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Swedish
Drummer Rasmus Kihlberg is a Rhythmic Chameleon |
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Talking about this year’s tour Rasmus Kihlberg
says, “I played with Nils Landgren. He is a Swedish trombone player and
singer and with my wife Viktoria Tolstoy who is a singer. (There was
also) a piano player, a bass player and the Frankfurt Philharmonic
Orchestra, but not the strings, only the woodwinds and the horn players.
The arrangements for that tour were made by Vince Mendoza and we
played only Leonard Bernstein music, all the famous hits and also the
non-famous. It was a fantastic tour and we had thirteen or fourteen
concerts in a month and only in Germany.
There was a full house in every place and standing ovations. Nils
and Viktoria sang this music so well. Sometimes they would sing duets,
sometimes she would sing one song and (other times) he would sing one.
Sitting in the middle of this orchestra with my drums was also a dream
come true, because I love all of the things that come from Vince’s
pencil (and that has been) since the first time I heard Vince’s
arrangement of Joni Mitchell’s
Both Sides Now (the album).
It has been a huge experience and also a fantastic tour to be
able to play enormously beautiful arrangements. It was fantastic.” That tour came
on the heels of a very ambitious tour schedule for Kihlberg’s wife, the
accomplished and highly respected singer,
Viktoria Tolstoy, whose own tour embraced several months in the
fall of 2015 and the early part of 2016, with breaks to return home to
be with her family. We wondered how two artists with splendid careers
and whose relationship and family means so much to them are able to
balance their lives and schedules, especially when they have two young
children and two teenagers. Rasmus Kihlberg provided these insights. “It’s hard, but we put some kind of a system
around it. When you get an (invitation) to perform even if it is only
Viktoria or only me or if it is for us together, we have a procedure
that is really important. First we check to see if we can have a nanny
or a babysitter during that time. Secondly, are we available (to
perform)? Number three is all of
the logistics for the kids, is that also taken care of, before we can
say yes to that gig. There’s a lot more logistics and planning around
the job today, but it works. We put in a good system. We recorded a new album with Viktoria in April
in Göteborg and we were away from the family and the house for four days
to work in Göteborg, but we took care of it. My mother came here and
stayed for some days and then the nanny took over. It worked out.
We would do everything in the world to work together and just to
make it happen. Also, if it is during the summertime and there
is no school for the kids, we always take them, because they love coming
with us when we do gigs and to hang backstage, to sleep in hotels and be
on airplanes. They love it. All of our kids are used to it, because they
were born into this and they know my father is a drummer and my mother
is a singer. It is nothing that is strange to them. It is really normal
to them,” he says. An artist’s
tour schedule also presents other challenges, for some it is ensuring
that your instruments arrive safely at the various destinations and for
others it is securing the proper type of instruments when you arrive in
the city where you are going to perform. Part of that challenge has now
been overcome for Rasmus Kihlberg with two major endorsements, one from
drum manufacturer TAMA and the other from the company that makes his
cymbals MEINL. “When I travel
so much it is really, really important, because I know what kind of
drums I will get when I travel from my hometown to Germany (as one
example), because they have exactly the sizes and the brand that I want
to have. I couldn’t do that before (I had the endorsement) and I had to
say just a couple of brands and if you have that it is good. Before I
got TAMA endorsed I put up five or six different kinds of drums, just so
I could get some good drums. Now I get exactly what I want and I know
how it will sound when I get there. I always travel with my cymbals, so I have them
with me. Every cymbal is different and I want to use my own. They are
handpicked. This company makes a lot of cymbals that are one kind of
cymbal and they make thousands of them. Even if you are a (music) nerd,
you can’t hear the difference, but if you are a drummer you can hear and
feel the difference between one ride cymbal and exactly the same ride
cymbal. It is about the weight or something. If you get a handpicked
cymbal and you start to play with it you want to stick with it for a
while. That particular ride cymbal is something that you want to play in
every environment. Before I was endorsed when I went to New York I would
go to pawn shops and check out if there were some good vintage cymbals.
A lot of my cymbals were bought in New York, I always used them and I
always traveled with them. Now I have MEINL and I could do exactly the
same thing as I do with the drums. I could say exactly what I want and
they will ship them there and it will sound okay, but it is not exactly
the cymbals that I handpicked when I was in the factory. Maybe it is a
relationship, love at first sight and then you can’t let go. I don’t
know (he laughs), maybe,” he says, while noting that he now travels with
his MEINL cymbals.
Rasmus Kihlberg
was born in the tiny fishing village called Simrishamn, on the southeast
coast of Sweden. The total population is about four or five thousand
people and it is located on the opposite coast from where he lives
today, in Malmo, Sweden’s third largest city located not far from the
Danish border. “My family was not a musical family. I am the
only boy out of four children. I had three sisters, one younger and two
older and everybody played the piano. I started playing the piano when I
was six. When my sisters were in book number one in piano school I was
on book number three, even though they were older than me. I really got
a grip of it and learned it really fast.
I had a fantastic piano teacher who was playing bar piano in
Malmo. He taught me Jazz really early and the Classical music. He also
taught me Blues harmonies and all of that stuff really early. I was
playing piano all of the way until I moved to Malmo, but when I went to
high school (in Simrishamn) I could choose a second instrument. There was no
orchestra in Simrishamn where I lived and that I could play with except
for the marching band and you can’t play the piano in a marching band,
so I had to go for something else, so I started playing the bass drum in
the marching band. Then I went to the cymbals and later I played the
snare drum. We also had some concerts when we were not marching. Then
there was a drum set (to play). A friend of
mine who was two years older (than me) was the drummer in Simrishamn and
I really looked up to him. I got a lot of interesting ideas from him. I
thought it looked so easy and so I tried it. It had felt safe to play
the piano, but drums were fun!” he says. The main thing happening in Simrishamn was piano
and I bought a Fender Rhodes and I bought a Roland Juno 6 synthesizer.
We had a band with this drummer who played in the marching band and we
called it the Funk Group. We played Spyro Gyra and the Brecker
Brothers’ Heavy Metal Bebop.
We had three horn players and we tried to do our best.
I learned a lot and I was really into Jazz and Funk keyboard
playing at that time. I listened a lot to George Duke, because George
Duke always had good drummers with him. There is one album with George
Duke that is really, really important for me and that is
Guardian of the Light. I got
the world of drums and I got the world of keyboards. That album
definitely delivered one hundred percent right to my heart and to my
soul. There were good drums by John Robinson and really good keyboard
playing from George Duke. That record had a big, big influence on me.
The first number on the first side of the vinyl record, “Overture,”
knocked me out. It was good
inspiration. When I was
about fifteen I sold my Fender Rhodes. It wasn’t in good shape, nobody
in my hometown could repair it and it didn’t sound good. I changed the
Rhodes to a drum set. As a keyboard player I always ended up in some
rehearsal with a Funk group and I would sit and fool around with the
drums after the rehearsal when everybody wanted to go home. My first drum set was a Maxwin by Pearl and it
didn’t hold for so long, because it was in very bad shape. I changed it
to a Rabbit and I have never seen a drum set like this Rabbit set since
then. It had the same logo as the Playboy logo. I don’t think that drum
(set) has ever existed or it was somebody who just put something
together and made it. They sounded really, really good.
It was the Evans oil skins on them like two layers of oil and
they had a super Steve Gadd sound. I was really happy with those drums.
They were just fun to play. I played along to a lot of records. I played
all day and all night. I had lessons
and homework to do for the piano. I did that for one day and the rest of
the days during the week I sat behind the drums. There wasn’t a teacher
in Simrishamn who could teach me to play drums. I thought to play along
with records was the best thing for me to learn. Listen and learn. Why
do I feel that (this drummer) is playing so well? How does he make it
sound so good? Is it in his wrists or is it in his approach to the
drums. I really tried to figure that out in the early stages,” says
Kihlberg. When he was
seventeen years old Kihlberg moved one hundred miles to the east to
Malmo located in the region known as Skåne and he explains why. “In Simrishamn you couldn’t study music at all.
You could only be a fisherman or you could only work for the coast
guard. You could work for anything, but music or as a performer.
I had to move to get my education and in Sweden we say gymnasium.
I think it is high school (in North America). We go from grade one to
grade nine and then we go to gymnasium, which is the higher school. When
you are about sixteen or seventeen you start high school in Sweden. I
started in high school in Simrishamn and just learning languages. I went
for one or two years and then I moved to Malmo and I started studying
music in high school.” While still
attending gymnasium (high school) Kihlberg played in some ensembles in
school. In one of them he played piano and in the other one he was the
drummer. “They couldn’t
find anyone (to play) drums. That’s where I really got into it for the
first time and I realized maybe this should be the instrument of the
future,” he says. We had some bands outside of school and one of
my first professional gigs was with a Reggae band from Malmo called Root
Mos (pronounced Root Moose). Mos is mashed potato in Swedish. (He played
drums in the band). That was ’85 to ’86 that I played with the Reggae
band. Then the singer in the
band got caught in some strange things. He went to Jamaica and he didn’t
really come back. He got stuck in London and got put into jail. He was
messing around with smuggling. The band ended up not doing anything. Then I started
playing with other bands. When I moved here to Malmo from a small town
it was a huge world that opened, because there were so many places to
play and so many people to play with. At the time when I moved to Malmo
there were a lot of musicians here that were playing Jazz. I call it
serious Jazz. It was so serious that you can hardly get it (he laughs).
I was more into playing Pop, Fusion, Funk, Soul, R&B and more the West
Coast music. There were a lot of musicians here in Malmo playing that,
so I got a lot of gigs the first year that I lived here, because they
didn’t have a drummer who could play Jazz, the West Coast and Pop Rock,”
says Kihlberg. Rasmus Kihlberg
who also has a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts, which he obtained after
finishing high school, tells an interesting story about his audition for
university. “When
I finished high school, I finished up on piano and the last year before
university you are supposed to do a test to be allowed to start at the
university. My ensemble teacher at that time asked what instrument I was
going to choose (for my audition) at the university.
I said piano, because that was mostly my routine. I studied one
year on drums with a teacher, so no. I will go for the piano I said and
he said no you don’t go for the piano you go for the drums. He was also
a teacher in Malmo at the university. Two weeks before the audition when
I was supposed to play three songs in front of a jury for the university
I changed my repertoire. I started to prepare myself for playing drums
instead. Two weeks later I did my audition and I became number one out
of forty drummers who auditioned. I joined the university when I was
nineteen and I was on drums.
It is a teacher’s education, so you get drums, improvisation and
ensemble teacher, which is my profession, but I never teach today (at a
school). I have some students (privately).” Kihlberg says
teaching more is something that he would like to try in the future,
“because every time I have a student I have, we have an expression in
Sweden, I have ‘meat on my legs,’ but you don’t say that you say I have
a lot of experience during the year. I have collected a lot of input
from different artists that I have been playing with. I think I have a
lot to give, but right now it is not an option, because there is no time
for it.” About 1986 Rasmus Kihlberg became part of the band
Enorma Groove, comprised of himself, highly respected musician, singer and
songwriter
Stefan Gunnarsson, Johan Granström and Per Rusträsk Johansson. In
addition to creating and playing some stellar music, the band also had some fun. Kihlberg tells the story of the song “Lap Rap,”
as he tries hard to contain his laughter, “We made that song in my
apartment, with Johan Granström the bass player and Per Rusträsk
Johansson the saxophone player. Stefan and I were hanging out in my
apartment in Malmo and we did a background on sequencers and drum
machines. Then Johan always wanted to do the Joik. The Joik is from way
up north in Sweden where the Laplanders (the Sami) are living. They have
a different language than Swedish. They have their own language and when
they sing they call it Joik (he
then does what some cultures would refer to as yodeling). I think it
is from some heritage north of Sweden or the Vikings. We were fooling
around with this joiking and the lyrics and we had a great time.
We had so much fun. Stefan was sitting and laughing and playing
his ass off on the keyboard and programming on the drum machines. We
didn’t do anything without it. It is just us four who have the
recordings on that one I think. (He is laughing) “Lap Rap.” Enorma Groove was the first really fantastic
band that I played with and when I could compare myself to other
musicians like Stefan. We spoke the same language and we had the same
ideas. We had the same ideas about musicality and everything. It just
clicked and we did some fantastic concerts.
In ’86 or ’87 we had a fantastic concert in Boden. It is the
little town where Stefan lives. That was the first gig that I had with
Enorma Groove, because there had been some drummers before me in Enorma
Groove, but the first gig that I did was at the Boden Jazz Festival. I played four
or five years with Enorma Groove. Stefan moved to Stockholm. Then Stefan
did his solo album and he contacted me directly. He said you have to
play on my solo album.” Enorma Groove
eventually disbanded when Granström also relocated to Stockholm. Continuing he
says, “During that time, Johan, Per and I were playing in a big band
here in Malmo, called Monday Night Big Band. It is the exact same idea
as the Village Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, who played for fifty years at
the Village Vanguard in New York, every Monday night. We started a Malmo
edition of the Monday Night Big Band, like a Thad Jones and Mel Lewis
kind of thing. There were a lot of people. We wanted to play live in a
club every Monday. We talked to a guy who helped us out with this and
his name was Jörgen Nilsson. He had played with a European edition of
Thad Jones big band called Eclipse and it was based in Copenhagen. He
was the second tenor saxophonist in that big band and he was a good
friend of Thad Jones who died in ’86. He had a lot of arrangements that
he bought from Thad or that he got from Thad and even handwritten
original arrangements just popped up in his mail. It was totally
insane.” A member of the
Vanguard Village Jazz Orchestra, Ed Neumeister was a guest of our big
band and he said wow you have this arrangement? Even we do not have this
arrangement. It is an original Thad Jones arrangement and you have this
in Malmo. I played every Monday for eleven years in that big band and it
was mostly the repertoire from Thad Jones and Mel Lewis. About ’88 or ’89 when I started playing a lot in
the big band I checked out Mel Lewis. I started to collect all of the
records that I could find of Mel Lewis, not only the Thad Jones / Mel
Lewis big band, but also all of the West Coast Jazz that he played on in
the early and mid-sixties with guys like Marty Paich, Art Pepper and The
Concert Jazz Band with Gerry Mulligan, (as well as) the Terry Gibbs Big
Band. I really got into this and I studied really hard for the big band.
Every Monday I could practice this live in front of an audience. It was
fantastic. It was the best school that I had. (You
can hear the enthusiasm in his voice.) I always prioritize the groove in front of all
of the technical stuff. If it doesn’t swing, if it doesn’t groove, I’m
not interested. If I can hear something that really grooves and is
really in the pocket, I love it. That’s what touches me really. That is
the most important thing.
Mel Lewis was the drummer for that style in big band and swing and he
played so easy that he made it easy for his band members in the big
band. I realized this is how you do it, to make it easy for the band and
to play easy. That was amazing for me to do those eleven years every
Monday. That was the best
education that I could get. That is why now and then I get calls from
people who want me to come and guest with their big band. They feel like
my playing is very (similar) to Mel Lewis. I was once called up by the lead trombone and
saxophone player from the Village Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. They were
supposed to do an interpretation course up in the north, the Norrbotten
Big Band in Luleå. They wanted to have a drummer who could sound like
Mel Lewis. I went up there and we played their repertoire from the
Village Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. I could do (the songs) in my sleep. It
was a fantastic week with those three guys, because they also gave me so
much credit. They were so happy to know that there was some guy in
Sweden who really took all of the Mel Lewis music (and sounded like
him). Those eleven years (playing big band music) meant something good
to me.” While he was
still playing with the big band Rasmus Kihlberg landed a permanent
position as a session musician for the renowned Tambourine Studios in
Malmo. He recalls, “At that time Tambourine Studios was
not as famous (as it is today). This was maybe ’94 or ’95 and the
producer was Tore Johansson who produced The Cardigans Franz Ferdinand,
Tom Jones and so many more. I think he produced the first two albums for
Franz Ferdinand. He called me up and he said do you want to have a
monthly salary and just come and work for me.
That was like a dream come true. I was listening to those guys
over in the U.S.A. like Steve Gadd, Bill Robinson and Vinnie Colaiuta,
who played on all of these records that I loved to hear. I thought that
is a dream, just to have a gig like that and to go to the studio and to
do music and recordings all day. I got a nine to five firm job.
I went there at nine o’clock in the morning and I did takes all
day. This was mostly on Japanese Pop albums. All the Japanese Pop
artists wanted to make records with Tore Johansson, because they heard
The Cardigans in Japan.
Japan was a big hit in the beginning for The Cardigans. During that six or seven years I did maybe 100
or 150 records with Tore as a producer.
Most of the records were released only in Japan. I was touring in
Japan a lot at the end of the nineties as well. I got to play with all
of the Japanese artists. I played with Japanese actor and singer Tomoyo
Harada and I played on her first three albums.
I did a month long tour in ’96 with Tomoyo and it was in huge
places. The people loved her. It was in the same era as when The
Cardigans got big in the world. I think it was about the time when
Lovefool got released. Tore
was actually on the first tour with me and he has never done that before
or since then. He played bass on the first tour.” In addition to his performances and the private
lessons that he teaches, Rasmus Kihlberg also offers a service called
Live Drums On Web where other
artists can send him MP3s with their music and if they are able to,
provide him with a sketch of some drum programming or loops. He will
then add real live recorded drums in a multi-track, eleven channel
format. “I will send it
back to them and they can paste it into their music and they can do
whatever they want with it. That is a service that I have been
(providing) since 2006. It was Tore Johansson who said shouldn’t you do
something like this, just to offer people everywhere your drums. At that
time the internet still wasn’t that fast, so I always sent by postal
service DVDs with files on it. Now with the internet being so fast, you
can really work with people, I just worked with Jay Graydon and Randy
Goodrum from JaR (the band). I call myself a
rhythmic chameleon, because if I play with one particular orchestra or
band I turn into a drummer for that position, for that time, in that
bar, in that measure, in that space, for that moment and even if it is a
Jazz gig and I play on bigger drums like a twenty-two inch bass drum,
twelve inch toms and sixteen inch toms, I learn to apply myself into
that environment. You can’t play Pop or Rock and Roll like when you do a
Jazz gig with those drums. That’s something that you have to learn and
maybe I put some extra effort into learning that, because I love to
change shape into different styles of music and for different bands that
I play with. I see myself as a rhythmic chameleon. A lot of people
who play with me say that they can hear that I was a piano player in the
beginning, because I am really in the music and not on top of the music.
I have some students that play drums and have always played drums and
not any other tone of instrument. When they play with other musicians
you can sometimes hear that they are not really into the music, they are
more into the drum pattern 1B and not listening so much with their ears.
One of my biggest trademarks is that I listen a lot when I play drums to
what the other tonal instruments are doing when I play. I can thank the
guy who started teaching me piano, the bar piano player, because he made
something for me that is still there. Seeds were
planted long ago, in a tiny fishing village named Simrishamn in southern
Sweden, a family who believed that their children should take piano
lessons, a piano teacher who did not stick to the regular curriculum,
but instead offered him a taste of music, beyond his lesson book, a boy
who was fascinated with drums and selected them as his second instrument
in gymnasium (high school) and a young man who was encouraged by a
university professor to choose drums as the instrument to audition with
for his university entrance audition. Those seeds grew in Rasmus
Kihlberg and today he is one of Sweden’s most well respected musicians. You can visit the website for
Rasmus Kihlberg here.
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Earlier
this year Swedish drummer Rasmus Kihlberg who has played and / or
recorded with artists such as Tom Jones, Charlotte Church, Bill
Champlin, The Cardigans, Björn Skifs, Japanese singer and actress Tomoyo
Harada and Joseph Williams of Toto, had a very busy tour schedule. 