Steve ‘n’ Seagulls are putting their native Finland on the world map of bluegrass music.
The band have gained quick recognition in recent years for their searing bluegrass covers of classic rock songs, most popularly their 'hillbillified' version of ‘Thunderstruck’ by AC/DC. “At first, this was just a side project to play acoustic shows here and there, but it kind of stayed alive,” band leader Tomi Tajakka explains.
“At first it was maybe more towards a Spaghetti Western type of thing, there were some songs that had twangy electric guitar and stuff like that, but then I guess growing up we got more into acoustic instruments – guitar, upright bass, stuff like that – so it has been evolving year by year.”
Steve ‘n’ Seagulls have released three albums since 2015, comprised of both covers and original songs. This year, Steve ‘n’ Seagulls flip-flop-fly their way south for their first-ever Australian shows, appearing at Bluesfest and Perth Festival.
“None of us have ever been even close to Australia, so I think the first thing we did was to Google all the poisonous snakes and spiders you guys have there because we don’t have any of that here,” Tomi laughs.
“Personally, I’m really looking forward to see how people react to music live. A lot of time when we go play somewhere, we like to go to the merch desk to meet a lot of people, meet the local people, so I’m looking forward to [the] cultural differences and everything like that. Of course, the performing part is the number-one thing, so I have no idea how Australian people react to live music.”
As Steve ‘n’ Seagulls continue to evolve as a musical force, Tomi says he’s excited to see what form the band takes next as they enter the studio to begin work on their fourth album. “We have about 50 per cent original and 50 per cent of covers at this point that we’re demoing – 15, 16, 17 songs, something like that,” he reports.
“We’ll be feeling really good. The line-up of the band changed a little bit last year and working together, there’s a lot of new energy in the band so we have a lot of good songs and good cover songs coming up.”
With the band back in the studio, there’s every chance audiences in Australia will get to see the latest version of Steve ‘n’ Seagulls by the time they arrive on our shores.
“We’ll be in the studio for three or four weeks,” Tomi says, “and hopefully we’ll be finding the new evolution of the band too in terms of making the best album so far and making the album the most complete, if you know what I mean, like a whole as an album – finding new sounds, getting more and more forward with the band, like what we’ve been trying to do on every album, so maybe those are the things we want to achieve on this fourth album.”
