Swedish band The Green Line Travelers provide further evidence that classic country music lives and breathes outside of the Texas and Tennessee borders. Their recently released album BAKER’S BOG BLOWOUT created quite a stir at Lonesome Highway. It combines some killer original tunes alongside a selection of classic cover songs and is honky tonk heaven for lovers of that genre. We tracked them down to find out more about their passion for all things old school country and a whole lot more. Daniel Bjorkande, the band’s lead guitarist, kindly responded on behalf of the band to our questions.
Sweden has become very popular in recent years for touring Country and Americana artists. Are you noticing an increased appetite for those musical genres?
Maybe so. There are a few booking agencies that have an eye out for great country and Americana acts, also upcoming ones, so at least there have been opportunities for Swedes to go and listen to great bands and artists. There’s been a show called “Jills veranda”, “Jill’s Porch” in English, that has aired on national television in later years. The plot is that a Swedish artist goes to meet Swedish country artist Jill in Nashville and gets to cover a country song and go through a bucket list. It may have grown an awareness for the more general public and a hipster or two that country music isn’t just Shania Twain. A lot of great artists have appeared in the background (Charlie McCoy, Hogslop Stringband, Sierra Ferrell, Johnny Hiland) and episodes have given viewers a glimpse of e.g., American Legion Post 82.
Tell me the history behind The Green Line Travelers?
TGLT formed in late summer 2013. David Ritschard and Agnes Oden were performing with their bluegrass outfit Spinning Jennies at a Swedish roots music festival and met bass player Anders Hojlund. They had talks about forming a rockabilly band. Anders knew me and asked me to join on electric guitar. It soon morphed into a hillbilly outfit when they got to the actual playing. The line-up was completed with drummer Fabian Ris Lundblad, actually a schooled drummer who had been studying jazz at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, but also a keen admirer of country and bluegrass. After the line-up was completed TGLT had their first gig in February of 2014.
Initially we played a lot of rockabilly festivals in Sweden, with recurring dates in Stockholm where we grew a small following of family and friends. Our EP was recorded very early in our career: it featured two original tunes and one was a polka, in the style of The Buckaroos. Digging deeper into classic country we got the idea to get Nudie-styled suits and found Maria Bansgaard Køster, North Country Maiden, and had her make suits for us. It might have been what caught the attention of the organizers of the Nashville Boogie Festival in Nashville and we were invited to play there in 2017. It was quite an overwhelming experience and we met a lot of nice people and had some fun gigs and festivities.
Where did your own love of classic country develop from?
Each one of us could probably give our own answer to that question, but in short you could say that for David, Fabian and Agnes, classic country music grew on them from their love of bluegrass music, whereas for Anders it was the rockabilly connection, while I approached classic country through a love of classic soul music, like Motown/Stax. When the band got together it started out as more of a hillbilly band, but it has slowly grown to become a classic honky-tonk country outfit. Now we are knee-deep into classic country and there is probably no turning back. For the record we got pedal steel player David Wigstrand to do his thing. We’ve admired his playing for quite some time and he really put his mark on the record.
You were awarded "Honky-tonk Group of the Year" at the Ameripolitan Music Awards in 2018. How did that nomination come about in the first place?
That’s a good question! We were deeply honoured. Our recorded output at that time wasn't really representative of how we sounded then, we had already moved on to more classic country. We might have had some help from a few semi-live videos filmed by Chris Magee (Bopflix) that were filmed when we played Nashville Boogie.
You buy into the total package of old-time country including the fashion aspect. How important is this to you?
We’d say that's really important. Of course, music is the main thing and dressing down can be a blunt statement as well, but for us the stage outfits is kind of a ritual. It frames the live performances to be a very important solemn thing and a way to pay our respects to the music and also to the audience that might be listening or dancing to our music. Also, a thing like Nudie-styled suits can create a certain kind of vibe and at best an extra layer to the experience. For our new record we chose to leave our suits, maybe to try to not be framed as just a costume act (we love acts with costumes). We have a Volvo on the front cover and Göran with his flamenco suit on the front cover. For the band photos we couldn’t leave out a cowboy hat though.
I understand that the band’s title borrows its title from a subway in Stockholm. Where did the title of your recently released album BAKER’S BOG BLOWOUT come from?
That’s correct, our band name is a reference to the green subway line that runs to the Southern parts of Stockholm where we started out and had our first rehearsal space. “Baker’s Bog” and for that matter “Blowout” are direct translations of stops on that line. For a reference to our EP - Highvalley is yet another stop. Also, we thought Baker’s Bog was slightly reminiscent of Bakersfield.
When and where was the album recorded?
It was recorded on Gotland, the island east of the Swedish mainland in the Baltic Sea. The purpose was to isolate ourselves and be thoroughly focused on recording the album. The studio, Vall Recording Studio, is located in a barn. The basic tracks were recorded in the spring of 2019 and there were plans to release it that summer, but lead singer David had a breakthrough as a solo artist singing country music in Swedish that summer and then covid struck. Then additional overdubs were recorded in Stockholm last year. Initially the plan was to postpone the release to after the pandemic, but since no one knows when that is we went through and did it.
The well-chosen covers on the album include songs previously performed by George Jones, Connie Smith and Conway Twitty. You’ve recorded these quite similar to the original versions. Were you tempted to reconstruct these songs or would you have viewed this as musical sacrilege?
Foremost we chose them because they are amazing songs and that they fit with our original songs and the record as a whole. We just tried to record them in the simplest possible manner, kind of like a lot of country acts and also rock bands did in the 50s and 60s, like: “this is a hit that just came out. Let’s just record it in a similar manner as the hit, we might get a hit as well.” Kind of like pretending these were not 60-year-old songs. Ha-ha, I don’t think we are gatekeepers out to stop musical sacrilege. We encourage musical sacrilege if it serves the song and art. However, The Green Line Travelers might not be the band to break the fold, invent new musical genres and expose the world to sounds never heard before. We’re sing-and-dance women and men.
The song Honky Tonk Saturday night is wonderful. It features Kristina Murray, a much-loved artist at Lonesome Highway, on vocals. How did that connection come about?
Thank you very much. We think Kristina is wonderful too and we are very glad that the song has been well received. Initially we met her at the Nashville Palace when we played the Boogie. I think we heard her perform with JP Harris and somehow, she got around to talk to Fabian. Next, we met her in Memphis at the Ameripolitan Awards where we were nominated in the honky tonk group and female categories respectively and said hi. When she toured Sweden with Southern Ambrosia, we crossed paths again at a festival and she did a great gig. It was probably then when I had that song in the can and thought her voice would fit well with Fabian’s as a duet. Fabian mailed and asked her and she recorded her part with Michael Rinne in Nashville.
Was the song Honky Tonk Tuesday Night on the album inspired by the now legendary Tuesday night sessions at The American Legion in East Nashville?
Yes. We have played there three times. The first night especially had a quite cinematic quality about it. Like a Tarantino movie or that scene in True Detective where a band plays “One-Woman Man” in the background? It felt really cinematic to be in Nashville at this place where they serve light beer, the water tastes like chlorine and these people in the audience aren’t faking it, they are doing the two-step for real and their cowboy hats are a part of their culture. And there were young people too. Probably hard to relate to for an American, that their everyday life can be that romantic for Swedes, but we have grown up with that on TV and it was like stepping into your own romantic dreams. So, the song is a tribute to those sessions, the Legion and what’s good about East Nashville.
Have you had the opportunity to have a full-scale album launch with the current restrictions due to Covid?
No, sadly not. We haven’t yet scheduled a release gig either. It looks like the restrictions for live gigs might remain for a long time in Sweden.
Where do you see your market in practical terms? Are you looking locally, further afield in Europe or America?
Well, locally (nationally in Sweden) lead singer David’s solo career is looking to take off, so we might have to look elsewhere. On the other hand, a legendary Swedish music critic wrote in his review of the record that we deserved a big break. We’ve saved that in our scrapbook. We know little about a European country scene but we would love to tour more in Europe. Thus far, we have been in Finland and France, and have had a covid-postponed gig in the UK. We’ve had some nice compliments for the record from Ireland and the UK. We'd love to do gigs there. Please reach out!
Obviously, we’d love to go back to the US and do an actual tour. For example, it would be another romantic dream come true to play one of those Texas dance halls. Would they two-step to “Pretend Girlfriend” and “Nine For My Pride”? That would be something. The next step might be to try to get on country radio (or at least the outlaw/classic/retro kind) all over so that a hypothetically interested audience might get to hear us. Either way we are thrilled about how the record has been received, and the kind words that have been said.
Interview by Declan Culliton