"Ladies and gentlemen, a great applause for this excellent band!”


Interview with Rikard Sjöblom

By Sergio Vilar

Let us make some history, Rikard. How were the beginnings of Beardfish? 
Beardfish was founded in 2000 by guitarist David Zackrisson and I (Rikard). We had the idea of starting a band without principals or fear of throwing ourselves into whatever direction the music would take us. In the beginning we were a quartet, with me on vocals and guitar, David on guitar, a drummer named Petter Diamant (Bootcut, Baron Bane) and a bassplayer named Gabriel Olsson. However, the music we played five years ago didn’t really please Petter musically, and although he did not actually quit, we started looking for a new drummer. We stumbled across this explosive “jazz-student-who-really-wanted-to-play-prog-more-than-anything-else-in-the-whole-wide-world” called Magnus Östgren and tried him out. The choice was crystal clear and he’s been with us ever since. Magnus has this rather sloppy, real heavy style of playing the drums that you seldom hear these days – It’s a little like John Bonham meets Bill Bruford. After Magnus joined in, all of a sudden we had all this energy to do stuff, rehearse all the time and I was writing a lot of new songs. We were recording with a guy named Stefan Aronsson in his studio and one day while I was recording some keyboards I said that it would be good to have a keyboardist so we could add it to our live sound. Stefan immediately pointed at himself and said “Oh, I can play!” He had actually played some flute on the recordings so we talked it over and then decided to let him in. Stefan is a guitarist really (like me) and he is a very musical person, so he just started playing keyboards and it worked out fine. The only problem now was Gabriel, who had trouble keeping up with the others. Gabriel is a great guy, but his bassplaying wasn’t that great. He had no problem playing what you showed him or told him to play, but that was the point, we wanted someone who when he/she felt something, would, and could, act on it. I talked to David, Magnus and Stefan and said that we had to find another bassplayer or we would just stand still and not evolve at all. Magnus had known Robert Hansen forever, they were childhood friends, and he had been sitting in on our rehearsals, listening to us play, promoting our demo recordings to people with such big words that you would think he was in the band. And then he was! I don’t think I understood how good Robert actually is until we started playing, but he basically knew the songs better than Gabriel already at his first rehearsal. He plays on feeling, he fills the gaps, he IS music, and much of the Beardfish sound can be credited to him alongside David Zackrissons very personal guitar style. After Robert joined the band we recorded “Från En Plats Du Ej Kan Se…” (“From a place you cannot see…” ) and when we printed the album Stefan said he wanted to quit! We felt satisfied with the album so we released it anyway and the rest is history…

Your music is characterized to be an interesting combination among many different styles. In your opinion, what elements do they define the identity of your music? 
We, as a band, like a lot of different music and although I write most of the songs, they wouldn’t be the same without the addition of Davids, Roberts and Magnus personal touch. I have been heavily in to Zappa and King Crimson, also Gentle Giant, and sure, you can hear that in the compositions, but then along comes Magnus and plays a totally different beat on his drums than I first had in mind, because he’s been listening to Thin Lizzy or Camel that day. David is in to practically everything, he can listen to Buck 65 (hip-hop) as easily as King Crimson. These things happen all the time, and the influences vary a lot for us.

Where do you find your inspiration? Which are your reasons to compose? 
I can only speak for myself, but when I write songs for Beardfish I often begin with a melody of some sort. I play around with chords and eventually find something that my ears pick up and the brain starts to mumble that it wants to make music. The inspiration can be anything, hearing a good song is a frequent reason to write one yourself. The reason to compose is because I must, otherwise I would go crazy, ha ha!

We speak then of “The Sane Day”, your new album. Which is the general idea of the work? 
The idea was never a concept album, and it still isn’t actually. That was something that came as a surprise at the end of the process, you know. “Hey, there’s a lot of references to a place call Mudhill here, what’s that about?”, or “Who’s Dwight the ballroom dancer?”. It really isn’t a concept album, but sure, it has internal concepts (I just feel this needs to be said). We just had a lot of new songs that we wanted to record, so we did. We rented a cottage out in the woods outside of Gävle and brought along all our gear and borrowed recording equipment. Then we stayed there for a week and recorded the basic tracks, practically 24-7. We produced it ourselves together with a dear friend named Björn Arnell.

When it came to decide what tracks would end up on the actual album, we faced trouble because someone would say that one song had to be in the album and another would say a different song, in the end there was not room on one disc. Someone hatched the idea of a double CD, and that was it.

And that you can tell me of the lyrics? What topics do you try in them? 
I am not in to writing lyrics about politics and stuff like that, although it probably happens sometimes anyway. I write to react, I hear something that makes me glad or pisses me off and I react by writing some words that ends up a Beardfish lyric. Then there is this other storytelling side of me that wants to tell you about all these fictive persons like Dwight in “The Gooberville Ballroom Dancer” or Captain Flurry in “Tall Tales” and I like that too. I really enjoy writing about goofy personalities.

Which is the process when preparing a disk? How do you develop the concept? 
The concept almost always comes naturally, we just make the songs come alive and then we record them and try to make our best effort in doing so.

The sound treatment one of your concerns is in the music? 
If you mean Hi-Fi, then both yes and no, we want our albums to sound good, but not like everything you hear on the radio. If you mean dressing our albums in sounds of synthesizers and percussion, and decorating our music in general, then yes. Sound effects are also a favourite.

Which do you believe that they are the most significant changes that it has experienced your music with the step of the time, from “Från En Plats Du Ej Kan Se” to the present? 
The biggest step was probably that Stefan Aronsson left the band to concentrate more on his other projects (check out www.baronbane.com – they’re great). He had very little time to rehearse etc. and when he left we could play almost everyday if we wanted to, so we had a very creative period after that. Also, I decided to take over his seat at the keyboards and concentrate on that part more than the guitar (although I still play a lot of guitar) and the four piece outfit we are now is the best outfit we have ever been.

Would you say that it is for you a necessity the one it is of looking for always something different? 
I think that if you are all about music, and nothing else really gives you that pleasure, then this comes naturally to you. You just have to fasten your seatbelt and let the music take you there!

Which is your perception of what happens at the present time to the music? 
There are many good bands out there, and here in Sweden as well. The problem with music and people is that “ordinary Joe” does not listen to what he doesn’t hear on the radio or see on the TV. And you will probably not see us or our fellow Sweden Liquid Scarlet on Jay Leno any time soon.

What music type do you usually listen? Can you be that you have been listening lately?       
I personally listen to all types of music, so do the other guys in the band. Lately I’ve been listening a lot to The Band, after I saw “The Last Waltz” I fell in love with their music.

How will the next album be? How so advanced the composition of the new songs is?  
We have a handful of new songs, the next album will probably not be a double (maybe a triple, ha ha!). This is gonna sound boring, but the next album is going to take off where we leave you at the end of “The Sane Day” and take it to a new place.

Alone for curiosity. When don't you make what a music you like to make? 
When we don’t write music we like, we throw it away, or give it to stupid friends, ha ha…

Thank you to respond our questions Rikard. Do you want to add something?
No, I think it’s alright. Well, you can check out www.beardfish.argh.se our future home on the web!

Nucleus interview: 14/12/05