photos: Filippa Edghill. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . .
dear lovers, friends and thieves,
I thought I should stop by and wish you a happy new year. thank you for this year and we have felt your support. thanks for listening to our music, buying albums and showing up to our shows.
GATSS has had an amazing 2008 and here are the headlights:
- May: Indienational Tour made a new tour in Europe. This time the line-up was Helena Arlock, Shooting John and GATSS. On the first tour we were 3 solo-performers - time the rythm-section from GATSS, Patrik Andersson and Jon Mattsson, joined us and we could do full band shows.
A new Indienational Tour is happening in 2009.
- September: Brilliant Hands, GATSS 3rd release was released after 2 years in the studio. It was a hard but important progress to make but it was all worth it - our most personal work so far. Petra Kalla made the beautiful artwork.
- October: Eileen Rose (USA) asked me to come and support her for her tour in Italy. We all became great friends and I am sure we will see more of each other in the nearest future. Thanks Eileen, Nick, Pat and Rich. Long live the Happydent.
- October: Townes van Zandt tribute festival (ITA): I was invited to go back down to Italy to play a tribute festival to great late Townes van Zandt. Here I met great songwriters from all over Europe, USA and Canada all performing that night
- October/November: 2 weeks before we were going out on a big release-tour in Germany, Belgium and Holland our drummer Patrik got a tinnitus attack and his doctor told him he had to stop playing drums for 4 months. Patrik has been the only drummer I have played with since I started playing so we took it very hard.
But we decided we had to do something about it so we called this guy Björn Ehrenstråle who joined in without questions and just went with it. Thanks to Björn we had an awesome tour, our best European one so far.
Also, last new year I wrote down a list of to-do's:
finish album - check!
get an apartment - check!
get a new webpage - check! thanks to Arlock Design.
plan bachelor party for my brother - check! crazy night in Copenhagen.
change strings on my lousy guitar, Poker - check! Bought a new guitar, plays unbelievable..it needs a name....hmmm
come up with a good delicious title for the album - check! well, maybe brilliant hands wasn't a delicious title but yet a title.
find out why every legendary person ate kiwi in school - ... ... ... still working on this one.
So for next year....I'm not sure yet to be honest with you. But I will get back to you. Today I am leaving town to spend new years in a cabin in the woods with my friends. life is beautiful.
Let's talk, dance, love in 2009.
Yours truly,
Gustav.
