rock'n'rill

Bad travel karma and good music in Sweden

On stage at the Songwriter Festival in Visby/Sweden. Photo: Jon Strider

Hey everyone,

I’m back from a wonderful trip to Sweden which had everything you’d ever ask for: Adventure, great music, good friends, challenges, love and more.

I had been invited by my friend Annika Fehling to perform and host a workshop at the International Songwriter Festival in Visby on the wonderful island of Gotland in Sweden. Rather than just go for the weekend, I figured I’d bring my little family and we’d have ourselves a little vacation.

So we set out from Munich to Stockholm on Thursday, June 30, on a 7.30-p.m.-flight. We got into Stockholm Arlanda a little late (past 10 p.m.), grabbed our stuff, found the bus to downtown Stockholm and rather than find the subway to my friend Eva Hillered’s house, we took a taxi. You see, it was going on midnight, we had a ton of stuff to carry and a 22-month-old daughter in tow. We arrived at Eva’s at 12.30 in the a.m. and as my wife opened our suitcase she had a near breakdown. It turned out we had not picked up our own suitcase but an absolutely identical one that belonged to someone else. Only problem was, this one had no diapers, baby clothes, or baby paraphernalia.
And after many many costly minutes on hold (international cell phone call), it turned out that the Lufthansa/SAS baggage office would not open before 8 a.m. the next morning. So I wrote them an email. The problem being that by 9 a.m. we had to be on a bus to Nynäshamn to catch the ferry to Gotland. At this point we assumed that the woman whose suitcase we had, had ours. I even tried contacting her through Facebook.
Got up at 7 on Friday and spent about 45 minutes running through the pouring rain, trying to find an open store that sold diapers – found a gas station. I also got a call from SAS shortly before 8 o’clock saying they had our suitcase and I was required to bring in the one that we had.

We decided that my wife & baby daughter would continue by bus and ferry as pre-arranged while I would take the suitcase to the airport, exchange it with ours and see about getting a flight to Visby. So I was lugging around more than 50 kilos of baggage. The big suitcase, my big backpack, my guitar, my smaller bag, my music bag with guitar cords, tuner, CDs, DI etc. It’s no fun to haul this stuff from one terminal to the other, trying to find the baggage office and then trying to find an affordable flight to Visby. And, oh yeah, since I carried the entire baggage for three people (my wife had the baby and the stroller, there was no way she could also carry a heavy bag), I was heavily overweight, baggage-wise. I bought another hand-luggage bag and put some stuff in there, paid some extra with the last of the money I had brought and was finally on my way.

I was so very happy to see my buddy Thomas pick me up from the airport in Visby. He had already picked up Karen & Marni Rae from the ferry so we were finally ready for the fun to begin :-)

We stayed with Annika Fehling in Visby and I can’t thank her, her husband Arne and her daughter Mira enough for making us feel so welcome and just being über-nice. Just wonderful. The Songwriter Festival was just a short walk from Annika’s house and while my girls took a nap I strolled over and caught some of Esther Rose Parks’s set. I’d met Esther last year in Stockholm. She has a really unique style, British, folky, very original. Do check her out.

On Friday night there was a special presentation for some of the festival’s performers at a very nice bar/club on the Visby harbor front. I sat in with Annika to do “Your Own Private Rainbow”, sat in with Annika’s trio ABA to play guitar on the Swedish version of our co-write “Not Too Late To Dream” and played a short three-song solo set. And I hung out some with Esther and my friend A.P. Meister. Nice to catch up!

Saturday was the main day of the festival. Would’ve loved to divide myself so I could listen to lots of great music and spend time with my family. I mostly spent time with my daughter in the park and on the playground and in the Botanical Gardens. I did catch my friend A.P. Meister’s set. He has some very cool low-key bluesy, atmospheric songs that remind me of Tony Joe White and Tom Waits.
A.P. sat in with me in my own 40-minute set on Saturday night, Annika joined me on two songs (Rainbow and Way Down). It was just great. The local paper had given me a great write-up and people were really with me throughout my set. Add to that a wonderful location and great organization.

On Sunday I hosted a workshop titled “Storytelling In Songwriting” – perhaps the most daunting gig of the three. But it worked very well. Most participants were performers at the festival so we had a great discussion about some of my key beliefs about songwriting and some exercises I had prepared. Very fruitful, I think.
And another short-notice gig also came through – a few songs on Tuesday at an event for the Swedish Musician’s Union. Also sat in with Bo Ahlbertz and Annika at this event. More fun.

The other highlights of our Sweden vacation were family-related: A trip to Villa Villekulla (Villa Kunterbunt), the original site of many Pippi Longstocking movies, a roundtrip on Gotland, a couple days in Stockholm with more Pippi-related excursions to Djurgarden and our time was up way too soon.

However, there were more travel woes on the way back home. First we couldn’t land in Munich due to a severe thunderstorm. We circled around for awhile, then landed in Nuremberg to wait it out. After 90 minutes of waiting, we took off again for Munich but I saw some lightning and thunderstorm from my window that would put all of Hollywood’s CGI wizards to shame. Landing in Munich (or Southern Germany) was impossible that night. We detoured to Frankfurt where we landed past midnight. Another grueling flight for our little daughter and more suitcase-schlepping for me. And I had to cancel a house concert/private gig on Sunday. Dang.
We made it to Munich on early Sunday afternoon. Whew.

12 July 2011 ·