Beches Brew

Posted 2013-08-12

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“One of the best live bands I’ve seen over the last decade. They should be sent on tour across the continent!” – Henrik Jöhnemark

Thomas Gustafsson, Sir Thomas Jäderlund, Göran Klinghagen, Viktor Reuter and Bengt Berger (Photo by Nikke Ström)

Beches Brew – the West Coast Edition  has been playing on Saturday afternoons at Studio HPKSM in Gothenburg since January 2018. Swedish Jazzradio broadcasted one and a half hour from one of the concerts on May 22. We decided to record as a lot happened in our music when we played so often. With support from Nikke Ström we recorded at Music A Matic studios with Filip Leyman at the knobs. Here is the album Gothenburg (CE41).

Apart from this we decided to release a suite from the live recording as a separate half hour long digital-only album, Gothenburg Live (CEX23). This album is offered free of charge to you who bought the cd. On the cd you will find a password do download or listened to the live album.

Big thanks to Nikke Ström and to Georg, Anton and Maja for having us at Studio HPKSM all of 2018.

In January 2016 Beches Brew gave concerts together with Karnatic as well as Hindustani maestros as part of the Beches Indian Brew project. In Chennai we gave a nice concert at the famous Sri Krishna Gana Sabha on January 3, playing with the great vidwans J. B. Srutisagar, Akkarai Sornalatha, V. Suresh and N. Amrit.

Then we played several concerts in Mumbai and Pune, some of them in the distinguished company of Nityanand Haldipur and Sadanand Naimpalli.

You find several videos from these concerts at Country & Eastern’s YouTube-page. E.g this one about the Chennai preparations:

In October the Indian return visit is taking place when the Akkarai Sisters, Jayachandra Rao and Shree Sundarkumar joins as. Find out all about it at Beches Indian Brew.

Shree Sundarkumar, Akkarai Sisters, Jayachandra Rao

In August 2017 we release a great album of live recordings from the Swedish tour:

Beches Indian Brew arrival

Here is a relaxed version of “Congo Square” from the recording of Beches Indian Brew, filmed at Kulturhuset in Stockholm October 2017.

In preparation for our big 2016 tour in India which started on december 28, 2015 and took us to Chennai, Pune and Mumbai we are happy that percussionist and electronic music creator Lise-lotte Norelius has joined the group. If you are familiar with our history you will know that she was a member of the Bitter Funeral Beer Band in the eighties and visited Mumbai and Dehli with that band in 1984. Since Thomas Gustafsson got tyfoid during that trip, he was not joining us in this tour so we had the wonderful Gothenburg trumpet maestro Staffan Svensson subbing for him; and since Livet Nord just had a son by the name Bror (brother) she was not coming either. We are quite a few anyway, most of us are present in this photo by Lucas Starck.

A year back we were nine in the band (Max Schultz, Mats Öberg, Jonas Knutsson, Bengt Berger, Sir Thomas Jäderlund, Livet Nord, Stefan Bellnäs, Thomas Gustafsson and Göran Klinhagen). We released two albums in September 2013: Beches Brew BIG and the digital-only Beches Brew BAG. The heading photo by Christer Männikus above is from this october 4, 2014 when we had two great percussion guests, Adam Rudolph and my and Adam’s ghanaian teacher from the mid seventies, Ewe master drummer Doe Kushiator joining the band.

The original group that released the self  named album Beches Brew in 2010 had Lindha Kallerdahl, Thomas Gustafsson, Max Schultz, Jonas Knutsson, Mats Öberg and Bengt Berger (photo by Thomas Gidén).

Then during a few years we played a lot in Gothenburg with the West Coast Edition of Beches Brew: Livet Nord, Göran Klinghagen, Stefan Bellnäs, Sir Thomas Jäderlund, Bengt Berger and Thomas Gustafsson. This edition has not recorded………yet. (photo by Lotta Andersson)

In 2011-12 a trio from the group, Göran Klinghagen, Bengt Berger and Stefan Bellnäs, did the music for Niklas Rådström’s stage adaption of The Bible at Göteborgs Stadsteater

Photo by Jonas Kündig

By November 3, 2018 when we release two new albums, Gothenburg and Gothenburg Live, we will have six albums on our conscience,
Beches Indian Brew, Beches Brew BIG, Beches Brew BAG and our first one, Beches Brew

In December 2019 we did our last concert at Studio HPKSM in Gothenburg. It was broadcasted by Swedish Public Radio.