a.k.a.
“The Great Petander”
by Andy Long
A couple of months
ago I went to a very special gig in London.
It was the debut solo gig for Chapman Stick player Nick Beggs, in which
he showcased some of the material from his album, ‘Stick Insect’.
His fantastic set also marked another debut, the first British gig for
the support act, the Finnish multi-instrumentalist and solo performer Petander.
In his home country
of Finland, Petander is something of a household name, having been a full-time
bassist for one of the country’s leading bands as well as having an extensive
discography of work with artists such as Popeda, Yo and Kari Peitsamon Skootteri.
These may not be
names that the rest of the world is familiar with but that’s mostly because
Finnish bands almost always perform in their native language, subsequently they
don’t necessarily travel well.
Petander had
decided it was time to expand his horizons in two ways, first by becoming a solo
artist and recording his own albums and secondly by switching to singing in
English. I met up with him after
the show and began by asking him why the time was right for such a radical move.
“I realized that
there’s a composer in me,” he began. “I
keep ending up with all this material all the time, it just kept coming
and I realized that I’ve got to do this myself, there’s just no other way.
If you’re in a band it’s always quite limited somehow, and as I play
almost every instrument, I just decided to do this now.
In Finland wherever I go, people know me.
Now that I’m singing in English, it doesn’t make any sense to them.
They believe that if you are from Finland you should just sing in the Finnish
language.”
“My first real
bass-playing gig for example, it was very funny,” he said, with a chuckle.
“I had just been on holiday for about a year and a half in New York and
Brazil, just travelling wherever Summer was.
When I got back I didn’t really know what I wanted to do next.
This friend of mine was in a really big band and they were having trouble
with their bass player. At one point he
just said “Goodbye’ and with a tour
coming up my friend said that they needed a bass player. He asked if I wanted to
join and I had nothing else to do. Things
like that have happened to me all the time.
I am definitely not
going to join any band now at least for a couple of years just so I can
concentrate on all this unfinished work. One
band that I played bass with ended up touring for five years. I ended up playing
all of the instruments on their albums as well.
Because I like to change instruments sometimes, it’s quite creative.
I think that’s typical for a composer.”
Petander will be
working on his solo album for the next few months at his home in the forests of
Finland. Although he hails
originally from the countryside he has spent most of his working life living and
playing in cities. So when the time came to return to more pastoral settings,
his musical associates found it very strange.
“Oh yes, that was
the point when I was officially declared a madman. When I finally moved to the
Finnish countryside. I had moved
away when I was around eighteen because it looked like I wasn’t going to get
any professional work. But now
I’ve had my cities, I’ve been all over. So now I live in the middle of
nowhere. You’re completely independent, it doesn’t matter what time it is,
you work when you feel like it.
I’ve been
recording on hard disk for more than ten years, so it’s possible to work on a
million things at the same time. Technology
is so funny these days, on the album there might be a bass track that I played
ten years ago and on the same song there could be a guitar that I will pick up
and play tomorrow.”
A few of the songs
for the album have already been demo’d . There is quite a variety of feeling
and style within the album, from hard rock through to acoustic ballads,
it runs the gamut. I asked him what direction the album was likely to
take predominantly.
“I think both
directions, we still have to work on that a little bit.
I know I may look like a heavy metal guy but to combine my own
personality with my music would be mostly both things and that’s where I am
at. I can play Brazilian stuff or
an Eddie Van Halen trip, no problem, or even Jaco or whatever and it’s not a
problem. On the other hand that’s
what gave me a lot of work.”
In reference to
heavy metal I found it interesting that Finnish magazines had drawn comparisons
to Slash of Guns `n Roses. Fair enough, take a look at the guy!
But what about musically? Petander
just laughs it off…
“Well if you’re
talking about guitar playing all it takes is curly hair and a Les Paul and then
you go Woo-ooo-ooo! and pose. So what about basses then?
Petander has had a lot of bass gigs over the years, and after all,
this is a bass mag, remember? Let’s
get some basses in there! He tells
me the story of how he got his favourite bass…
“I was in Rio De
Janeiro for the third time in a year, almost ten years ago and met all these
musicians that were there. I took some percussion lessons and I met this man
called Joao Gravina, who lives in Rio. I
just went to his place as a guest with some friends, I didn’t even know he was
a bass maker.
We had dinner and
some wine, then we went to another room and it was full of basses, hand-made
basses that he builds. He really knew what he was doing.
I’ve still got that one. It
sounds really nice to say I’m playing a handmade Brazilian bass, that’s the
truth, it can even handle the Finnish climate quite well. You have to adjust it
somewhat for winter and summer conditions, but that’s all.
I’ve also got a
Carvin five string fretless that I like a lot. I used to endorse Carvin so I got
it made just the way I wanted it.
One of the songs
that will definitely feature on the forthcoming album is a poem, written by Nick
Beggs and set to music by Petander. The
poem is called “If” and was written in memory of Nick’s friend Kevin
Wilkinson, a drummer who worked with such names as China Crisis, Robert Fripp
and Howard Jones. (Kevin took his
own life in 1999.) Petander tells me the song is almost completed but he really
wants Nick to approve the final version before doing anything with it.
As
a final insight into Petander’s rural Finnish lifestyle it’s worth
mentioning that he is Vice-President of a local hunting club.
Finland has a huge moose population and there is sometimes a need for a
cull to keep numbers within a manageable level.
Last year eleven people were killed in car accidents when they struck
moose.
Petander told me.
“I’ve been training dogs for three years now and it’s a lot of
work, especially when you're doing a hundred gigs a year, which means you’re
out of your home for two hundred days. Try to train a dog then!
A couple of years ago it got really crazy.
On the weekends you
get up at 4.00 a.m. and spend all day hunting. You jump in the car around six,
drive somewhere, play a show till midnight, jump back in the car, drive home,
spend all the next day in the woods again and then drive somewhere else.
Imagine the third day! You
don’t get any sleep at all, which means you can’t really see anymore. I
realized that it was like, “Hey I don’t want to do this, but which one am I
going to quit? So now that I am
working on my solo project my life is a lot easier!”
