May

Hi everyone!

It's finally spring. The trees are green, the snow is gone, the girls are smiling and Simon Says No! is playing The Great Escape, a festival in Brighton, England. There will be one show in London (Club Fandango @ 12/05 – 10:15pm), and two in Brighton (Prince Albert, 48 Trafalgar St, Brighton, BN1 4ED @ 13/05 – 1:00pm & Basement, 24 Kensington Street, Brighton, BN1 4AJ @ 13/05 – 8:30). Hopefully we'll get both there and back again without any ash-related problems.

In other news, we are now working with our new partners in Air Chrysalis and Oslo Grammofon. ACS is the leading independent music publisher in Scandinavia. Oslo Grammofon is a record label from Oslo Norway. The album is growing in our womb, and will be born in September 2010.

Januar

We are back in harry's gym studios to mix the album with Nick Terry. Feels good to move on from the hollydays and get things going again.




Next week we'll be playing two show in London. See MySpace for time and place! Ingar from Ivory Roads is joining us on guitar for the London shows. So be shure to say hi if you're near by.

Ocean Sound Recordings

This last week we have been making ocean sounds with Nick Terry on a small island outside of Ålesund. In this great and fresh Giske Studio on the west coast of Norway we're adding the last tracks for the forthcoming album.

The Great scenery, cool people and good food makes it a perfect experience. A tiny island surrounded by the fjords and mountains tops really makes you push the ambience to scenic levels. The darkness of the north sea at night brings out the distortion of screaming guitars (and thundering bass Rolf points out... so OK, dark tribal viking drums as well?)... all in all we're heading back to Oslo Tomorrow ready for the January mixing with Nick, a London Showcase and some Christmas festivities.

Last week we took a break from the christmas preparing and played on TV2, Norway's biggest commercial TV station. Our national TV debut. Yeah!

http://webtv.tv2.no/webtv/?progId=366445&itemId=358790

Simon´s final no!

Our names goes back to the day when Ruben challenged Simon to go solo. Simon's answer was clear, but named the band formed in the days to come.

We're now sad to announce that one of the founding members of SSN, after several years in the band, has decided to leave. Simon felt the need to focus on other things than music for while. So yeah… Simon Says No! and all that.

There's no hard feelings within the band, and it's with a heavy heart our musically paths now part.

Thanks for all the great moments we've shared together as a band through the last years Simon! We all look forward to new moments of greatness, off the stage.

Ruben, Rolf and Even.

September Tour

And then we were back on the road for a good two week roam in Scandinavia. Starting out as most bands do with loading the van in exitement and figuring out gear, merchandise, highways and all. Our first stop Kristiansand is always a treat, thanks to our good friend Louis who always take great care of us when we visit. Stavanger had their Nu music festival the day we arrived, unfortunately we couldn make the festival program this year, but heck, why not use a day off to hang out with people we havent seen in a while and play em' some new songs? We even got some krautrock questions answered by Faust who was at the venue. Then on to Bergen, Back to good ol' Hulen. Always fun to play for our home crowd. Exiting to meet and play with the legendary Telescopes. After a short break we went on to Sweden to play with our good time buddies in Blackstrap. Of course the van broke down when we travelled back from Bergen so our backline got stuck in Oslo. Fortunately Blackstrap, well endowed gearwise as they are, let us use theirs. A couple of shows with them did us really great! Hope to see em' again soon.

We were on our own again, on a bus to Copenhagen trying to figure out how to sort out our backline situation. Frenetically calling friends who live there and make them call their friends to try to muster up some amps and a drumkit we could use. We got the amps sorted out relatively quick, but what is a rock concert without drums?! The ours went by and no luck. What do we do? program some computer drums? Not play the show at all? No way! After a good falling out with the sound engineer and a few more calling of favours, we figured we´ll do a final desperate attemt to get ahold of something for Even to beat on. Send Simon out on the street to scout for a drumkit. Godspeed and not a chance in hell he would find one. But what happens; Half an hour later he shows up with a grin on his face and a bass drum in his hands, "I met some guy at a bar down the road who had these drums we could borrow, I put him on the guest list". Fab! Simon saved the night. Read the story here. So we ended up playing a great show and had a good night out with long lost friends and old SSN! band members, before we wrapped up the tour and headed back home to Norway. Thanks to all the people that came to see us and the folks who made the tour happen. Hope to see you next time around!

Love

Ruben Even Simon Rolf

Simon Says No!