At the age of 70 Kjell decided to go his own way. When the petroleum company this time as usual neglected Kjell’s pleas to negotiate the fees for his gas station franchise contract, they didn’t get a signed contract in return. He had already moved on, setting up his beloved gas station free from any obligations. I guess you could say that his bus stop dreaming paid off in the end.
I live in a small village, Furulund, in the south of Sweden. It has about 4000 inhabitants and the gas station Kjell runs is one of the rallying points of the village. He was born and raised in Furulund, and in 1963 he realised an old dream he had, bought a piece of land and set up his own gas station.
In the beginning of the eighties he joined Bilisten, a new petroleum brand, as a way of getting better deals, cope with investments and building a trusted brand. Thirty years later the driving spirits who started it are long gone. The petroleum company had been walking from one hand to another and now it’s more about skimming of the profits of the gas station owners, without adding any value to the business.
Having your own gas station is a little like being a farmer: you are never free. And one of Kjell’s dreams is being able to employ someone who can help him out, so that he and his wife can go on vacation now and then. Within short he’ll be able to reach his goal about that, now when he’s on his own.
A person like Kjell is pretty important to a small village like Furulund. It feels like he knows everyone in town, he’s always up for a chat and if you like to you can sit down with him and have a coffee, if there’s no customers waiting. In these days when almost all shops have standardised products, looking the same whereever you go, Kjells place is different. He’s always on the lookout for what people in the village might need, and if you ask him if he sells something and he doesn’t have it, he always answers: “No I don’t, but I can get it for you”.
Add to this that he every year organises a Christmas fair, he sponsors and helps the local football team and he always helps out with other events run by schools and others. So I guess we can call him our local hero, being a rebel now too.
I think Kjell is a really cool person and he’s helped me out many times when I needed help with my car, the christmas tree lighting were broke or when I was out of tobacco (Swedish snus). I have helped him out with his Facebook page, but now we have to migrate to a new one, since you can’t change the name of a page. There are of course bigger hassles than that to a change like this, but they seem easy to carry when you’ve really decided yourself for something.
The other day I asked him if any gas station owner could do this if they wanted to, and he simply answered “Yes”.
If anyone has influenced my interest in music it’s my older brother and best friend, Stefan. I dare to say that I probably never would have picked up the guitar in the first place if it wasn’t for him. Sadly he passed away a little more than 11 years ago in a house fire, but he’s still very much alive for me, especially when I listen to music or when I create music.
Stefan was a rebellious guy and in his teens he soon got into trouble, which led to that he was sent away to a correction facility, some kind of prison for young people, which still existed in the seventies in Sweden. Being 10 years younger than him, I was about 6 years old, and didn’t know anything about the reasons behind this. When we visited him, to me it was just a big adventure, and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting with my beloved and admired brother.
After his sentence (a year I think), he continued his adventures away from home, moving to Göteborg and doing a lot of stuff. But finally, at the age of 22, he finally came back home again and settled down. And my life took a new turn.
Making up for lost days, we spent a lot of time together. There was always something happening around Stefan and I was there with him all the time. As I was one of the primary targets for the school bullies, he saw to that they soon got to know that I had an older brother. The physical abuse ended instantly the day after he had visited one of the appointed leaders, and as for the more difficult part, the psychological mobbing, he gave me the tools to handle it myself. For this, music was an important part.
When he came back home, he also brought with him a guitar, which he had learned to play with his friends in Göteborg. One night he brought it to our house and wanted to teach me some chords. It was easier than I thought, and when I for the first time strummed the E major chord I was fascinated by the beautiful sound I had created, and I was hooked.
Stefan had a big collection of vinyls, spanning from the sixties to the eighties, and I loved browsing the albums, looking at the covers and listening to some of them. He always wanted to show me music he loved, and gradually something started to change in me. Instead of conforming to the daily trends, popular in school, I started to find my own preferences, and with that, my own identity. I felt like I was tapping into something bigger, something more mature and I felt stronger.
We shared a lot of music during the years. We had a lot of other interests in common too but music was always important. Rock’n’roll was the base but we both had a curiosity for other types of music and suggested lots of different artists to each other. To me Stefan somehow was rock’n’roll in person. Wild, energetic, with a joy of life, spontaneous, generous, creative, with a child inside of him but at the same time a troubled soul.
I listen to a lot of different artists, and sometimes he enters my mind and I think: “You would have loved this!”. When I have written a song or played a tune on the guitar I wonder what he would have said. That’s how he’s still here with me.
Today is not an anniversary of any kind. I just happened to look at an old photograph of Stefan, reminding me how important he is to me, and realizing that I haven’t written anything about him. So here’s to you brother. I miss you buddy.
I have to end this post with a song. And this is the first one that came to my mind, when I thought about him. I still regret that I didn’t choose this song when I arranged the music for his funeral, as the finishing song, beacuse I feel somehow that he wanted me too. Instead I ended with “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” by CCR, which was also one of his favourites, but not as rebellious of course. /Pär
Well, now we’ve sent the songs on the next single “Come Together” to our newsletter readers, the first comments are coming in, and everything feels just fine.
If you’re not subscribing to our newsletter you can choose to join here (it doesn’t cost anything), or wait for the release on February 29th, when it will be published on our music page, Itunes, Spotify and a range of other places.
Finally, Id like to show you the cover, how it turned out in the end after Lasse had worked with it some more. We got some suggestions from some of you, how to improve it and Lasse used some of the ideas, so thanks a lot for the comments. Here it is:
Things are falling in place now with the new single. We’ve decided the release date to February 29th (we couldn’t resist) and Lasse’s worked with a cover, which you can see below.
Also, tomorrow the last finishing touches will be made at Stockholm Mastering, and after that it’s time distribute the single. That will take a month, but already in a week, we’ll send it out to our mailing list. If you’re not a member there, it’s free to join, and we’ll send out some special song gifts and news to you, once in a while.
This weeks mixing session went well I think. We had some technical problems with a failing hard disk, but luckily there was backups.
Mixing is always a kind of struggle against yourself. It’s hard to keep up the concentration, keep your ears fresh, be creative and find solutions for all the problems a song always present for you.
And it’s a bit like walking into a bubble and then come out a few days later having lost track of everything in the real world.
Of course we have no distance to the final results yet. Still, after a day it feels good. Well better than good, it feels great actually.
It’s 3 a.m. in the morning. Lasse’s sleeping but I’m still awake thinking about today’s 10 hour mixing session. We’re halfway through the agenda with the two songs on our new single. “Come Together” with Andreas Lundgren on lead vocals is the song that we’ve been working on since yesterday night, and with an hour more of finishing adjustments it’ll be ready.
When we start working with a song in these final mixing sessions, most parts are already recorded and arranged by Lasse. Sometimes we add some details, like correcting a bass line, adding backing vocals or some other ideas we might have. (we tried some wind chimes, but in the end they didn’t make it to the final mix, you can see me trying my best here below :))
As the beginning of the song is almost always already set in stone, the end of the song never is. This will not come as a surprise, but the end is something you’ll finish last in the production. No big news, but the question is: how important is it?
Well, in the beginning of a session Lasse could state: “it’s not vital for the song you know, and even if I don’t like it in general we could end this one with a fade”. I agree with him, but I can feel something nagging in my mind as we work on with the other parts.
It always ends up, though, that we work a lot with the end of the songs, and, to my somewhat biased opinion, it also always turns out to something extra in the end. And both of us do think it’s important how a song ends. I can’t really grade it, but if you look at a song like a story, it seems quite important doesn’t it?, and it’s important for how you, as a listener, come out of the song with a good feeling that you keep?
In our new song “Come Together”, the end turned out wonderful, not only the last tones, but also the whole finishing part; it even added some untold layers to the story. How about you? I’m sure you know how many songs start, but how important is the end for you, the very last tones? /Pär
When Andreas Lundgren visited Lasse in the studio the other day, Lasse had the video camera with him, and filmed some of the vocal recordings. I put together a video from the clips to introduce you to Andreas and at the same time show you a preview of the new song.
I’m going up to Stockholm tomorrow to help Lasse mix the song, and we’ll have it ready as a single in February together with the song “Let Us Light a Fire”. /Pär
As Lasse told you the other day, Andreas Lundgren was in the studio with Lasse recently to record the vocals to the new song “Come Together”. I’ve known Andreas for a couple of years and I’m a big fan of his voice and his music and I’d like to show you some of his songs here.
Here below you’ll find two beautiful songs from his last album “Bad Buddha” that was released a couple of years ago, an album that will be re-released this Spring. Also, and even bigger news, is that he also will release a completely new album at the same time, in March this year.
Meanwhile you can enjoy these songs, which you can download by right-clicking on the links if you’d like to keep them. The entire album “Bad Buddha” is available on Spotify and if you like to follow Andreas music adventures you can find Andreas page on Facebook.
Within short we’ll give you a preview of our song with Andreas, “Come Together”, and I’ll be traveling to Stockholm next weeek to join Lasse in the final mix of that song and another song, which we probably will relase as a single within short. We will keep you updated about this.
Thanks to Andreas for letting us give these songs to you, I hope you like them. /Pär
Andreas Lungren is one our favourite singers so it’s a pleasure to have him sing one of the new songs we are working on, one called “Come Together”. And no it’s not a cover of that old Beatles classic. The only thing it shares is the name.
The other day Andreas showed up for recording at The Bus Depot. And it was a very special session. Andreas used his voice to create a sort of out of this world and a bit spooky feeling on the track. He just made it better.
We are happy!
"I need to press the cans to get the music inside my head"
There’s still no snow here in Skåne, in the south of Sweden. Well, we’re quite used to it, it’s much more common with a winter without snow than one with snow here where I live. Still, every year we’re waiting for it, wondering if we’ll have a white Christmas or not.
Nevertheless, Christmas is here in a couple of days, and you can say that Bus Stop Dreams have been alive almost half a year soon, since we launched the site here in the beginning of August. Of course we’ve been working with the project and the music long before that, but it really didn’t exist for real until we launched it, until we delivered and started meeting the audience.
For us, these months have been an adventure, in every step we’ve taken: where will we find our listeners? how will they like our next song? is the video any good? what will we do next? and we’ve thought about and reacted to all responses we’ve received. There’s been quite a few of them, and all these positive reactions give us even more energy to enter the next year eager to give you more music and interesting stories. We do want to get to know you better, and at the same time we’d like you to learn more about us.
So far we’ve released four songs on two singles, and together with these, four music videos. The album release date was set to some day near New Years Day, which was a bit too optimistic. I can’t say that things are against us, but it’s all these little things around each production that adds up taking longer time than you expected from the beginning, considering also that Bus Stop Dreams is not only about Lasse and me, but also about also about a number of marvellous people we collaborate with.
I can promise you that we’ll have more music for you to taste in the beginning of the new year, and we will show you more and more of what we’re working on and who we are. We’re learning as we go and we hope you stick by us.
Thank you for all the response and that you’re listening to our music. We wish you the best of holidays and a happy new year!
At the age of 70 Kjell decided to go his own way. When the petroleum company this time as usual neglected Kjell’s pleas to negotiate the fees for his gas station franchise contract, they didn’t get a signed contract in return. He had already moved on, setting up his beloved gas station free from any obligations. I guess you could say that his bus stop dreaming paid off in the end.
