Regular readers may know I’ve previously sung the praises of Gävle, an unassuming mid-sized city in central Sweden.
Partly because of its remarkable collection of musos. They probably run to several hundred by now – soloists, duos and bands of all genres – and by which I mean professional or semi-professional. That is a remarkably high per capita ratio.
It is also where I began my Scandi musical journey, back in 2009, having been exposed to a local electronic band and their female lead; a journey that was amplified when I visited it for the first time in 2016 and decided thereafter to focus on the Nordic music business in my scribbling.
It is also where I have encountered numerous musicians who have appeared often in these pages such as Stefan Aronsson of Red Cell and numerous other bands, the fabulous young singer Ingrid Fröderberg and the massively talented Johanna Brun, who was here with her latest single only last week.
It is the sort of place which really should be a member of the European Music Cities network as Manchester is (the only representative) and I hope that one day it will be.
My second visit there was in 2017 when I attended a small festival and the first evening was dedicated to the memory of Joe Hill, the most notable musician from there despite the fact that Cat Stevens was raised in Gävle and it was also the birthplace of the iconic (Thomas) Di Leva.
Joe Hill (born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund in Gävle) was not only a musician but one of the leading activist trade unionists in America, to where he emigrated, only to be executed for a murder he claimed not to have been involved with, in 1915.
He is revered throughout the trade union movement globally and his protest songs can be considered precursors to those of the likes of Guthrie, Dylan, Seeger, Springsteen, Baez, Smith, Bragg and many others.
Tribute compilation album to Joe Hill featuring many big name artists:
There has long been a small Joe Hill museum and garden in Gävle (see photo above) but a new Visitor Centre has just opened there. It is celebrated by the record label COMEDIA, the brainchild of the Gävle-born ‘Grandfather of Swedish Indie Music’, Claes Olson, which has released a compilation album ‘45 Postcards from Gävle (1979-2024)’ with 45 songs from 45 different artists and bands who all have their roots in the city and covering 45 years.
The content covers music as disparate as the 1979 debut album with P.F. Commando and Zeke Varg to songs with several artists and bands that are current on Gävle’s music scene, such as Southern North Coast Country Cowboys, Venus Passage, Xinombra, Extra Everything and The Others.
Artists such as Stefan Sundström, Caroline af Ugglas, Miss Li, Marty Willson-Piper from the Australian band The Church, Karin Wistrand from Lolita Pop (whose debut album was recorded in Gefle Sound Studio), the aforementioned Di Leva and Regina Lund and Michael Blair (who has worked with Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Lou Reed and more) all appear in one or more of the 45 songs.
Claes Olson started COMEDIA just over ten years ago, a label which today has both Sweden’s widest and largest catalogue in terms of publishing Swedish music. All tracks in this collection are taken from that catalogue.
The album isn’t short in the punk department, an area in which the town is particularly strong, featuring local pioneers P.F. Commando and bands such as Bizex-B, Russian Submarines, The Pillisnorks and Force Majeure.
Post punk representatives include The Bizarre Orchestra, General Belgrano, Ismael, Border Case, Foreign Affairs and Boarding Surface.
Tedeborg (who has featured several times in NMC) is present, too. He is responsible for ‘Ian Curtis Reached Heaven Long Before Me’, a tribute to the Joy Division vocalist, with the singer Ida Long – the first artist I ever saw in Gävle, fronting the band Baron Bane, and who herself contributes to the collection with her Berlin and New York award-winning interpretation of the Tears for Fears song ‘Mad World’.
Meanwhile numerous artists already mentioned, led by The Pillisnorks, helped record the single ‘Putin will teach you how to love the Motherland’ with members from the Russian band Pussy Riot.
In the seventies and eighties, Claes Olson himself was a member of, among others, the band Zeke Varg, while Di Leva-produced Bang Too and Bangkok (which in 1985 had a radio hit with ‘Like an Angel’). He acted as a producer of no less than 18 of this compilation’s 45 tracks.
Another featured artist that has appeared in NMC is the gifted guitarist Steven Kautsky Anderson who made his breakthrough a decade ago with the instrumental song ‘Dance of the Fortune Teller’ and his Swedish Grammy-nominated debut album ‘Gipsy Power’.
The internationally acclaimed francophone duo Le Lac Long 814, which has appeared often in NMC, contributes the cultured ‘La main tendue’, and there is input in a similar vein from the Gävle-born Brita Aspan and her Britli Trio.
Jimmy Skeppstedt, one half of Red Cell, turns up as Adora Eye with ‘Black Metal Black’ from the album ‘If you need a King, I’ve been prepared all my life’, while those crazy folk at The Last Cow (another NMC review) put in an appearance.
Techno comes courtesy of the now Berlin-based Richard Solstierna in several guises along with STENLUND.
I could go on – the press release rivals War & Peace for length – but I reckon I’ve said enough by now to convince you that this is an incredibly musical small city. As the promotional strapline says, the score is Gävle 45 – World 0.
‘45 Postcards from Gävle (1979-2024)’ has been released digitally on Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL, Amazon, Deezer and other music platforms today.
While my town, which is more than 2.5 times the size of Gävle, struggles to find the money to reopen the small theatre which closed two years ago because it was falling apart, but which in its time saw the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel treading the boards, and while there is just one designated live music venue, Gävle already has a first class concert hall, this new Joe Hill Visitor Centre and in the not too distant future, the city’s new £30 million cultural centre, the Agnes Kulturhus, will open.
I guess I’m in the wrong place.
Check it out here:
COMEDIA: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100059010895326
SIMBA (Swedish Independent Music Business Alternative: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100079849933455
