tours in the past from Acoustic stuff, Big band tours and even stuff with symphonic orchestras and now we will combine the best sides from all those and make it one big explosion. The show plan is not fully done yet, of course, but I’m really liking what I see already on the strategy table and it just seems to get better and better every meeting we have. I wonder what happens when we’ll combine the Big band guys (who can party) with the classical dudes (who can party) with us (who can party a little bit…;). Before every tour you should have the feeling that the next one will be the best one ever. And I have the feeling again. Let’s see. There’s lots of work to be done before we can hit
the road. But luckily we have all the time in the world this time.

So for the last time this year, get ready to clap your hands and to sing with us tonight and tomorrow. Let’s end the summer with lots of love and noise together so we have good memories to digest until we see again in 2016.

Mr. Hapa Haber

PS: If someone doesn’t sing a birthday song to someone tonight, I will bite someone somewhere in the ass….

PPS: Isn’t it great to have one (rusty) superman in the plane in case we run out of fuel or something...

PPPS: Helsinki IFK are playing tonight their Champions hockey league match against FC Bern in Switzerland. The result will most definitely effect on my stage mood, so hope for the best. Good luck boys!
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