The Blue Accordingly
Peter O Ekberg is something so unique as a guitarist with his own expression. I invited him to visit and was impressed by what I heard – both from his fingers and his lips.
When I first heard Peter, it was on a few assorted records in the late 70s. He also appeared on recordings with both Dan Hylander’s Raj Montana Band, and later with the Boogie Kings – whom I was lucky enough to see live in Stockholm. Peter has also played with Tommy Körberg, Mats Ronander, Louise Hoffsten, Floyd Moore, Eric Johnson, Thorleifs and many more. As a producer, he has worked with some of the most famous names in Sweden – and some from across the great water. It was also there that Peter had his first contacts with music in high school. But let’s start from the beginning…
Peter Olof Ekberg
Peter was born in 1953 in Åryd outside Växjö, where he also grew up, and eventually formed his first band. At the modest age of 15, he was “headhunted” by the Germs from Växjö, and with this band he participated in the Swedish Radio pop band competition Opp-o-poppa at Liseberg in Gothenburg in 1968 – then as a bassist. It was apparently a terrible experience, according to Ekberg.
He was still primarily a bassist when he went to the USA a couple of years later as an exchange student.
– One night in Austin I ended up in a bar where a really good local band was playing, Custer’s Last Band. And I sat down at a table with two pretty girls, who I talked to. When the band took a break, the drummer and keyboardist came and sat down at our table. It was their girlfriends I had talked to, and they were all super nice. The drummer, Bill Gossen, later became my best friend. We sat and talked, and he was genuinely curious. “Well, so you play,” he said. “Would you like to sit in?”
“This whole idea with the record sprang from loneliness.”
One of the songs Bill mentioned was The Nazz Are Blue (a Yardbirds hit, with Jeff Beck on vocals), and Peter knew this, so he jumped on stage and played with the band.
– Bill drove me home that night, and came to pick me up the next day, to show me Austin. And it grew into a very deep friendship, which lasted until Bill died from cancer a few years ago. Bill’s friendship became my ticket into Austin, and his network of contacts also became my musical one, because he was an established musician and songwriter in Austin.
– That’s where I really got a taste for music.
The 70s and 80s
Back in Sweden, his group Attila got a record deal. They sent demos to five record companies, and received yes from four. Peter chose Polydor. He released four solo records and there was a lot of touring. He also produced Raj Montana and Rockamöllan. He moved to Stockholm in 1977, and things became more productive there. In the fall of 1982, Anders Burman wanted him to take over the production after him at EMI. And of course Peter accepted this offer.
– After that, I got a taste for making music without having to sit in a tour bus. I searched for other cultural expressions. I was almost ten years at SVT in Stockholm and NRK in Oslo.
He then became head of the culture school and principal at the media school in Karlskrona. Now he is culture manager in Piteå.
The New Album
I treat the cultural director to a small pasta lunch and he continues the story. Alone in Norrbotten, Peter finds himself in a new dilemma.
– I had barely made a song in 35 years, so I wanted to see if I could still do it.
He had Cubase 7 and a good UAD sound card and started writing some songs. At first, it was a bit of a struggle… But it became more and more enjoyable. He had all the time in the world. But after six months, he started to wonder if it was worth it. He thought there was a risk that it was becoming a dusty old man’s project. He contacted two independent producers he knew (Ulf Börjesson and Johan Dereborn), and asked what they thought. There was silence for a while, then one of them said that it was as cool as can be. The other had the same opinion.
– This whole idea for the album sprang from loneliness. And in one of the songs, Just Lonely, I sing “north pole lonesome”, so NP Lonesome became my alias. And I named the album The Blue Accordingly just to tease these blues puritans.
It took about a year to finish. When he posted it on line, he was extremely surprised by the reaction. There were both phone calls and private emails.
– For me, it was truly a great gift that I made it through the album. It’s such a great feeling to rediscover something that you thought was lost. “Damn, I still have this. Thanks, it works!” It’s impossible to describe how incredibly nice it felt when the response to this started coming in. I understood that it wasn’t just politeness, but people were genuinely surprised. “Damn, how good he’s done this”.
– The vocals are almost exclusively a first or second take. Standing and screaming with headphones on in an apartment, and suddenly hearing how people start moving about in the apartment above, is incredibly stressful.
– There are some things that I would have liked to have done one more time, but I decided to do it this way. And the same goes for the guitar playing , but there it was more because I noticed that I wasn’t getting any better the longer I played.
The producer Uffe Börjesson started making suggestions. “You must have a real drummer…” so Bengan Andersson from Skara was contacted and he recorded the excellent drums in his studio.
There was no time frame, there was again no budget, and there was no client either – more than I wanted to see where all this would lead.
Then I realized that I needed background singers so I contacted Sharon Dyall, Jenny Fall and Lena Malmborg and they happily volunteered. Then some other people came in.
I play the bass, all guitars, percussion and some drums and keyboards. But everything that needed to go up a notch professionally, I left this to others – and that’s to Uffe’s credit. What was initially a good lone-wolf thing became much better that way.
One of the secrets to how it all worked out was that there was no clear purpose here. The music itself was the only purpose, song, for song, for song…
How did Peter avoid the home recording trap, where the songs are never finished, where there is always something new to add or redo?
– I was right on the verge of going there – at that time it had been almost a year – and I knew that if I started to redo it, the whole project would fall apart.
– I was just on my way, but then it was Uffe Börjesson, among others, who said: “You’re done now.” So I thought: this will have to do.
Uffe undertook the mastering of the album, and since Peter wanted to release the music on all possible media, he found help there as well.
– I called Örjan Englund at Eagle Records and briefly told him what was involved, and he said yes, right away.
After three weeks the album was up worldwide and then it only took a day and the whole carousel was up. In the first month, Peter had four thousand streams. He was happy with that.
– Without the home recordings, this would never have been done.
Equipment
Peter used Cubase 7 and a UAD sound card (unknown model). He recorded the vocals with a Peluso 2247 microphone, which he is very happy with.
The keyboard is mostly taken from NI Kontakt 5 – he has also used some of the Easy Drummer percussion sounds, plus some from Kontakt.
– The Fender guitar has two regular Custom Shop pickups in the neck and middle, and a Dimarzio HS2 in the bridge position. Then I also have a Suhr with two single-coils and a humbucker. I use that a lot on the record.
– The strings are D’Addario XL – 0.9 to .46 – I have always used that. Previously I had the same set from Ernie Ball.
– The guitar goes through a Fender Deluxe, or a Mad Professor CS40, and a bunch of pedals. Almost never directly into the amplifier… Then I have used the S-Gear plug from Scuffham Amps.
– I’ve also used a Chandler UAD plug-in for a couple of solos. When you turn this up so the tubes really glow, it sounds very special.
The pedalboard contains what you see in this picture, but since we met, a couple of pedals have been replaced. It’s a project in constant evolution. Peter talks about his favorite pedal:
It’s a handmade Björn Juhl Honey Bee. It’s expensive, and it’s so warm. I always have it first. There’s nothing that can reveal that this is a pedal.
When I’ve mic’d up the amp, I’ve used a Shure SM-57. All in all, very ordinary stuff. Then I have a bunch of nice old UAD plugs… compressors, reverbs…
Then it doesn’t matter if you have good or bad equipment, if you don’t have a good song to start with. You often tend to forget that…
Supro tremo-verb
Peter of course had his Custom Shop Stratocaster, which got to meet the simpler cousins from the country, i.e. my screwed-together monsters. Of course, there was some playing – and this was even before I showed Peter the Supro amplifier that I had at home for MM review. But then Mr. Ekberg got really interested and immediately ran out to his car and fetched the pedal board.
“The blues has been kidnapped by a kind of middle-aged, white middle-class men…”
Peter keeps playing and talks about the instrumental song on the new album that he woke up one Sunday morning and had a dream about, Notes From The Neighborhood. More than a little 70s dance band-like in tone, and I just love it!
And Peter of course becomes enamored with the Supro amp.
– Wow, it sounds great! I would like to have it with me when I go out and play at the blues festivals this winter…
– Sounds incredibly good! Can I turn it up a little and see how it behaves?
What do you say then… Of course! And he turns it up real good.
– Well, I’ll be damned! You must excuse me, but I want to see where the limit is. It seems to be able to handle it…
Peter later ends up ordering a couple of different Supro amplifiers, and they are now part of his live arsenal.
Peter’s playing and preferences
I took the opportunity to praise Peter for his own unique musical language, where he moves in and around the traditional pentatonic scale, and where he really dares to go wild in his improvisations.
Where does the inspiration come from?
– It probably comes from the fact that I have often been a singer as well. I got quite tired of Chicken Shack and similar bands, and looked for other paths.
– Beck was exciting. He wasn’t that identical pentatonic scale that everyone played around with. There were also others… Peter Green was a big, big hero for me. When I first heard Blues Jam in Chicago, the first song, Watch Out… It was something completely incomparable, with everything from timing to tonality. But there were others… Amos Garrett was an eye-opener when he was in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. “Oh, you can play a major scale in the blues!” Beck did too, for that matter. But you never hear that from the others…
– Someone said I sounded like Jeff Beck when I play, but I don’t agree with them. I may be inspired by Beck, but I don’t sound like him.
– I’ve never been able to sit with a gramophone and copy solos, I’ve had to learn in other ways. So there’s never been one that was my idol, but there’s been a hell of a lot of different ones that inspired me, and so I’ve picked from my own head.
– Boogie Kings was a fun thing… We played a kind of punk blues. We loved the blues, but we didn’t care about being traditional. We realized that we had to start from our own background. That’s where the difference lies. The energy, and that we were stuck in tradition.
– And we had Backa-Hans and Ingemar Dunker in the accompaniment. The audience could just, physically, lean against that frame. It was impossible to get lost there. You could play in a different key, and it would still have been right.
The Blues has been kidnapped
– I’ve got a kind of blues obsession now. The blues has been kidnapped by a kind of middle-aged, white middle-class people who don’t understand either the origin, the basic idea of the blues, or this thing with blood, sweat and tears – don’t get me wrong …
– It’s so historyless. It becomes unbearable to listen to, if you don’t have some kind of anchoring in the roots. Listen to these triplet shufflings left and right: ”I woke up this morning…” If you then listen to the originals – what the blues stood for, and still stands for – it’s a force, and sweat and stories, but it’s also a development.
– Take all the pianists, guitarists, harmonica players and what you want. Not everyone sounded the same. Everyone had their own tone. Everyone developed their own tone. That was the whole thing. But today it’s just like you absolutely shouldn’t do that, because then it’s not the blues.
– Damn, I’m whining. That’s not the point at all. I’m a very positive person basically.
The Future
Peter says he intends to make another album, a blues album, and it won’t be puritanical! It will be based on the foundations of the blues, but then it will be completely from him and those he surrounds himself with.
– For me, when I make the songs that have a clear blues base, I play from the way I play. I want to play white, and from myself. I have different frames of reference, a different history, a different background. I can’t imitate someone who is going to tell about the ugliness of the cotton fields, and the oppression of industrialism. It will be false if I try to do that, and it will definitely not be a tribute. It will just be pathetic.
Then there was a long discussion about Peter’s playing style. We didn’t really agree on everything, but I claimed that he has somehow maintained his tone and expression in his guitar playing the whole time. You can hear that it is Peter O Ekberg.
In the end, it has been over four hours of conversation – I don’t want to call it an interview – that I have to listen to.
– Damn, you’re going to be tired of me, says Peter.
With those words, we part ways. But I’m not going to get tired in the first place, and there’s always an album to break off with, if the conversation starts to feel heavy. The Blue Accordingly by NP Lonesome aka Peter O Ekberg. Thirteen original songs. A pure pleasure!
I assume you’ve already listened to it. And if you haven’t, it’s available on Spotify and iTunes if you want to download it. I dare say that this is the most important album released this year. For those who love modern, cheeky, blues-based, dirty, scary, uplifting rock music, it’s a must. It’s all here. Rarely has a vocal album been so packed with wonderful guitar parts, messy riffs, and sprawling solos. Absolutely wonderful! I haven’t enjoyed an album this much since I heard Jeff Beck’s contributions on Amused To Death with Roger Waters. Although Peter O Ekberg does almost everything on his own – I’m deeply impressed. My personal favorites: the above instrumental, Blue Me X, and So Happy For You. And then all the other songs of course…
A couple of appetizers…
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