“Okay, it’s May and the 2012 Ice Hockey World Championship has started! That’s great! I ended up doing five shows in April, as one concert of SAB had to be cancelled. We still managed to play the first show with SAB’s new percussionist, who turned out to be a solid performer. More to come today, as we play a show in Tampere, Ravintola Artturi…

I had a great time singing Iron Maiden at three shows by The Coverslaves. We played at a private party in Helsinki to a bunch of fantastic Maiden-fans, as well as two regular gigs in Hyvinkää and Loimaa. I had never performed in Hyvinkää before, but I have to say that the crowd in Ravintola Pelikenttä were simply awesome. What a great audience! It was especially cool to sing a few rarities, such as Still Life, Sun and Steel… And many others, of course. Thanks to the guys of The Coverslaves for inviting me!

Now it’s May already, like I said, and this month is exciting for a couple of reasons. First of all, I should become a father for the second time any day now… We’ll see when the baby decides to come out! And secondly, we are going to Italy with Dreamtale to play three shows, as well as a few shows here in Finland! Hope to see you in the shows…” -E

“March came and went! We did 6 shows altogether, with SAB, Dreamtale and Purplestone. The shows with SAB turned out to be the last ones with Timo Tolppa playing percussion – we are getting a new, permanent percussionist now. His name is Hartza Hartikainen and he will play his first show with the band in Vehmaa, April 7th.

As for the Dreamtale-shows, it was nice to get back to work after such a long break since the last show. We changed our set a bit and started the shows by playing the 1st tracks from all the five albums (in reverse order, from newest to oldest). Now we are getting ready to make our first visit to Italy! The band will play three shows with Force Majeure (FIN) and Spellblast (ITA) in May. Details about the shows are available in the concerts-section. See you in Italy! Some fans are reportedly traveling with us to see the shows.

Finally, I ended the month with two Purplestone-shows, playing some good old-school heavy metal, like Rainbow, Uriah Heep and Deep Purple. The shows were really, really good and the audience in Lempäälä and Loimaa was fantastic! Me and the band were pleasantly surprised. So, thank you all for being so great! 

Now it’s April and I’ll do a few Iron Maiden tribute shows with The Coverslaves. Hopefully, I’ll find some time to go to the studio and record some demo vocals for my solo-project, too. It’s been hanging in the air for a long time now…” -E

“It was another acoustical month, as we did three shows with Seppänen Acoustic Band, plus one acoustic solo gig. The solo concert was a bit of a surprise in many ways – first of all, I was asked to play at my local pub just a few days before the date, so I pretty much just turned out there that night with no particular set-lists (picks I had, heh) and started to play some tunes. The bigger surprise was that in this tiny pub outside of Tampere, two Dreamtale-fans arrived to see the show – one from Italy, another from Slovenia. So it was a real international evening. Something quite special for that place. Here’s a photo from the evening:

The shows with SAB were great, as usual and we’re doing another two this weekend. Then we have two Dreamtale-shows later this month – the first ones since the beginning of December… We have changed our setlist quite a bit and will play a couple of old songs. That will be exciting!” -E

“Greetings to everybody! I decided to start posting short entries in the end of each month to let you know what’s been going on and share some of my thoughts and reflections. I played only three shows in January, all solo and acoustic, in Jyväskylä and Oulu. I don’t do solo gigs very often, but they are nice events, as they are usually different from all other shows, including the ones we do with Seppänen Acoustic Band. The shows were also the first I played after my laryngitis, so that added some extra excitement for me.

I try to play some different material than what I’m used to playing and I always try to do at least a couple of surprises to keep things interesting. In Jyväskylä, there were some KYPCK-fans in the audience, who requested stuff in Russian, which was great to do. In Oulu I had some people writing to me on Facebook, wanting to hear a very special track Poikani nimi on Paavo by Tuiran Miliisi. Here is a video that a guy filmed from the show:

I also had some visiting guests at the show on Friday 27th. First, Jere and Antti from Tuiran Miliisi joined me for three songs and in the end Tuomas from the band Random Mullet came to play one song with me and Antti. It was all good fun! See you again soon!” -E