The Sacred Sailors Interview

Interview:

Thank you very much for agreeing to do this interview! Would you guys mind introducing yourselves?

The Sacred Sailors are:

Manne Olander - Vocals

Christopher God - Guitar

Olle Hansson - Guitar

Sebastian God - Bass

Magnus Delbratt - Drums

We´re a rockband from Gothenburg (Sweden), celebrating our tenth anniversary this year.

With three full length albums in our bagage, we´ve been touring around europe quite a lot during these 10 years, mostly in Germany.

So, how did you guys get together to create The Sacred Sailors? Why the name The Sacred Sailors?

We started out 2001 when we were around 15-17 years old. We practised our instruments in Mannes parents basement, playing coversongs of Stooges, Flaming Groovies, early Alice cooper and Bob Seger. First line up was Manne, Magnus, Chris and our former bassplayer Arvid Sondén. We all loved the sounds of the sixties and seventies and wanted to do our own thing inspired from vintagerock but in a modern way. Olle joined after a few months and the TSS was formed. The name was taken from a old Egyptian book who tells stories about a mysterious group of sailors that where called "The Sacred Sailors".

It was actually the Godbrothers cousin Lucas (who now a days lives as a munk in a temple in India) who came up with it, and we thought it sound cool so we took it.

What are some of your influences?

We like a lot of different kinds of music, but what brings us together to build The Sacred Sailors is besides from what I already mentioned:

Anything from Detroit now/then... Seventies-rock like: Roky Erickson, Damnation of adam blessing, tom petty, fleetwood mac, Outlaws. Late seventies garage punk like Radio Birdman, Death, Damned, Ron Ascheton´s New Order. Sixties psych, soul and rhythm and blues.

In 2004 you released your first single called You My Friend / Love Sound. Later that year you released whole album called We Gave It All to You. Two years later you released another album called Golden Dawn. I would like if you can share few words about this releases.

The B side of the first single was a leftover track from the recordings to the first album. Lovesound as the bside was named, is heavily inspired by the psychedelic sounds of the late sixties. It was only released in 500 copies so it´s pretty rare these days, the album is not to easy to find either(1000 copies).

The We Gave it all to you-album was recorded in two sessions, we recorded five songs only to send out to different labels as promotion. It didnt take long until lonestar records got in touch with us and wanted to do a 500 cd/500 LP deal. We didnt expect anything at that time so we where very pleased.

We got back to the studio which was called Riffrecordings and was located upon a Libary in Guldheden(the most beautiful part of Gothenburg). It was run by a guy named Sami Miari who use to play in a ninetees doom-band called Stillborn. He sometimes brought his one year old son around to the studio and I remember that when we almost where finished with the last mixing, he one day gave Magnus a call told him that his son had gone loose with all the buttons on the mixingtable and we had to remix some of the songs haha...

The studio used to be a old Radioprogramme recording studio with only one small recordingroom and a even smaller engineeringroom. We wanted to record everything live except the vocals so we put drums in the recordingroom, one amp in a wardrobe, one in the kitchen and one in the bathroom. Some of the songs was writen in the studio. I remember that I wrote some of the lyrics in the recordingroom while singing the lead. We put a lot of our teenageskills and love into that album, we didn't plan anything, everything came straight from our hearts nothing was meant to be anything else than just good, groovy tunes. We where very serious but we didn't care that a song was 5-6 minute long or didn't have any chorus.

A tragic incident happened during the last recordings of the vocals. Arvid was very quiet all day and I got a little mad because I thought he wasnt supportive enough. When I was finished recording he told me that one of our friends had died the night before in a tragic car accident. So every time I listen to the album it brings me back to that day, it´s filled with different emotions. Definitely a great allround album if you ask me. It´s a partyrockalbum but with some darker sides.

The second album(The Golden Dawn) was recorded in three different sessions and studios.

We got more and more into sixties garage, psych and wanted the album to sound more produced than the first but with the same kind of attitude. At that time I was in a deep psych-era and listened only to early pink floyd, 13 th floor elevators and rare psychcollections. I was a big fan of reverb and delay but the other guys wasn´t too pleased with the idea of having too much effects, so you can hear some sound-difference between the songs on the album. Anyway, it was supposed to be released on the american cult garagelabel "Dionysus records" but we got a bad contract and after months of negotiation we decided to go for a small french label instead. Sadly, the album was never released on vinyl.

Your latest album is called Tune In Turn On. What can you tell me about this?

We recorded it all by ourselves. We brought Christophers computer and recordingmaterial to a abandoned recording studio in Gothenburg. We had only time to record drums so we recorded the rest at Christophers apartment. We mailed a demo and got in contact with another french label called Bad Reputation records. We where a little bit tired of the lofi sound and wanted a bigger, more modern rocksound so we put a lot of energy into the mixing of the drums etc. We wanted to reach a bigger crowd and do more tours so I guess it got more natural to write 2.5 minute long songs with a melodic chorus than 6 minutes of guitarsolo and wailing. But still it´s a rock n roll-album and if you would ask a Coldplay-fan they would probably call it very vintage.

How is touring going for you? Are you satisfied with it? Share an interesting experience you had from concerts...

It has been pretty calm for a while, we had a thing going on with a Swedish tv-commercial but it didn´t gave us as much as we had hoped for.

We´ve had some incidents these past years since the last release as well. Magnus almost died of a overdose one and a half years ago, he´s much better now but it took a lot of energy for everyone of us.

We have no new record deal and no cooperation with any bookingagency what so ever. We never get tired of touring and we really miss it. We´re a liveband and we love to perform.

Many funny stories to tell but it takes too long to write down everything, we always hook up with strange and funny people when we´re on the road. I guess we´re a little bit naive and sometimes don´t know how to say no. But during shows... I remember the first tour we did, a guy at a bar in Ulm started a huge fight with other people in the audience and some guards, only because he wanted us to play more songs.

How about some future plans for the band? By that I mean do you have an idea for new album in the future? Where will you go touring?

Yes, we have a lot of new songs. I think this next album probably will be the best. We are far away from finished but we are working on some really good stuff. We still haven´t got anything settled with labels or bookings for this new album, but the wheels are in motion.. I think we´ve learned that the most important thing is to have fun, not over think too much and go with the flow.

We will tour anywhere/everywhere. Any suggestions?

Thank you very much for your time and effort. Do you have anything else to say about the band or yourself, that I didn't ask?

Yes, as you may know by now we´re looking for more new contacts. We´re interested in cooperation with any kind of booking agencys, labels, bookers etc, all over the globe.

Send us a mail if you´re interested in getting some of our new songs or can help us out with shows/tours and so on.

sacredsailors@msn.com