The
Swedish band Splicer,
on their western Europe tour talk,
and talk, and talk...
Johnny
Glanz: How did it all start?
Martin Hehrne: I remember it was
way back in 1996, we all got together
in Linkoping (Sweden) where we studied
at the university. So we started
out as a student band, doing covers
but always trying to sneak in a
couple of our own songs. We used
to get the crowd excited with good
cover songs, and then all of a sudden
the audience were jumping and cheering
to our own songs!
Marcus
Davidsson:
We wanted to express ourselves with
music and were coming from such
different musical backgrounds. There
was alot of struggle and compromising
because of this, we all wanted to
sound like our heroes, but eventually
it became one of our greatest strengths.
We've sort of found our common denominator.
Tomas
Unosson:
University was like training camp
for us, combat school even! I guess
it was early 1998 that we told ourselves
to wrap the covers in covers and
focus on originals. But those long
evolving years in the beginning
made good practise.
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Marcus Davidsson
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Tomas Unosson
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Martin Hehrne
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JG:
How come you're a trio?
MD:
The three of us has always been
the core of the band, even though
we've worked with many drummers
over the years. Our songs are very
based on an acoustic sound which
makes drums an extra treat but not
an obligatory element.
TU:
We're pretty oldschool in that we
strongly believe that if a song
doesn't sound good with just vocals
and an acoustic guitar it's not
much of a song. Given the genre,
that is. In the end it basically
comes down to if a melody is good
enough or not.
MH:
How peculiar it may sound, the three
of us has become really good friends
and for someone to be part of that
I guess it would take some time.
To use a rock-cliché, it's
like a long marriage!
JG:
What's your motivator and what do
you wanna achieve with your music?
MH:
Get laid!
MD:
If you're an artist it's natual
to want people to notice you. For
me it's that combined with creating
emotions in our fans that makes
me wanna write a good song or give
a good performance.
MH:
Yeah, it's like masturbating. Rehearsing,
a live gig or a recording that goes
brilliant gives the best feeling
in the world.
TU:
We wanna be recognized as good songwriters
and do it professionally. It's already
a huge part of our lives and doing
it professionaly wouldn't change
our lives that much except for maybe
being paid for what we already do.
I guess there's no recipe for doing
music full time. We do our best
and hope that will be enough.
JG:
How do you work with recordings?
MD:
First we use demos to present ourselves
to recordcompanies and to our followers.
When you do a song it's natural
to want to hear it recorded.
MH:
We're very fortunate to have a good
friend in producer Jorgen Warnstrom
(Soulmine Recordings) with whom
we've been working with since the
first Splicer-demo, spring 1998.
Concerning our sound we don't really
try that hard to be original or
sound innovative, we just do songs
the way we like them to be. And
that happens to be in a traditional
way.
MD:
Yeah, over the years, we've really
learnt the lesson that less is more
and working with a producer gives
you that necessary outside view
of things.
TU:
We try to have a complete view (design,
looks) of the band and the recordings
are part of that.
JG:
What are you doing at the moment?
MD:
Serving coffe!
MH:
Actually we're on a four month tour.
Right now in Dublin, Ireland. We
started out in Sweden, beginning
September and have done about 20
gigs through Europe so far.
TU:
We had to quit our jobs because
they were in the way of living out
our musical dreams. It's all very
spontaneous! We bought a Chevy Van,
packed our stuff in and took off,
it's such a wonderful thing to do!
It was the right thing for us, at
that point in life anyway. No regrets!
MH:
It has turned out really good, and
we expect a lot to come out of it.
MD: We've met a lot of nice people
and hope to get some contacts that
can bring SPLICER a few steps closer
to fame and fortune, or even nirvana.
JG:
What's around the corner?
TU:
We'll continue the tour to Scotland
and England in November. New songs
are being rehearsed daily in the
livingroom of our house outside
of Dublin.
MH:
We hope to come back to London and
then join London-based JonhJohn,
brilliant band by the way, in Paris
for a couple of gigs.
TU:
We have a lot of tentacles out,
we have to tie it all up and get
a clear picture of where we stand
and where we wanna go. We¯re also
planning to publish a book about
our trip. It'll be a real treat!
MD:
When we get back to Sweden we want
to work part time to be able to
keep up what we've started with
this tour. Next year there might
be a new tour in the US or eastern
Europe. Who knows, the sky's the
limit!
