Freak When Spoken To

by Anastasia Jonsen

  “You can hear what he’s singing very clearly, because he’s not focusing on putting across a certain forced style. To me, that becomes more and more important as the years go by. I used to think that certain singers had such a cool vocal style, but nowadays I want somebody who can tell a story – and still be a great singer.”

  Organic Food for Thought

  IA TRAVELS AROUND THE WORLD and holds clinics, and he shoots videos, both for his own Freak Guitar YouTube channel as well as for magazines. As Björn is a very experienced teacher too, you’d expect to see more of him in that role.

  “I do clinics sometimes, and it’s a lot of fun when people get to ask questions. Out of the stuff I’ve done, it’s mainly Freak Kitchen they’ve heard. I’d be happy to do more clinics. But drum videos, I don’t know? I’m not terribly unique in my playing, I think? Patrik Ullaeus who shot ‘Nobody’s Laughing’ wanted to shoot a drum video with me, and perhaps we should, he’s such a brilliant director. We did a festival gig in Holland, and they asked if they could record me with a drum cam for a festival video they were making, and afterwards they sent me the material. It was very useful for me to see the whole gig from my point of view, to notice how I interact with Christer and IA and the audience; things I might not notice otherwise because I’m too caught up in the moment. Perhaps something like that could be fun for people to see. Perhaps I’m too modest.”

  Björn says that he very rarely practises on his own anymore. He does play the drums every day because of his job as a drum teacher, but seldom spends quality solo time with his kit.

  “People sometimes ask me why I don’t write my own music. It’s the same as with rehearsing: I don’t feel the need to. I feel satisfied where I am. But that only gets me to a certain point. I might work on something for one of the students and realise that it could be a cool thing to use in one of my own bands. But I won’t deny that when I do practice and really find the flow, I also feel really frustrated because I improve so much as a drummer by diving into my own playing. Why don’t I do it more often? Perhaps I don’t have the ambition to become the world’s best drummer? I think I work really well in all the contexts where I am active right now, and for now, that’s good enough for me.”

  However, Björn finds other ways of developing his skills besides playing actual physical drums.

  “When IA’s Art Metal project with Jonas Hellborg were performing at the Freak Guitar Camp, I was invited to play with them. I got 6-7 songs to prepare for the gig, and I began by writing everything down, so I had a rough sketch of how all the rounds went. Then I listened to them over and over and over again for about two weeks until I had them in my system, all the long rounds with odd Indian rhythm patterns. And that’s one approach to practicing. If I had sat down with the drums right away, then it’s possible that they had been in the way, you know? Because there are no drums on those songs, it was something I had to invent from scratch. So when I finally did sit down, I didn’t have to play for a very long time, because I had everything prepared in my head.”

  There are drummers who, at a mature age, have realised that they suddenly aren’t satisfied with their style anymore, and go to some drum guru and learn a whole new style of playing. Knowing Björn’s hunger for musical brain teasers, it’s fully possible to imagine him in a similar situation.

  “It does sound interesting, finding a completely new approach to playing. Perhaps playing melodic percussion could be something for me? I’ve played so many styles and genres as it is. I even went an extra semester at MI just to be able to take lectures from the jazz pianist Carl Schroeder. We had a jazz band and he acted as a kind of super guru with suggestions and critique when we played our way through the jazz bible The Real Book. I’ve also played in various big band orchestras and other jazz constellations in parallel with my rock career. But in a jazz setting, I still have this underlying feeling that I’ll be exposed as a fraud at any time. It feels a bit as if I’m only visiting, which is silly because there are so many different takes on what jazz is. But at the same time, it is a genre with plenty of rules and set approaches to what is OK and not.”

  Creative musicians often want to keep the joy of experimenting alive. For a guitar player, it’s easy to imagine the possibilities: different distortion pedals, guitars, amps, picks and so on. The choices seem less obvious for a drummer.

  “I listen to a lot of various styles of music to get inspiration. Like ‘Do Not Disturb’ from Land of the Freaks, which is basically a piece I wrote for the snare drum. I wanted a sound reminiscent of something Scottish: imagine playing a drum while mounted on a horse, a super tight sound where you put the actual snare wires directly underneath the batter head. So, basically, what I did was to take my small snare drum, turn it upside down and tape the snare itself a bit to get it even tighter, and then we recorded it like that. And that’s the way I work: I try to find solutions to what I want by using what I have – in this case, experimenting with a snare drum I already had rather than to go out and buy a particular one.”

  Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. This attitude is something IA also regularly talks about when he is holding clinics, and he is very far from those self-important, navel-gazing guitarists you see at conventions. Just like his style of playing, IA’s way of interacting with the audience is hilarious and memorable.

  “Oh, it does feel good to be invited to music academies in Paris or Boston and the fine, fine auditoriums over the world when you don’t even have a complete school-leaving certificate. I take great pleasure in getting paid money to make serious teachers uncomfortable when I pick nose hairs and the kids laugh themselves silly. It brings out the worst in me, it really does, and the finer the setting, the more rebellious I act. If I know that I’m supposed to act all respectful in an awe-inspiring environment, I can’t help but raise the volume and break all possible rules. At Berklee College of Music in Boston, everything was velvety exquisiteness and they had a massive Steinway grand piano on stage, and a tiny, tiny monitor in their auditorium. I had brought my Laney rig and thought, right, now they will get to experience music like they’ve never heard it here before. So I blew the place up and it made the teachers terribly nervous and they goofed things up. In situations such as these, I very much take the kids’ side.”

  In 2005, Freak Kitchen’s sixth album Organic was released. They had now strayed from the previous sequence of putting out an album every other year, and the next one in line, Land of the Freaks, would take another four years. Although Organic certainly has an underground hit in “Speak when Spoken To”, this album can probably be seen as their most anonymous release. A video was made for said song, and gained a little bit of attention in the guitar playing world as it featured Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal. He contributed with background vocals as well as a solo played on a fretless guitar – yes, a guitar with no frets, like a violin!

  The reviews were a little less enthusiastic than before, and with hindsight you can tell that this is one of those “middle period” albums most bands write. If IA had been super-serious and super-duper-cynical on their previous effort, his tongue was now firmly back in his cheek. Tracks like “The Rights to You” and “The Independent Way of Life” did direct severe criticism at the music industry, but written as satires rather than simple scorn. “This is the album for you if you like your snark served hot”, as one reviewer wrote online. The lyrics may indeed be labelled snarky, but the album also features some of the most sensitive and philosophical lyrics IA had written up to that point.

  “Becky”, which is about a girl IA had seen in a documentary, is a real fighting anthem, written to encourage those who feel alone in their struggle for anti-racism. Two of IA’s most touching pieces of lyrics are also found on Organic: “Heal Me” and “Breathe” both deal with people who are beyond the stage of desperation. Numbness and resignation have brought them down, but there is a weak shimmer of light in the distance: the wish to be healed and the words “You’ll work it out/Or so I’ve h
eard” gives the listener a fraction of hope – depending on your level of cynicism, of course.

  The cover of Organic somehow captures the anonymity of it. The picture is blurry and the logo blends in to the point where you hardly see it. Although Freak Kitchen have a lot more freedom over album covers than many other bands, someone still has to make the decisions. Björn admits that this is an area where he is less involved.

  “It’s not a democratic process and we don’t always agree. IA, Christer and Camilla have worked a lot with design and I haven’t. My opinions wouldn’t carry the same weight. If you take Organic, I think it’s a bit messy and the logo doesn’t stand out if you’re flicking through albums in a record shop, compared to the third album. Yellow cow on black! Hey! But I also have a tendency not to like the ideas initially. When IA described the cover for Cooking with Pagans to me, I thought it sounded so stupid. I thought, OK, so here we go with the funny again. But now I love it.”

  On the other hand, what does unite the trio is a love of learning. As mentioned, Christer has worked with design, and actually has a degree in graphic design.

  “I once set a date, if I hadn’t become world famous by the time I was 35, I would get a proper education and a job. So I studied Japanese and Japanese cultural history, and I got heart arrhythmia, because I went so all in, and I also got a degree in business economics as well as in graphic design. I love studying; I could do it for the rest of my life. I ended up with a job as section head at an educational association, but I hated it. I realised that I couldn’t cope without playing music, and that’s when IA rang me and asked if I knew any good bassists. Now I know that this is who I am: I am a rock musician.”

  Christer has the most diverse educational background, Björn has the most specialized degree, and IA is completely self-taught. He says he can’t learn anything if the subject doesn’t interest him.

  “Everything I crammed into my head in school is just gone now. I read a lot, but only about things which really interest me. My wife has the ability to memorize books almost word for word if she’s got an exam coming up, but I can’t do that.”

  IA calls himself “slightly obnoxious” because he has always questioned school and teachers. He says that he sympathizes with the kids and that he doesn’t think you’re ready for complex subjects like religion when you’re twelve.

  “They’re certainly not all ready at the same time! I was ready to study history when I was 23. I hated it when I was 14. I believe that school in many cases makes you copy knowledge and repeat it in the right order and nobody cares if you actually understand it. Of course knowledge is power and all that, and you need a basic understanding of the world around you even when you’re younger, but you’re wasting so much of your youth having stuff forced down your throat: stuff you either don’t understand that age, or stuff you won’t understand why you need to learn because nobody explains why. I am, of course, fully aware that it would be difficult to create a school system where the intellectual needs of all children are seen to.”

  Around the time Organic was released, IA finally appointed a proper guitar technician. It’s hardly a surprise that he found the right person for the job among his Freak Guitar Camp students. Fredrik Eriksson tells us the story of how he first heard about his future employer.

  “When I was twelve and started sixth grade, I was already hooked on guitar and was playing like mad, 24/7. I played every chance I got. My music teacher Lasse apparently saw my hunger for the guitar and music so one day he handed me a VHS tape and just said ‘Check this out, I think you’ll like it!’ Without being cliché or anything, my life changed. That tape was IA’s first instructional video Freak Guitar Vol. 1. I lived and breathed that tape day and night, learning everything on it. Especially his use of harmonics and his tremendous phrasing with tapping was a big, big influence. After that I listened and learned anything and everything with Freak Kitchen and IA I could get my hands on. And it’s still the same to this day.”

  When Fredrik started working for IA, he already knew quite a lot about his gear, both guitars and amps, from his previous years as a student at the Freak Guitar Camp.

  “Yeah, we just went over everything on my first gig; the guitars, the tunings, amps and settings, string gauges (the diameter of the string) and so forth. The keyword to describe my work for IA is usually ‘relaxed’, whether it’s at home or on the road. I started to work as IA’s tech when I was 19 and with a typical 19-year-old’s behaviour, so to speak. And I feel, looking back on it now, that IA sort of took me under his wing. Our relationship never really was a boss/employee type of thing. It always was and is founded on friendship.”

  One question both IA and Fredrik gets is what IA’s secret is when it comes to sound, instruments and gear. Fredrik says that the secret is in IA’s hands and the biggest secret is in his mind, in his creativity. IA explains further.

  “Someone asked me how I get my guitar sound. Well, I place the microphone next to the amplifier. It’s actually that simple. If you have something to say with your music and it’s there in your fingers, you don’t need gold plated this-and-that. If you’re not passionate about what you do, it’ll sound ca-ca no matter how expensive your cables are. I have plenty of colleagues in this business who have so much better gear than I do, but they have nothing to say. I also want to be as close to my sound as possible. The more gadgets and things you have, the more things can go wrong live. Because I don’t have lots of effects, I have nothing to hide behind. If I have a bad day, the audience will hear it right away. But if I have a good day, they’ll hear me. Because I know this, it makes me work a lot harder to deliver. Other musicians may think that my sound is very hard to play with, but that’s no wonder – it’s my sound and it’s a part of me.”

  Very little of what Fredrik does for IA is specifically requested by IA. By now, Fredrik pretty much knows instinctively was IA prefers, and there have been no major changes in the set-up.

  “I have changed the string gauge for IA’s Bb-guitar but that’s pretty much it. Since the rig itself is so basic there’s not much to fiddle and tinker with. The signal goes from one of the many Caparisons to a Jim Dunlop passive volume pedal to the Laneys, either the VH100, GH50 or 100 or most recent the Iron Heart. We use Laney’s standard straight GS 4x12s and now we have incorporated some standard 2x12s as well, also from Laney. And that’s it! Even the wah-wah is gone most of the time.”

  IA plays with a fairly extreme string action, and Linus Abrahamson explains how this affects his personal style, sound and tone.

  “I have a hunch that his high string action may have had something to do with his unwillingness to look after his gear properly, because I seem to recall that his string action got lowered around the same time he got a proper guitar technician. But certainly, it also has to do with the fact that he wants to play quite forcefully, and that demands some room for the string to vibrate. And that’s the complete opposite to what fast playing guitarists normally want: they want a very low string action in order to make it easier to play fast, especially in technical hard rock and metal.”

  You’d expect to hear in Fredrik’s own playing that he’s had IA as teacher. Fredrik talks about what he has learned from IA, not only musically, but on a wider plane.

  “You can indeed hear that IA has been my teacher, but in a good way. I always try to sound like myself but there’s no doubt that IA is a big influence when you hear my playing. The guitar playing aside, the major thing that inspires me to do what I do, to play what I play and to live like I live is his take and view on life: be polite and easy-going, be honest to yourself and be realistic without being pretentious. He inspires me to be myself.”

  The current trio is described as “such nice guys” by most people who have met and worked with them. It is, in fact, very difficult to find anyone who thinks otherwise. Music journalist Janne Stark thinks that this has both positive and negative consequences.

  “In many cases, musicians become more interesting the mor
e reserved or unapproachable or even nasty they are. That makes them elusive, a bit mystical, desirable and placed on a kind of pedestal. If you’re kind and a ‘regular guy’, the secrecy and mystery disappear. Thomas Silver in Hardcore Superstar once said when I interviewed him for the guitar magazine Fuzz: ‘If IA had half of my attitude or if I could play half as well as he does, there would be no limits to our success.’”

  Another member of the press, Mik Gaffney, points out that what always sticks in people’s minds about Freak Kitchen is their humour.

  “These are three extremely serious musicians, very passionate about their instruments and always dedicated to putting on the very best performances. Yet, you never leave a Freak Kitchen show, or one of IA’s guitar clinics for that matter, without a huge smile on your face. Why? Because they understand that music should be fun too. It’s a show, it’s a chance for the fans to leave behind their day jobs and spend two hours being entertained whilst they enjoy some of the most seriously accomplished music by three zany Swedes.”

  Björn adds that they have tried to find the balance between seriousness and the comical streaks, especially in live performances.

  “In Freak Kitchen, the two sides clash sometimes, and we do discuss them. How many fans will we lose if IA stops playing the guitar with a dildo? Those are the kind of questions we’ve contemplated, more than what to wear in band photographs. We haven’t really discussed image at all. Perhaps we agree to wear something black so it looks like we’re playing in the same band, at least. We wore black for Land of the Freaks but had to photoshop IA’s shoes, because there was this huge white stripe on them. He’s not very interested in clothes, to put it mildly. What interests us is including the audience. We don’t want there to be invisible wall between us and them.”

  Mik acknowledges that this indeed works and says that Freak Kitchen believe you can be really good at what you do and smile while you do it.