May 29, 2018 – Upsalla, Sweden – Venue – Katalina (Ulf’s Room)

This is one of my favorite places to play in Sweden and Katalina is one of my favorite people to visit. She is the proprietor of this quite large beautiful and beautifully kept place.. she who does everything from cooking the food .. hosting the events people overseeing the bar .. she is extraordinarily hard-working, very straightforward and nice and best of all… My friend.
Ulf’s Music room is quite charming holding about 100 people with a little stage .. perfect for Göran and me
We are so fortunate tonight to have one of the best sound men in the business, my good friend John from Norrtalja, to come here especially to do our sound… to Göran and me, it sounds amazingly good in a matter of minutes… And it stayed that way for the entire show… The way you can observe a great sound man is to see if he is still sitting behind his desk or he is out in the audience enjoying the show. If he is out in the audience enjoying the show then it means that everybody is happy and there are no tricks played with the sound. And that was the case tonight …John was out the audience from start to finish. Huge thanks John.
The show
Again, it was one long show tonight for an amazingly warm and responsive audience.
It was certainly like we were playing for a bunch of friends and the spirit of that kind of show is the best for us… Plenty of interaction … wonderful highlights
We started out with the trilogy of “Last Chance“ songs… The Real Thing, Son of a Rotten Gambler and I Wasn’t Born in Tennessee… These all seemed to connect and we were on to the new album of new songs, “Fix Your Words” with “Whatever Devil is in Me“ and the title song “Fix Your Words“..
These seem to connect on a very high level with Goran and the audience and me . A requested “Track 224” got us a bit on the lighter and more up-tempo side and showed off the virtuosity of my great friend from Norway!! The audience seemed to love this, interrupting Goran’s playing with bliss of clapping here and there.
Sometime soon after there was a wonderful segment that let the audience get to know my wife Joan a little bit better and join my wife and me at one of our typical evenings at a Japanese restaurant run by Chinese people.. with Joan Joan Joan – after playing that we ended a little segment with the Joan inspired song …the title song of my previous album, “A Song I can Live With“. This was definitely one of the big highlights!
Shortly after a warm version of “Angel of the Morning “
with the audience singing along we did a loose version of “Wild Thing” which had the audience whispering the chorus in such a soulful manner…just great! Loved all of this.
But I guess my favorite part of the show came at the end when we did the song I wrote for the prisoners which is now a Spotify hit, “Fuck All the Perfect People” ..with the audience singing along..
Then we drifted to more special requests; for my friend Tony Pankhurst, who had just flown in from England for the show, we did one of his favorite songs.. “Here I Am” which was my first hit song as an artist back in 1962 on Warner Bros.
Then we did a requested “Charcoal Sky” from my album “Yonkers New York“.. then it was another request, “Theme for an American Hero”.
As we were about to leave the stage, another request came from the right side of the room for one of my favorite songs, “Block out the Sirens of this Lonely World” I loved doing this tonight!
We ended the night with a favorite of mine that I hadn’t done for a long long time from the album “Black and Blue America”… “The Ship“.
What a night! One of my favorites in memory!
One thing that should be said is my cohort, Goran Grini. loves to be on the edge… Having to play according to certain inspiration that he feels… And that’s the way it was all night particularly with the requests which we haven’t played in a while… or that he had never heard before…And that always leads to a connection with us that makes the show so so inspired and rewarding.
Said hi to several including:
Heli, Sophia and Jasmus, Who were there a full hour before the show just the nicest young folks you could be.. thanks so much for the support… so nice visiting with you… Heli send best regards to Ted .. here’s wishing you both a very happy anniversary! .. say hello to Yari and Lena… hope to see them next time!
Hi Andy thanks for the kind words… Hi Gernana. Thanks for the kind words as well look forward to seeing you soon..
Hi Stephanie Daniel… so great to see you on the side singing along with so many of the songs… And thanks so much for your request of “Block out the Sirens..” I loved singing that for you!
Hi Hilding! Great seeing you again and again.. thanks for all your support over the years and very big hello to your friend Eva.. so nice to meet you.
Great to see a couple of university new fans and friends… Hi Joe… Thanks for being here and thanks for telling your friends Hannes about my music… Hannes, thanks so much for being here as well and I hope you enjoy “Yonkers New York”.
They hello to my friend Eric and other friends from Norrtalja.. and huge thanks to John for the great sound all night.. it doesn’t get better than this!!
Huge thanks to my great friend Hakan Olsson. Who has been a great tour guide for this entire show… But most important is just great to ride with a friend.. the road does not get better than that!
And a special hello to Will for organizing this show in this town so nice to meet you will and your lovely friend Karen …what a nice couple.