Jazz & Fly Fishing: They Go Together

Alright, which one of you four is posing as a fly fisherman so not to get tossed from the band?
Joona: Ok, I did that. They made me do it!
Håvard: Actually, the truth is that none of us are posers. I was the last one recruited, and I guess the process was very boy band-like. If I should try to guess why they chose me, I´d say it was because they needed a guy who could fly fish well, could play jazz guitar well, and was Norwegian—they wanted a piece of the Norwegian fishing and concert scene.

Håvard, how’d they find you?
Håvard: Joona sent me an e-mail three or four years ago on MySpace. He said something about putting together a band of fly fishing jazz musicians and touring the world, and I said, “Great!” Then nothing happened, and to be honest I forgot about the whole thing. A couple of  years later, Joona sent me another e-mail saying he’d hooked up with a TV company in Finland interested in doing a documentary series about a fly fishing jazz band. I said, “Great!” This time it turned out to be the real thing.

A TV show?
Joona: I’d been talking about a fly fishing jazz band to a couple of friends, and to my surprise, one of my fishing mates told me he’d heard about another guy in Finland talking about combining jazz and fly fishing. I got the guy’s number and gave him a call just to hear if he was stealing my idea or what. It turned out he was a film producer whose passions in life were jazz and fly fishing. The rest is history!

Six billion people on the planet, and you guys are the only fly fishing jazz band. Is this genius achievement or the byproduct of a grave marketing blunder?
Håvard: Sometimes it feels like a genius achievement. And sometimes it feels like a grave marketing blunder. People´s reactions are always divided—either they dig it immediately, or they get the facial expression of a jelly fish when we explain what we´re trying to do.

What are you trying to do?
Joona: Reach the small, but wonderful crowd of fly fishing jazz fans. We’ve maybe found twenty of those on the globe so far. That almost fills a jazz club, so it’s nothing you should consider doing for a living. But the crazy aspect of the project has appealed to more than just the jazz and fishing nerds, and that’s our strength. The question is: is the world big enough for Jazz & Fly Fishing?

"Sometimes it feels like a grave marketing blunder."

Do you guys have other jobs?
Joona: Jazz and Fly Fishing doesn’t—yet—bring much bread to the family table so we work on other projects too, and we all play in several bands. You want to get inspired by different people, play different types of music and so on. Me and Fredrik also teach music. Tapani just graduated with his Masters and he’s working with computer programming to develop a kind of a metering device—a chair that meters your heart beat from the butt.

Help us fill in the gap—how does fly fishing influence your music, and your music influence your fly fishing?
Joona: Fly fishing makes hands sore and stiffens the fingers—that makes me play fewer notes, but only the most important ones. Too few musicians have experienced what cold water and a week of casting do for your musical expression! On the other hand, jazz music has taught me to be creative and open to new ideas. Both jazz and fly fishing are really about improvising. You learn the skills and then just go where the music, or trout, takes you.
Håvard: When we´re touring, they intertwine completely. Sometimes, especially when we get really beat, I mix up whether we´re going fishing or playing. It´s like that weird state when you´re half asleep and everything gets mixed.  For me personally, playing jazz music and fly fishing are two sides of the same coin—two strange, totally pointless human activities that pretty much make up the meaning of life for me. Well, there are fortunately a couple of other things that give my life meaning as well.

You guys more likely to wear tweed on the water or on stage?
Håvard: Tweed seems a little over the top… None of us have received knighthood, yet.  
Joona: At first the producer’s idea about suit jackets when fishing sounded really silly. We tried it, and at least I fell totally in love with it. A wool jacket adjusts to body temperature, works as a fly drying patch, has big pockets for fly boxes, and looks good! And I can use the same jacket on stage. I also dig old fashion hats—they’re both jazzy and work perfectly on fishing trips. Now I’m just dreaming of straight waist-long waders and black leather wading shoes, something to match the hat and the jacket with.
Håvard: He [the producer] also thought it would set us apart from other fly fishing productions, where, according to him, “the guys look like they´re in the army or something with all their sponsor uniforms.”

What fly fishing gear makes it up on stage?
Håvard: Well, I tried using the fly rod as a slide, you know, bottle-neck stuff, on our song “Lahppoluobbal” at a gig in Finland. It didn´t work. Fred sometimes wears his pin-on reel with forceps and everything on stage—he forgets to take them off his suit jacket. These things are bound to happen when your mind starts to mix jazz and fly fishing.

How’s the new album shaping up?
Håvard: It´s been about two months since we recorded it, and at this stage I´m usually not too enthusiastic about a recording. Typically, I´m very excited about a new recording during the first few days, followed by a long period where I think it sounds horrible. Finally, I sort of start liking it again, or at least I stop despising how I sound. With this one, however, I´ve liked it all along. I guess this is either a very good or a very bad sign…

Give us an encore—where’s the greater value: an expensive instrument or a top shelf fly rod?
Håvard: An expensive instrument, no doubt. I love exotic fly rods, but even the pretty cheap ones are fabulous these day. Well, some of them, anyway. The same can’t be said about musical instruments… With some very few exceptions, cheap instruments are crap, and make you sound like a clown.

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