Tour Bus Diaries pt.1

It’s something around 7:45 am local time and we’re driving through Denmark right now. Yesterday we started our journey 5:00 am Finnish time so we’ve been sitting one whole day in our car so far. This time we’ve got new driver, “Ransu” with us and I think he’s got lot to learn about us. He really don’t know yet how annoying people we can be while sitting hours in a tour bus and having most extraordinary conversations with each other.

While I’m writing this blog text up to this laptop, our car navigation system tells me that we’re arriving to Berlin approximately 1:30pm today. Then we’ll have rest of the day free time and we‘re ‘bout to chill a bit. You know… something good food and maybe couple of beers. But we’re open minded so if you have some party goin’ on, make sure we get the invitation ;) 

Maybe it’s time to introduce our crew now:

As I said, this time we got new driver with us. During yesterday, he already get his new nickname and is called “Ransu” ever after. Likes it or not, he got name of the dog from Finnish TV show called “Pikku Kakkonen”. 

Maybe some of you’ll remember Markku behind our mixing table on last Central European tour? He’s here again. So lots of bad jokes and even more bad stories and ideas up to come. You don’t even want to know… just buy him a shot of Jägermeister and you’ll get new friend =)

And that’s it. Only two crew members besides band. Niina from finnbands.com will join our crew in Hamburg and then we’ll have one local language speaking person included. Also Rowan from our booking agency is traveling with Deep Insight. He’ll handle tour management and working as Deep Insight’s technical person.

That’s it for now. I need to find WLAN connection somewhere and get this text online. See You on tour and let’s have a paaarty! 

European Tour starts soon April 23rd - May 3rd!

White Flame - Tour Bus Diaries Tour 09!

Few days and the White Flame’s tour bus starts driving ahead to Central-Europe! There will be helluva road trip through the Sweden to the sunny (hopefully!) Germany and onwards to Hungary, Austria, Switzerland and France. Altogether there will be over 7500km the sitting in the car. Well, that’s the shit part of it, but I guess that there’s a much FUN to come. The new album Tour Bus Diaries is out in the Europe and the band is pretty good mood at the moment. We started our tour 2 weeks ago, and the new song seems to rock very hard. Somehow we catch the live feeling with ‘em quite quickly which is good ‘cause older songs had have time to stuck’d in your mind longer time. So I think that there will be good mix to Yesterday’s News songs and TBD songs! Too much good shit to play and we’re able to play only about 40 minutes sets ‘cause of timetable. :)
And I noticed that the weather have been great in the Central-Europe, so I really really madly deeply hope that it still continues few weeks ‘cause in Finland it’s a little different.. God damn’d I want to feel that summer shine! And another nice thing is that there’s the Ice-Hockey world championship ’09 running in the Switzerland at the same time that we arrive the country, so five hockey-maniacs might get crazy. :)

We’ll do seven shows with the Deep Insight, the Finnish emo-rockers who will release Their new album very soon and two shows with the local heroes. Here’s the venues where You can catch us, so don’t miss the Tour Bus Diaries –Tour, we really want to entertain you and rock your world! C U in next two weeks!

~Anthon~





23.04.2009, (GER) Berlin, K17
- With: Deep Insight
- Ticket pre-sale: www.ticketonline.com

24.04.2009, (GER) Hamburg, Logo
- With: Deep Insight
- Ticket pre-sale: www.ticketmaster.de

26.04.2009, (HUN) Budapest, Dürer Kert
- With: Deep Insight

27.04.2009, (AUT) Vienna, Chelsea
- With: Deep Insight
- Ticket pre-sale: www.oeticket.com

28.04.2009, (SUI) Zurich, Dynamo
- With: TBA

30.04.2009, (SUI) Uster, Rock City
- With: Deep Insight

01.05.2009, (SUI) Biel, Etage @ St. Gervais
- With: Deep Insight

02.05.2009, (GER) Crailsheim, Jugendzentrum Crailsheim
- With: Deep Insight

03.05.2009, (FRA) Paris, La Mecanique Ondulatoire
- With: High School Motherfuckers

Right here in my hands, I'm so in luv!

Hi folks!

I already knew how great it sounds, but today I finally got one copy in my hands and now I know that we really did right thing with the cover art too! (Milla at VIILTO did great job once again, thanks to Her).

You still have to wait about one or two weeks to get own copy in Your hands, but don't worry, You will get the taste what's comin' up 'cause there will be more song available in MySpace really soon!

Oh yes, can't wait the release and the tour!

~Anthon~

Excited about the show tomorrow

Just got the feeling that I need to write here something. 

It's been while when we have played a real ROCK show and you can imagine how excited we're when we jump on stage tomorrow. Last week we had acoustic show here in Tampere and it was quite fun, though I felt something was missing... you know... Sammye turns his balls shaking sound to volume ten and Anthon screams with his guitar... and Vince is throwing around the mic stand in a way you'd better look for cover behind the drumset.

It was in November when we had a real rock show before this and I can tell you that I've really waited this day to come again. It's great that we've recorded new songs for upcoming album and almost mixed all the material but these are the long days when you realize that you belong to stage.

Hope you still have patient to wait new WF album and album release tour even though we have been in silence for a while. I think we'll rock harder than ever before now when we've been of the stage and gathered all our strength and energy. At least I got that feeling!

CU soon!

Finishing the album and some guitar stuff!

Finishing the album and some guitar stuff!

Good morning to everybody in the world of White Flame and sorry that there has been so long silence. To be honest, even there’ve been lot of stuff to do we are lazy people to write. Well, but now I’m glad ‘cause the mixing sessions have been finally started. We did lot of recordings between August and January. As we told earlier we worked with sixteen songs and now fourteen survived in the mixing room.

There’s still missing horns, but we will record ‘em in the next week and after that ALL THE TRACK IS DONE! Well, I can’t believe that.. ;)

We’ve spent so many hours and days in the Deerhouse studios, specially me and Vince, but I can tell you that you will hear why (at least I hope you can) and it was worth it. Now we moved back in the Seawolf studios where the final magic happens. The mixing, post-producing, all the little hooks you know and the mastering. The biggest problem will be to decide which songs end up in the album and of course the singles. Anyway during this month we have a completed master tape in our hands. And let me tell you, that’s cool! I’m so happy! I can’t wait to introduce that new shit fo’ U! The art work is move ahead really great and we have the title of the new album, excellent! Unfortunately You and we still have to wait the releasing date a little while, but don’t be worry, you will hear it pretty soon. Stay tuned!

Okay and now little bit technical information ‘cause some of you might be interested how I do the guitar parts in the album. The basic setup was almost same that in the Yesterday’s News album. Stereo guitars (L&R) is taken with two different guitars, amps (Laboga, Mesa) and cabinets (Laboga, Marshall) with the three microphones which are pretty same in the both setups, usually =). Of course there’s a lot of variations like gain rate, pedals before amp (like boost, compressor) and sometimes different preamps, but usually when I started the guitar parts I do these main rhythm guitars first. Basic White Flame rock songs needs humbucker pickup, so I use pretty much different LesPauls in the basic rhythm parts. Jem’s Dimarzio pickup sounds very good too, specially with LesPaul so I used Ibanez also. If I remember right I used more different LesPauls in the Yesterday’s News album and now I replaced another LP track with Jem. Well anyway the setups etc. are introduced in the end.

This time I fell in love with the Fender Stratocaster so I play lot of tracks with it. In YN album there was clean/low gained Telecaster tracks, but now I found so brilliant sound with the Strat. that I used it pretty much in rhythm parts and solos. Mostly I like to use LesPaul and Jem in solos as I did. And everybody who has record with LP knows the troubles with fine tune, so when I fucked up with that, then I use PRS. They are something that you can trust with that kinda of problems, so I played some lead stuff or solos with them and little x-tra tracks. Slide stuff I did with Tokai LP and all the acoustic parts with Cuenca. Some freaking with guitar synthesizer and cool double tracks with baritone guitar, that is lot of fun!

In my case I like that there is two perfect main sounds and guitars. It’s also important thing to make recognizable basic sound for the band and of course for my self. By chancing amplifiers, different sounding guitars and put it along with other elements I can make more interesting and bigger sound, I hope. Okay, sometimes it’s good to remember that you don’t have to do the “guitar wall” in every song or from the start to the end. That’s why it’s good to mix different setups.

You thank your self if the recorded sound is already that good that you don’t have to fix it in the mix. Of course we cut the “bad frequencies” etc. to make it fit, specially ‘cause we have a bad obsession to make so many bg-voc/choir tracks, guitar tricks, keyboards, horns, strings, percussions what ever that sometimes it’s a challenge to mix it all together. The main equalization and sound is the balance of the three microphones. It’s important part of the sound. Then there’s is a 6 or 4 band EQ with Low/High Pass Filter and some tracks will go trough the external three band compressor. Some extra tracks or solo tracks are taken only with two microphones ‘cause there no need to make it so large.

In the mixing process we also do the final delay, echo and special effects. Some of them have done already in the recordings, but specially the delay/echo and very radical stuff is more safely to do in the end in my opinion.

For example I love the EH memory man deluxe kinda of delay sound and some tape-delay stuff so Line 6 Echo Park –plug-in or Tel-Ray –plug-in works for me!

Well, here is the list of the equipments that I used in the recordings. If you got some questions in your mind (ok, maybe after you’ve heard the album) feel free to ask.

Now let’s finalize the next masterpiece ;)

Take care, hopefully we all stay health and happy New Year to all of You!

-Anthon

Anthon’s Gtr-Gear in Studio 2008

Guitars:

Gibson Les Paul Custom 1970

Fender Stratocaster 25th Anniversary -54/-79

Ibanez Jem7VWH

Paul Reed Smith Standard 22

Paul Reed Smith CE24

Tokai LoveRock Les Paul with Seymour Duncan pickups (slide tune “A”)

Danelectro Baritone Guitar

Cuenca NW 10-elec. acoustic guitar

Ibanez X-ING IMG2010 Guitar Synthesizer Controller

Epiphone Boneyard Les Paul

Harley Benton HBN100 (Dobro)

Amps/Cabs/Mics:

Laboga Mr. Hector

Mesa Boogie TriAxis

Marshall JCM 2000

GT Trio 25^th anniversary silver edition

ENGL Tube Preamp

Groove Tubes RF-1 Soul-o-series. (Shure SM57, Sennheiser MD-421)

Mesa Boogie SIMUL 295 Stereo

Marshall 1960TV cabinet (TSM Ribbon, Shure SM58, EV N/D468)

Laboga 4x12 celestion vintage 30 cabinet (EV N/D468, AudioTechnica AT4060, Shure SM58)

Pedals/FX:

Roland GR-300 Polyphonic Guitar Synthesizer

Roland GR-700 Guitar Sunthesizer

Roland PG-200 Programmer

Solton Cathedral Echo Model F-300

VOX Bber the Top Boost, cooltron tube techonoly.

VOX Snake Chermer Compressor, cooltron tube technology.

BBE Mind Bender

MXR Phase90

Morley Bad Horsie 2 Wah

Dunlop Cry Baby wah

Boss BD-2 Blues Driver,

Boss TR-2 Tremolo,

Boss CE-3 Compressor/Sustainer,

Boss GE-7 Graphic Equalizer,

Boss TU-2 Cromatic Tuner,

Danelectro Free Speech TalkBox

Dynacord Tam 19

Pics:

Guitars, one missing.

Main amps! Secret of the sound: Mamba ticket!

GT compo, we did some very cool 70's stuff.

Guitar cabinets and mics.

Some Guitar Synth stuff, freaky! And used pedals.

Long echo.. we did nice backround harmonies.

Trough Vince's lens

I had a camera with me and once in a while I remembered to snap a shot or two. Most of them are shaky but at least some are useable and not filled with passing genitals. Have fun checkin' us nutjobs out, eh!


This here is a VW Sprinter, The Bang Bus or "home". That's where me, Jony(pic), Anthon and Sammye spent two weeks while we rode trough various euro-countries playin' shows in pretty much all of them. A Sprinter is...well cozy enough even for four guys for such a long time but we had to fit a few extra members as well.


Some of You might recodnize this charming character from behind the mixing table at our live shows. You can call him Markku. We call him a bunch of names but I don't think he'd appreciate me writing them here.


Say hi to our driver Jusu. It was his first time driving round rock hippies, but he managed to keep his sanity. Jusu also did a fantastic job with selling our merchandise.



And finally, this is Niina, or "Mami" as the crew called her. She took care of our daily routines but also managed to fit in a jäger or two.


We tried to use our time in the car wisely, so often one of us was trying to put their hair in order...


...alltough it did go horribly wrong while driving on the bumpy roads in Poland. (Poodle, Hah!)


Ahhh, good Ol' Sammye! He was very popular with the females over there in Central Europe. Perhpaps it's his way with (german) words that gets the fans all worked up. He did more authographs and is now featured in more MySpace profile pictures than the rest of us.




Usually after the shows I was soaking wet and totally beat. You should've seen the bruises on my feet after all that mic stand kickin' and knee droppin'!But me and the bro, we had a little secret...




Are you sure that's Lovex and not White Flame?



Or is this Lovex?


Now THIS is White Flame!!



Oh yes! Miss You we will!! It was a long and exhausting journey but we had

Cool shows(I'm in the crowd BTW)...


...tasty and nutricious food and drink...


...new (and improved) frindships..


... and even reuniting some siblings. All in all that was time well spent. After two weeks of constant travelling and doing shows it was time to head on home. But first we got some packin' to do since half of our stuff had been riding in the Lovex bus.




You got that last piece? Good, let's go home now?


PHEW! What a ride! Have as back real soon now! For pictures that actually include me(and maybe the others too), go to Myspace and check out pics sent in by all of You wonderful Flames and Flamettes!

Cheers! Vince

Vocalist's log, rockstardate 5.8.2008, 10:39

So here I am, fresh out of the shower with a cup of coffee and a keyboard. All I would need now is some crushed pineapple and curd and I'll be set.

It's day two here at Seawolf studios. Or day three, as we arrived on sunday already. It would seem to be that whenever we make an album me and Jony must travel to the scene together. Just like last time, I watched aside as he packed his VW Golf with drums and guitars as well as our personal stuff. Well, at least we saved some space since we didn't have that big Nokia bag I used to carry around. This time I only took a backbag. Oh, and my PS2.

Yesterday was the first day of recording. We are doing Jony's parts this week. It's just me, Jony and Anthon here, with Petri Majuri pressing the record-button. We got off to a good start, waking up around 10:00(Yeah, I couldn't believe it either!) and pretty much starting right away. I think it helps alot that we are doing the drums the same way as last time. Jony and Petri had no trouble in finding a satisfying tuneup for the drums and setup for the mikes. The only thing we went back to adjust was the tone of the snare drum. But It's safe to say that everyone is pleased with it now.

No matter how You prepare these tunes, theres always some new crazy shit You come up with once that rec-light is on. It's only when You hear the actual tracks with a proper sound that You can notice if something is missing or something could just be like a gazillion times cooler. Poor Jony's had so much to remember in just one day that if he'd have to do them over today he wouldn't know what goes where. But luckily me and Anthon get to mess with his head with completely new stuff today.

Well, I should be going now since I hear some banging(although I can barely hear it over Kakko's powermetal voice) coming from our headquarters. They can't possibly manage without my snotty remarks and stupid ideas.