finnbands: Please introduce your band to the German people. How would you describe the music you're playing?
Matti: Absolutely amazing.
Kimmo: Hard-hitting grunge rock flirting with punk and the darker side of pop, that´s what we sound like. We stopped growing up at 20 so I guess it´s our duty to keep on making music & having fun with our lives.
Janne: We're very open-minded guys, we get inspiration from a lot of different things, but I guess our music is a combination of unlimited ambition and limited skills... Musically, we we're born in the beginning of the Nineties so I guess G 'n R, Metallica and Nirvana will always play a big part in what we end up sounding like, no matter how hard we try to fight it.
finnbands: Where and how did you get to know each other?
Janne: We've basically known each other forever. I mean, I met Kimmo when I was 4 years old and Olli at under 10, and the other guys more than ten years ago, so you could say we know each other too well, almost... This can lead to interesting situations, we fight like brothers but also love each other like brothers... It's not uncommon for best buddies like us to form bands in their teens but I think of it as sort of a miracle that none of us have fallen by the wayside as the years have gone by. We still share the same dream and we love hanging out and fucking shit up together.
Kimmo: Janne and me met at a musical playschool when we were 4 years old, and I got to know Olli when we started school on the same class, we were 7 at the time. Luca and Matti we got to know a bit later in our teen years, but yeah, we´ve known each other for a VERY long time.
finnbands: Even though you probably got asked this question every time but please tell us more about the meaning of your band´s name. I've read something about the 11th hour and using the favour of the moment. Can you explain what this means in combination with the band itself?
Kimmo: Well, our band´s name is just two words that go well together... no special symbolism there at all. It can mean whatever you want it to mean. I think the lyrical themes we have in our songs touch on things like the 11th hour & stuff, that it´s important to wake yourself up every single
day you´re going to live, and make the most of it.
finnbands: Are you full time musicians or do you have a regular dayjob besides music business?
Kimmo: Haha, I work at our record label GBfam Records, so I´m really deep in this music stuff, most of the time it´s cool but I get days when I´d love to do something completely different. Anyway, I´m happy with my life as it is, I like being in the music business. I like the people I meet.
Janne: Not fulltime musicians yet but my dayjob right now is working for the record company like Kimmo so I can consider myself lucky to be able to do stuff that's music-related, because I don't really get off on much else. Except maybe drinking and sleeping.
Olli: I have tried to study recently, but music takes more and more time.
Matti: I work in a recording studio so I have to tolerate musicians almost daily.
finnbands: You are going to release your album 'Sleepwalkers' soon. What can people expect from your second album?
Janne: It's a heavier album. More metal and punk influences, much better songwriting in my opinion, a lot more fun, it kicks fucking ass whereas our debut album “Almost Over Everything” was this moody piece of soft rock with not that much focus or direction, even if we had a couple of pretty good songs there. We're still the same grungy rock band in a way but I guess we've learned a couple of new tricks and lost a lot of stiffness along the way. We learned not to worry all the time but instead bang the hell out of our instruments. And it's a band album, whereas the debut was just four guys (Olli was not with us back then) in a basement for a year doing whatever they felt like that particular day. The new songs are so much easier to reproduce live that it feels like a new beginning for us on stage as well.
Kimmo: It honest stuff, and it´s quality stuff too. We´re getting better with not being too obvious and generic with our songs, yet still being relatively easy to get into.
finnbands: In relation to your upcoming album: Would you say that all of your songs deal with a similar topic (e.g. love and all that's connected with it) so that there is a thread guiding to your songs or is your lyrical spectrum diversified?
Janne: A big part of the new album deals with waking up to reality for a change. Seems like so many people go through their lives with their eyes closed (sleepwalking...), surrendering to whatever they choose to call it, be it “fate” or “faith” that ultimately leads to people not taking responsibility for their actions... or even their own happiness even if they could. Every shortcoming in their life seems to be someone else's fault or, alternatively, they choose to deny the fuck-ups they've made. I'm no fucking preacher, nor do I want to be, so these songs are a sort of a call to think for yourself. Waking up and smelling the coffee, breaking your habit, breaking the mold. Look in the mirror and be true to yourself.
We did have a title track that summed up this theme pretty nicely, but unfortunately the music wasn't as good as the lyrics so you'll have to wait to hear it... no promises, though. The song Dissonance Fading is pretty important in this sense. And I'd like to add that these songs are not guidebooks to good life, they're just stories from certain moments of waking up... or falling back to sleep. Not all of them have happy endings.
That said, we did not try to write a theme album or anything. And not all the songs carry the same theme. It's just that when you put the pen to the paper during a certain period in your life, certain themes come up time & time again, and you only realize it afterwards. I'd love to write more bubblegum bullshit as well but it's just not as easy...
finnbands: The recording of your second album isn't that long ago. Can you tell us more about the time in the studio? Any strange happenings or funny anecdotes?
Kimmo: Olli came close to losing his mind on the guitar sessions in Imatra, and all because we apparently hadn´t cleaned enough or some other shit like that. And he threw some pedals around after a bit of tuning problems... I can be quite the whining asshole in the studio but now we had the producers to tell me to fuck off when I wasn´t doing my own parts, so I helped myself to some beer and let the other guys do their stuff... and the result is great.
Janne: We yelled “VITTU!!!” every 20 seconds. Luca was mostly sleeping and Olli was always either getting drunk or hung over. Our dear producer Jens was the voice of reason so we could kick back whenever we wanted to and basically just concentrated on having a great time playing guitar, having beers and cracking the worst jokes ever. We'd learned the songs beforehand pretty well so there was a minimal aspect of hair-pulling and nervous breakdowns compared to how it was with the first album. Plus we really liked the town of Örebro in Sweden.
Olli: It was like having a good time with friends. The only not-so-great days were the ones we spent recording together in Tampere without a producer. That was all about arguing and shouting “VITTU!”
Matti: One of the weirdest moments during the whole process was when we went to Sweden for drum recording on a ferry. We had a few drinks on the ferry and somehow forgot to wake up in the morning. When we got to our car, some dudes of the boat company were dragging Luca´s car out from the boat with a forklift truck, with the standing brake on and stuff. Me and Olli found ourselves caught behind some barbwired fences and finally climbed over them to Sweden without showing our passports or anything.
Olli: After which we found ourselves in a beautiful park in the middle of Stockholm feeling like Nasty Suicide of Hanoi Rocks back in -83 with bottle of Jägermeister in our hands couple of hours later.
finnbands: Will you release your album also in Germany? Or isn't anything planned so far besides a release in Finland?
Kimmo: Well nothing certain at this point besides Finland, but I´m pretty confident this record will be released in other countries as well. Maybe even the moon.
Janne: Yes, we are planning an official release in other European countries, but it just takes a little time. We've got good guys working on those matters and people seem to respond to the album pretty well so things are looking good. So I'd say later this year.
finnbands: About the roles in the band: Who is responsible for the songwriting? Is there someone who always takes on a certain job in the developement of a new song?
Kimmo: The great thing about our band is that we all participate in the songwriting, but it´s not a lame-ass democracy; we really take the time to find out what the best ideas are. We´ve got one role we all like to play; the whining asshole. That´s something we all tend to do at some points. Good thing is that not all of us are in a shit mood all the time. He who happens to be most on fire leads the others.
Matti: Satan writes our music.
finnbands: Are there any plans for a tour so far? Maybe some concerts in other countries? Germany? Have you ever been here?
Kimmo: Well of course we´ll tour Finland after the album comes out in March, after that hopefully some festival gigs here & there... Then we´ll go wherever the wind blows us, hopefully Germany too.
finnbands: How does a normal day on tour look like? Is everyone laying lazy in the bus till it's time to play the show and afterwards you party till dawn?
Janne: We haven't really toured in very long stretches so far, so we're still very excited each time we get to hit the road. And we do like to party whenever we can, so all in all it's great fun.
Kimmo: Yeah it´s very rarely that we don´t get drunk after a gig. On the bus Matti likes to do these hour-long monologues on politics when he´s hungover, Olli brings on chocolate cakes & stuff, Janne usually is the first one to start drinking. Luca and me just try to keep the circus together.
finnbands: What do you think is the biggest prejudice about musicians? From your own experience, are these prejudices rather true or false?
Olli: That they just lead a loose life and get drunk. It´s pretty much true. But being a musician is also hard work. It´s not just like, ooh I´m gonna be a great musician today. Or is it, I don´t know…whatever, let´s have a beer.
Matti: People think that most of the musicians are drug-driven libertines. But the truth is that only some of them are like that, which is boring. Bring back the Sixties!
finnbands: Where is the sense in being a musician? Does it lay in many record sellings and awards or are you of the opinion that success isn't everything and all that counts is a life for the music?
Olli: Definitely life for the music. If you manage to get some income from music that’s extra. But of course we´re all waiting for huge record sales and massive touring.
Matti: Music = life. A good song is a reward by itself and if it manages to touch someone or stop someone to think for a moment, it´s even better. Like Kimmo said once "if you want to make money, you´ll go to trade school"
finnbands: There is a huge hype about the whole finnish music industry at the moment. Do you have any explanation for that?
Olli: I´m actually doing a research about Finnish music export policy and phenomena (as my degree at University – motherfuckin' rocker would like to be a Bachelor of Arts). Anyway I would say that this hype about Finnish music has a lot to do with export and management. I think that more than ten years ago Finland lacked people who had skills or enough courage to promote Finnish acts 100 %. Or maybe Finnish people are just doing amazingly good music at the moment. It has to be some kind of a mixture of exporting Finnish acts and the fact that people around the world just like to enjoy great (Finnish) rock music.
finnbands: How do the future plans of Day Eleven look like? Do you have anything special planned so far you are willing to tell us?
Kimmo: Hmm... you can´t plan special things, they happen by accident. At the moment the future looks bright.
finnbands: The last words are saved for you. Now you can tell us whatever you want. : )
Kimmo: Laavu pystyyn.
Janne: Check out our music at myspace.com/dayeleven, consider your day saved and go out and buy several copies of all our records. Other than that, I've got nothing else to say except that Izzy Stradlin' is the coolest looking guy ever.
day-eleven.com
February 2007
Interview by Anna © finnbands.com
