Sonata Arctica Unia Promo Tour Diary

North America

Hello again people!

Tony & I just came back from the promo trip in New York and there's of course a small bunch of events to bring to light. We had a total blast even if there were some things trying to kick us down (mainly a lost wallet). Ok, so here's the day by day account:

Saturday, 31st of March:

Naturally I will start off with whining about the early wake up (0500) and the fucking flights and layovers = 23 hours total travel time from Kokkola to NYC. So, you can imagine in what shape we arrive at the customs in New York. As we're waiting for our bags, a customs-dude in uniform comes up and starts chatting and asking questions, no problem there but when we have our bags and he puts a hand on each of ours shoulders stating: Let's go boys, both me and Tony can't think of anything else than the upcoming rubbergloveparty. Fortunately that's not the case, instead he rushes us past the line and we get out faster than usually. Our record company rep. Loana is about to have a heart attack when she sees us coming out with an escort, but she recovers fast enough not to pass out. At this point we've been up for around 26 hours with just occasional dozing off on the airplane, so we're ready to hit the hotel and pass out. (Yeah, yeah, I know, I still had to go to the bar next door for a couple of cold ones but basically this was the end of the night...)

Sunday, April Fool's Day:

After a breakfast in the nearby cafe, and checking out Nightwish's funny April Fool's joke, it's time to start the day. As I look on my schedule there's interviews from 11am to 5:30pm with a lunch break in between so it's really not that bad. Of course, I manage to screw up the beginning by destroying my phonecard (by accident I may add) but after I get it running it's no problem anymore and the day just passes by pretty quickly. We were trying to get to go to the Rangers game in the evening but that backfired so it's basically just dinner and some beer. We walk around a little and then enjoy the beauty that is American television before hitting the sack. I wonder if we can get Comedy Central here in Europe ?

Monday, 2nd of April:

Another early morning, actually not that early (0800), but fucked up by the time difference I wake up around 0530. Alrighty then, we quickly move over to the NBC studios to get stand-by tickets for the Conan O'Brien show (another thing that will backfire later on) and on the way we catch a performance of Beyoncé or however you spell it....anyways, the hot chick from All Saints. At the same time we spot Kevin Spacey from a distance but don't manage to shout Kayser Soze. Maybe better that way. Next up is an interview for Metal Maniacs which is accompanied by a couple of pre-dinner beers. At 12:30 we head out to a Vietnamese restaurant to have a dinner with a bunch of journalists, distribution people etc. Naturally there's a lot of joking going on and a pile of beers for at least some of us. Then to the Caroline distribution offices to meet with staff and VIP's. This of course is very enlightening, but unfortunately they have no beer, a mistake that is promised to be taken care of by the next time we'll drop by. A quick swing by NBC studios shows that we won't make it to the Conan taping (they were letting the 50 first people in and we had the numbers 54-56) whatever....back to the hotel and an hour of rest before the listening party at Lit Lounge. This was basically us playing the new album, hanging out with fans and Dj:ing some. It was fuckin' awesome to meet sooo many cool people and have a good time. (I think some magazine covered it with pictures etc. so I won't go into detail that much)...Jens dropped by and later on we went to a bar called Cutting Room and got totally wasted.

Tuesday, 3rd of April:

Hangover, for the first time on this trip...nice :) Lucky as I am, there's just a couple of radio interviews set up for the afternoon and those go by quite easily and at around 5 pm it's time for another VIP dinner with all kinds of new people. This time it's at a Thai place and the food rules ! As well as the beer ! On the dinner we get a recommendation to watch a play called Avenue Q , but as usual it's sold out. Maybe we oughta learn a lesson from this, if you want to go to an event of any kind get your tickets in advance and not on the same day....it won't fucking work. Amen. As we have no plans for the evening we meet up with Munsey our radiopromo guy and a couple of his friends Bobby & Bobby Jr as well as Jens. We have a MODERATE amount of whisky & beer and hang out, chatting about a whole bunch of stuff which basically is of no concern to anybody else. Nevertheless, a nice laid-back evening.

Wednesday, 4th of April:

The only thing scheduled for this day is a feature for the Revolver magazine around noon. The basic idea is that we get some equipment and have 2 hours time to compose & record a song. You can read more about what happened in the upcoming Revolver magazine and the song can be downloaded on the web. In short it was a lot of fun dickin' around and we ended up recording a funny short song. I'm not sure I'm allowed to release the title yet, so I just keep my mouth shut. Be that as it may, I think most of you will find it as amusing as we did. Ok, enough said, the rest of the day was shopping, eating, catching the limo ride back to the airport and sitting in 3 different airplanes before finally hitting the home couch.

Cheers & thanks NYC !

Shit, a couple of more things that I forgot to mention: As me & Tony already said to the people at the listening party, Jani won't be able to make it to the US/Can-tour this year. This is due to his servingthecountry-mess which is still in progress and as we need to start applying working permits shortly he won't be able to make it. This sucks ass of course but there's really nothing we can do about it. Other than that, things seem to be running well and we actually have seen the preview of the video which looks fuckin' great ! Can't wait for everybody else to see it....this is way better than any previous videos in my opinion. We have a couple of promo trips still to make, namely Europe & Japan, and I'll probably check in after them as well, and of course as the tour starts there will be more insane tales from the road.

Japan

May 20th-27th

Contrary to the usual routine, I'm writing this a couple of weeks after the actual fact so I'm bound to rely on my somewhat scattered memories. Be that as it may, and let's get on with the story:

Somewhat jetlagged we arrive in Tokyo on Sunday morning. After a quick meeting about the schedule, it's up to Tony & me to stay awake and make our best to adjust ourselves to Tokyo time asap. Our efforts fall a bit short and with an afternoon nap we secure the fact that there'll be little or no sleep during our first night in Japan.

Which is of course what happened. Come Monday morning and work as usual. The day pretty much passes by in the same vein as on the previous promo-trips. Interviews follow one another, with short breaks every now and then. A dinner with our label people and some beers later we head back to the hotel, having completed some 6+ hours of interviews. I watch some movies and pass out.

Tuesday starts pretty much as the day before, after noon we head out to Asakusa for some photosession. Basically we're walking around all day, shopping etc. and the photographer whirls around us with his camera. Later it's time for our first in-store appearance. We get picked up and head towards HMV-Shibuya. A couple of hours are spent, first doing somekinda interview on stage and then signing stuff with fans. It's really nice to hang out and talk to people even though these kind of situations don't really leave time for anything but a quick hello.

Hotel and sleep is up next which suits us more than well, however yours truly heads out to the nightlife ending up having a blast and almost ruining the next day.

One hour of sleep is not really enough when your about to do a full day of interviews mainly for radio & tv. Maybe there is some lesson to be learned here (once again). Wednesday starts out with an interview with Captain Wada and continues with us driving around to different radiostations etc. Luckily there's a short 20 min here and there and I get through the day by doing short "power-naps" in between interviews. By the time we move over to the in-store event at Tower Records in Shinjuku at 7:30 in the evening I'm almost awake. Some hours later we're back at the hotel and I am done.

No news here, it's get up and get out and around noon we're at the Marquee (our label) offices doing interviews. One of the more interesting things happens around 3 o'clock when we move over to Keyboard magazines offices. A photo-session and interview after which I'm requested to play some solo licks. Of course it would have been nice to know this in advance, but whattahell - after all this is my job. I finish off the whisky-bottle I've been sipping on and play some of the licks I've used in solos. Anyways, next we drop by the Finnish Fest 2007, which is basically a midem-type exhibition in a smaller scale, showing all kinds of Finnish music. A quick bite and it's time for the highlight of the night: Watching Stratovarius perform at Ebisu Liquid Room. The show is naturally really cool and afterwards we have some drinks, later it's bar hopping time....well you know the rest.

Our friends at Marquee know what kinds of actions will happen when Finnish guys meet their peers so Friday's first scheduled event is a signing session, "Disk Union" at 5:30 late afternoon. I pretty much spend the day sleeping, while Tony walks around Shibuya, shopping or something. We hook up for dinner before work and then jump in the van for a drive of an hour or so (yeah, I have now idea where this store actually was). The session runs pretty smoothly and soon we're back in the car driving towards the Liquid Room once again. Tonight we get to see Apocalyptica as well but the bar-scene is something I decide to pass on as well.

Our last working day in Japan starts off with a train-ride to Osaka where we have a special fan-event. Yoshi from our label and Captain Wada start the event and as we join them on stage we do a lenghty interview. Later there's somekinda lottery thing etc. before we start the signing session. After a couple of hours we're done and sit down in the bullet train. As we head back to Tokyo we open some celebration beers to mark the end of this promotion-trip.

Sunday:

For me the celebration continues and ends when I realize I'm about to miss the shuttle to the airport (this happens around 0700 on Sunday morning), I make it just in time (however considerably later than agreed) before the ride leaves. The flight home is spent sleeping and by the time I arrive in Kokkola I'm pretty sober.

This was the last of the three promo-trips Tony & I made to promote our new album Unia. All in all it went pretty smoothly and we met A LOT of people and talked more than enough (even for me). There's still some phoners to be done every now and then but now it's finally time to tour which is fucking great!