SXSW is still one of the world’s largest music festival and conference, even if the technology part has surpassed the music part in the number of attendees some years ago. At the music festival more than 2000 bands play and fight for the attention of the total of about 8-10000 music industry people, press and the fans. On top of all the official showcases, there are partiers with live music all over town, many of these more like small festivals in themselves.
If you like hard, guitar-driven rock with lots of drums, Spidergawd is the band for you. The band resides in Trondheim, Norway, and the set up is vocals, guitar, bass, drums and baritone sax, not the most usual instrument combination in rock. Their first album was released early 2014, and we are now waiting for their 5th release. Yesterday night Spidergawd played at the new club, Røverstaden, in Oslo.
All together I attended fifteen festivals in 2017 and around twenty single concerts, photographing more than 300 different performances, so far my most productive year as a concert photographer. Here is the second part of my favorite concert photos from 2017, from M to Z. (Photo above: The audience to Mø at the Øya Festival this summer.) Continue reading
Beth Hart’s breakthrough as an artist came in 1999. In 2003 she released the platinum selling album Leave The Light On. From there her career has gone steadily upwards, culminating with a Grammy nomination for her collaboration with Joe Bonamassa and the album Seesaw in 2013. Her latest album, Fire On The Floor, was released last year. During all these years she has toured extensively, and also visited Norway several times. Last night she played at Sentrum Scene in Oslo.
Fifty years after the start, Roky Erickson is on tour with his band The Hounds of Baskerville playing the songs of his famous band The 13th Floor Elevators. His career since the 60s has gone up and down, with more downs than ups, but since around 2005 he has had a slow and steady upwards movement. The concert at Rockefeller last night showed that Roky Erickson is still capable of playing good concerts.
Jane’s Addiction have been on a tour for some time now, celebrating 25 years since they released the ground breaking CD Nothing’s Shocking. The tour started in May, and they have played several venues in the USA, O2 in London before they played the Parken festival in Bodø, Norway and last night they played in Oslo.
Sweden have had many big pop acts during the last 40 years, starting with ABBA and so far ending with Avicii. They also have and have had some really great rock acts like Ebba Grøn, Thåström, the younger Lars Winnerbäck and Håkan Hellström. And then they have Ulf Lundell. He has been around since the mid 70’s and is still going strong. Yesterday night he played for an almost sold out Rockefeller in Oslo.
The first time I saw Ian Moore was in 2005, and then some years later at the Continental Club. I remember his playing and his extrovert show as something special. This year he played at the Continental Club again during SXSW, at 1 AM the last day of the festival. And it was the perfect artist to close SXSW for me.
Guy Forsyth is one of my all time favorite Austin musicians. I have written about him on this blog before, and Friday night I saw him at another pre SXSW late night show at the Saxon Pub. I can’t count all the different settings I have seen and heard him in, everything from solo, with a tuba, with the Asylum Street Spankers to a pop band setting some 10 years go. This time he was reunited with his old compadre George Rarey, and he played one of the best sets I have ever heard from him.
Lars Winnerbäck is one of the most exciting Swedish artists. His singer songwriter skills are surpassed by few, and he has been poring out songs for more than 15 years. During this period his music has evolved, through one man and his guitar, through Irish inspired recordings until his present organic rock based music. Tonight he visited Oslo on his Scandinavian tour and played for an enthusiastic crowd at Oslo Spektrum.
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