Before the release of new album “Weekend Man”, we’ve met Adam Grahn & Hannes Irengård, respectively singer and guitarist of the swedish band. They told us about this new CD in a joyous and relaxed atmosphere.
Adam Grahn (vocals): Sound check, un, deux, trois, quatre.
It’s time for you to conquer France, what can you say to us in French?
Hannes Irengård (guitar): We tried to learn on the way over here, we were stuck in a traffic jam, we tried to pick up a few words, but I can’t remember any of them.
Adam: I think the most important one would be “de rien”, it’s pretty much something we can say after each song, instead of “merci”.
Hannes: Now, it’s like “you’re welcome” right?
Adam: Yes it’s “you’re welcome”. It’s not like “thank you” but “welcome”. (laughs) But all the bands say “merci” so we started saying “de rien”. It could be our thing in France.
Very nice! The band has existed for ten years, what is the most important memory you are able to remember?
Adam: So many. But has it really been ten years?
Hannes: Yes it sounds like.
Adam: We played the first show in 2008 officially. So that means it’s 8 years. Please say 8 years cause it sounds old. (laughs) I think, one of my strongest memories would always be the first time we sold out a concert. For a while, at the beginning, things happened so quickly, so many dreams just happened right on the top of the others so it was hard to realize that was really happening. We had the first time we were played on the radio in Sweden, and the first time we were number one on the radio in Sweden, and we were on MTV, and we had a music video. All these things! But I think, one of my strongest was: you and me hugged after the first sold out show in Cologne in Germany, and which was, to that point, our biggest show ever. There were about four hundred people, it was our first headline tour ever outside of Sweden. It was in 2010 and we came back, we had like a McDonald dinner, expensive luxury stuff. We walked back and it had been just like lines of hundred of meters, people outside this place, we thought “it’s not suppose to be for us, there should have something else”, we started walking through it, and people were yelling “hey, it’s the band!”. We had a very weird feeling, but I think that definitely hook me into like “OK, this is for life now, it’s forever”.
Hannes: That was one of mine as well, but I mean, just going outside of Sweden to play rock n’’oll music was just like drugs. And simple things like staying in the hotel, I mean, playing the show and not going home, these are just a major deal, at least for me. Obviously, it’s not that awesome.
Adam: But there were a lot of those things for us that were, like Hannes said, you get used to it quickly and so those first times. It’s like having sex. The first time it’s like always “oh yeah OK this is cool, everything” but I do it all the time. (laughs) But our first time for everything had always been very special.
Let’s speak about your new album, where do this title “Weekend Man” come from?
Adam: We couldn’t name this album “When I See You Dance With Another”. Obviously, we had all these songs’ titles, and we were like “OK, baby, not an album title, “High Times”, no!”. Like that with every songs! This one worked. And then we started figure out the feeling, the vibes of the whole album. It’s a party album, and the “Weekend Man” kind of groove from that. It figures out “who is the Weekend Man” ? The Weekend Man is a mystical non-living or maybe living creature, like the devil on your shoulder. Basically, wherever the Weekend Man goes, it’s a weekend, no matter if it’s Thursday or Wednesday, and he’s the one that makes us do all the things we shouldn’t be doing. Like we should be working, or studing, we don’t because the Weekend Man makes us have a beer. And so it just started growing from there: “The Weekend Man” cool! Imagine in your head a screaming dude like “aaargh”.
Hannes: An awesome dude with a good-looking moustache. (laughs)
Adam: Yeah who is the guy on the cover, it’s awesome.
Where did you record this new album?
Hannes: We recorded the album in Berlin, so the atmosphere was obviously on top cause it’s just an awesome place to be, very creative.
Why not in Sweden?
Adam: Beause it’s good to distance yourself a little from regular life. When you do something like this, you need to be 100% focused and I think it’s easier to go somewhere where you don’t have to be home at 5 o’clock. And also, there are a lot of possibilities in Berlin, there are great studios, a great atmosphere in general.
Hannes: And we needed to go where the producer we wanna work with is, so we had to go there. But after a while, a studio is just a studio. The first time we worked there, we were like “Wow we have all this cool equipment, this is fucking awesome”, but after a couple of days, it’s just a studio where you work so even though the atmosphere was good, there were hard times as well: they were crying, they were exciting, they were fighting.
Let’s speak about your music video “Baby”, which is funny as well. How did you have this idea?
Adam: Leo, our director who made several of our videos, and I had coffee and started to write over ideas: one of them was driving a car, one of them was something like wearing this fat suit, and jump around, and one of those was roller dancing, and we thought “this one sounds like the most dangerous so let’s do that”!(laughs) Because, none of us had any idea of how to roller skate, we knew nothing and we can’t dance either.
Hannes: The perfect combination. (laughs)
Adam: Yeah, but we were really sure “Baby” gonna be the next single. A lot of bands want to look good when they do music videos. (laughs) And we tried to stay away from this as much as we could, if we had to choose. But Leo hook on this idea and we talk about it, and we said “OK all right”, and the record company had no idea what they were paying for. (laughs)
Hannes: Actually, it’s seems like a awesome idea to hook with the roller skates. We had just like a couple of days.
Adam: One week to learn! One week to learn how to stand on roller skates, and then to make a choreography, and practice it. It was in December 2015: we were standing and practicing outside on a parking in snow, and there was a construction company building a house around, so the workers were standing on top and looking to, laughing, and we were like “baby babababy” in the frozen cold. And Jonas, fucked up his knee: we played a winter festival, a week before, and we went skying after the show and he turned off his ligaments, so he needed to have surgery, but he couldn’t have it before the video so there were a lot of pain put into this video. (laughs) Glad people had a laugh.
Who are you mocking in this song?
Adam: It’s our hearts in this lyrics. It’s some kind of joke, the question is if it’s “cheese nacho babe baby” or “she’s not your baby”. It could be both, so you have to decide which one you like the most, it sounds the same. But it’s a song for people who need to leave their partner, people who are in an unhealthy relationship, and they need to move on.
Is there any social matter you are really concerned about that you wish you could talk about through your songs?
Adam: We actually try to make a conscious decision to not involve politics in our music.
Why?
Adam: Because, I personally, think it’s great when artists or famous people who have an audience, communicate good things, such as the fight against racism, against homophobia, equal rights. I think that’s great and everybody in the world is behind that, and I think famous people can reach out, but then sometimes I feel like “I’m a fan of this band because it’s a band, because of their music, I want to listen to their music”, and the music is great but the lyrics are racist, for some reasons you know, and so I can’t listen to it, no matter how great the music is, but the singer is a racist so I can’t listen to the songs, or I go and watch U2 for example, which is one of my favorite bands, but sometimes I just wanna ask to stop talking and just sing the song. And also we make it our mission not to get too heavy. Enough bands are doing it, and they do it well. But what we want to do is to make people forget their problems: just for 90 min, forget your life, take a vacation of your problems and come see our show. We want to make you feel good. That is kind of our mission.
What is your next show in France?
Adam : Rock En Seine, how do you say it?
Yes Rock En Seine, it’s correct.
Adam: Yeah, we’re looking forward to it. I think the last time we were in Paris was in 2014 at La Maroquinerie. But let me double check the tour schedule because some dates are not official yet, but I don’t know when I can announce them. We will be back in France, I think we will be back this fall! We will let you know as soon it will be official.
What are you listening to these days?
Adam: Tom Pretty!
Hannes: Actually, I’m listening to Swedish artists like Håkan Hellström.
Last question: as our media is called “RockUrLife”, what rocks your life?
Adam: What rocks my life? Hannes rocks my life! (laughs) I dont know. Right now, Coke rocks my life. (laughs)
Hannes: Right now, I feel high of the fact we gonna play again, it was insane a lot during this last 30 min but I’m super excited we gonna play again.
Adam: We sound like we just came out of prison! (laughs)
Hannes: Kind of feeling like this! (laughs) Seriously, it has been a long hard road, it’s finally time!
Website: royalrepublic.net
