Continental Shift:  2. Finland

The second of our European countries and we’re heading north, to a place with more than 180,000 lakes!

When I told Americana UK colleague, Martin Johnson, that I was working on this series he suggested that I might want to check out a Finnish americana band, called Jack’s Basket Room. Finnish americana?! And a band with a great name like that?! One of the things I’ve loved about researching this series has been the strange rabbit holes it has led me down and the fascinating bands I’ve encountered in the process. I originally wanted to include Sweden in this series, it being the country that has had the most commercial success, internationally, with its americana acts. Unfortunately, none of the Swedish artists I tried to contact responded and I was casting around for a country to replace it. Once I started talking to Pasi Nissinen, one of the guitarists from Jack’s Basket Room, and he’d clued me in on a few more Finnish americana bands, I knew I had my Nordic connection.

Finland’s take on americana really needs to be more widely appreciated because these are artists that are producing some outstanding records. One thing in particular seems to characterise the Finnish take on this music, it’s not happy!

“It’s the blues. And I’m not talking about the Blues music. Finnish people have a long history with melancholia, depression, darkness and long winters. But we also have our love of nature and our own strange sense of humour (or the lack of it)”. Heikki Hänninen,  Buko Shane

“When people who are not Finnish have described our music, they have often pointed out some kind of Nordic melancholia that shines through. Finnish music tends to be melancholic and that is something that appeals to us”. Julia Rautamaa, Iron Country Sisters

“I think Americana music made in Finland tends to be more melancholic and a bit darker. Finnish music, in general, has fewer major chords and happy endings. I’ve especially noticed this in the lyrics; Finnish music has always been heavily melancholic. I myself struggle to write happy songs, and when I start writing something I think is going to be joyful and uptempo, I’m always like, “Yes, at last, this is going to be a happy one,” and then, when I finish the song, everybody ends up divorced and dead in it”. Pasi Nissinen, Jack’s Basket Room.

Let’s face it, you’re not going to be listening to Finnish americana for the laughs! Personally, I’ve always liked the darker side of americana. Southern gothic, Appalachian murder ballads, the down and dirty day to day of the Bakersfield sound; americana thrives on struggle and the words of tortured souls, so it’s no wonder that, once I started listening to some of these Finnish bands, I could immediately identify with their approach to the music.

I asked Pasi how Jack’s Basket Case came together. “The roots music scene in Finland is small enough that like-minded people end up coming together pretty easily, or at least knowing each other. Especially since there weren’t – or at least 10 years ago there weren’t – many Americana players here. Helsinki has a population of just 650,000 people, and it’s by far the biggest city in Finland. The next two biggest cities have only about 200,000 people, and in places like that, you start recognizing people you pass on the street, so active musicians tend to know a lot of each other here. Our band came together pretty naturally and easily. All the members were already familiar with each other in some way, and everyone had been playing or singing since childhood. Minna and I were coworkers, and one day we found ourselves in a musical void. We realized that we liked pretty similar music (at the time we were listening to “Raising Sand”) and thought we’d try writing a couple of songs together. A friend of Minna’s heard that we had been playing and asked us to do a gig. We figured it would be nice if someone played the banjo or something similar along with us at the gig, so we asked Heikki (the other guitarist) to join, since we knew he liked country music and could play all kinds of string instruments. Heikki ended up staying in the band after that gig. Afterward, some of Heikki’s friends invited us to play at a small bluegrass festival, and we thought adding a bass would be nice. So, we asked Ville and his banjo bass to join, and Ville ended up staying in the band after that too”.

One thing that emerges as an interesting link between musicians playing americana in Europe is that many of them have had a background in playing Jazz. I was discussing this with Christophe Comper (Prinz Grizzley, from Austria – the guys in his band previously played together in a jazz outfit) and we came to the conclusion that the two forms are both based on collaboration and an interest in different instrument combinations. It seems it’s a common connection in Finland as well, according to Markus Nordenstreng, of Finnish americana band Tuomo & Markus. “Tuomo and our trumpet player Verneri Pohjola have played jazz together for several decades in various bands and the style that they do is considered as ‘Nordic Jazz’. Verneri’s dad Pekka Pohjola (multi instrumentalist, composer and producer who played in fusion Jazz groups) was a famous Finnish musician who recorded for the famous 1970s Finnish label Love Records whose catalogue has definitely influenced us”.

Iron Country Sisters also hail from Helsinki and the band is built around the Rautamaa sisters, Julia, Paula and Silja, who started the band. They grew up with their parents’ music collection and that tipped them towards americana.

Julia Rautamaa told me, “Our dad has been listening to American and British music all our lives. Many styles of roots music such as blues, rhythm and blues, soul, country and folk have been the soundtrack of our lives. In the nineties, many families in Finland used to listen to Finnish music, but in our family American roots and British rock/folk were the genres. We also used to listen to The Beatles a lot in our childhood, which has sparked our love for singing in harmonies”.

Four piece outfit Buko Shane carefully market themselves as americana influenced, attracting an audience that likes to seek out something a bit different. “Always Americana influenced and usually also other styles are mentioned such as rock, blues, roots or even experimental music. But “Americana influenced” feels good and gives us a lot of freedom to perform various styles.” Heikki Hänninen from the band went on to describe their fans as “Music fans with big ears. Young and old. Record collectors. I’m pretty sure that our music doesn’t arouse any interest among mainstream music listeners, but it doesn’t bother us at all”. 

Tuomo & Markus, a six piece band featuring Finnish soul artist and jazz musician Tuomo Prättälä and singer/songwriter Markus Nordenstreng from Finnish rock band The Latebirds, draw from a wider palette for their version of americana, including indie folk, psychedelia, soul and jazz among their sources of inspiration, though Nordenstreng says that “if I had to name just one influence for our band, I’d probably choose Grateful Dead since they covered so much musical ground without much prejudice”. You can really hear the full range of these influences in the music they produce, which often becomes a lush soundscape, shimmering with light and shade, like their latest instrumental single, ‘Anyhow Lane’, featured below. They also record and perform, on occasions, under the name of Pratt & Moody, showing that the Finnish sense of humour isn’t so much strange as quite wittily self -deprecating. Their most recent recording is 2023’s “Game Changing”, though they started recording back in 2016. In fact, all these bands have a strong track record, as far as recording goes. Jack’s Basket Room will release their third album early in the new year, Iron Country Sisters released their second album, “Grace”, in September of this year and Buko Shane have recently released their second album, “Pandemic Blues”, the follow up to 2020’s “Old Blues”. They’re also all active on the live circuit, so does this mean that americana is popular in Finland? “I wouldn’t say Americana is popular in Finland but there’s a loyal audience for it.” Markus Nordenstreng told me, going on to say that “Some bigger acts like Wilco and Father John Misty can certainly draw thousands of fans. Artists like Lucinda Williams, Calexico and The Jayhawks keep coming back here and always do well”. Passi Nissinen added that, “Some bigger Americana names, like Sturgill Simpson, do occasionally come to Finland, but it’s quite rare. Sweden has a much larger Americana scene, so if you want to see good Americana artists, you often have to head to Stockholm”.

Could Finland emulate Sweden’s success with americana? There’s some indication that a scene is building there, and while it’s not in danger of toppling the heavy metal market anytime soon (“We still have a lot of metal bands here in Finland!” Heikki Hänninen), you can hear that it is developing a very distinct identity and sound of its own. “We’ve been more daring recently, incorporating Finnish traditional instruments such as the accordion and the Jew’s harp. For our cover of ‘Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)’, we wanted to add something Finnish into the mix, so we decided to play the intro on the accordion” (Passi Nissinen). “The Finnish music scene is small but filled with amazing talent and the coolest thing about it is that musicians from different genres mix together quite a lot. I think that has definitely had an effect on our approach – that’s what brought us together in the first place”.( Tuomo Prättälä).

Judge for yourselves and listen to these examples from these four excellent bands. There’s clearly something exciting happening in Nordic circles, and it isn’t just the stirring of Santa Claus.