Racetrack Babies

My first song: Cushion

Back in the days… when I was still the lead singer of Teddy Bob Freddys. I went to work in Stockholm for a period. I brought an acustic guitar with me. I had slowly started experimenting jamming a bit for myself and trying to sing along to the few chords i knew then. It was very difficult for me in the beginning to make the sounds that I had in my head, beeing the ones that came out. I recorded my jams and listened to them, but nothing really good assembled in the beginning. I worked in Stockholm for a whole year and had an apartment at Norr Mälarstrand with a varanda with a view over Stockholm.

One day when I got home from work to the appartment, the solitude and the absense of my friends from Denmark inspired me to the song Cushion. I think I am making fun of myself in that song.

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I had a bunch of very dedicated hardworking and friendly colleages in Stockholm and I invited them home to my appartment for some snacks and beer. I played the song for them and they thought it was very good. By that time when I came home to Denmark I also played the song for Teddy Bob Freddys and I also think they thought it was a good song. At that time Teddy Bob Freddys was disassembling, so nothing happened with it in that constellation. Later i introduced the song in Racetrack Babies and it seemed to float right into our repertoirer from day one. It ended up beeing one of the songs of the debut album “Love Sick” from Racetrack Babies.

The song God Bye from Racetrack Babies’ debut album love sick

As I have written elsewhere, the song with the title “God Bye” is spelled correct, which some Danish music journalists did not comprehend.

God Bye was the second “real” song that I wrote. I wrote it back in 1999 when I went to N.Y. to purchase my first guitar. I brought the guitar with me to my sisters apartment on the 33’rd floor in Mahatten and the store where I had bought the guitar had kindly lent me a small amplifier. I wrote the intro there (which at that time was very difficult for me to play) and I also wrote the rest of the song there. That was my state of mind at that time. N.Y which seemed to be so full of people somehow seemed ot be full og many lonely people living seperate lives very close to one another. During my stay in N.Y. my state of mind was on the edge because os some personal issues.

I had given the song a working title “Good Bye”. When I was driving in a cab through Manhatten, the cab stopped right outside a building which had the number 666 on it, while writing this blog i read that it was 666 Fifth Avenue on the internet. This gave me the creeps, but I thought that that might also be a sign. So I renamed the song from “Good bye” and called it “God Bye”. It was the beginning of my musical carrier and everybody talked about loosing their soul at some point(the crossroads), if you want to make it and I always wondered about that, so I thought the title: “God Bye” was perfect for that song, I still do. The song lyrics in the song Soul Snatch dance around that same subject concerning loosing your soul. I was scared stiff about that thought and had no idea what was meant with it. I do now I guess.

God Bye was the only song which we brought with us to the “Summer Salt Santiago” tour, it was a request from Guitar player Søren Ernst Hansen which also plays guitar on The Captain of Sorrow. It is a pleasure to play it live, and it is still one of my favorite songs, because it is so clear in its expression. Especially the “break” after the song just before it takes of again is a sure joy ride to play live.

When we recorded that for “Love Sick” Jacob contacted a museum and we borrowed an air raid alarm, which was used during the second world war to warn against air raids. That’s the sound which you can hear in the beginning of the song. We brought this “horn” with us to the “Love Sick” tour in Denmark and Skandinavia.

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666 Fifth Avenue, Manhatten N.Y.

My first and best Electric guitar

Back in 1998 when I started rehearsing with Racetrack Babies I did not really know how to play the guitar. I had started learning it on an acustic guitar in my apartment in Stockholm where i wrote my first song, Cushion. At that time Jacob had a cheap extra guitar which he had in the rehearsal room which I got to borrow sometimes. That made me interested in learning how to play the guitar. It ended out with me playing more and more guitar at our gigs and when we jammed. In the end i had to purchase my own guitar. At that time my sister lived in N.Y. and when I went to visit her I also wanted to purchase a guitar. I went down to Sam Ash and immidiately fell for my black Gibson Les Paul with gold pickups. I returned to the shop several times to make sure it was the right decission, but as in many other aspects in life sometimes you just know what is right at first sight. I was not a very good guitar player at the time, so sometimes it was a bit embarrasing hanging out in the guitar shop just trying out a guitar. I only knew a few chords and I think I invented the riff in the shop, for the song which ended up as beeing “Unprepared” later on the Racetrack Babies Album “The End.”. While I played that riff a dude came in from the streets with a Rastafari hat and banged his head and said: “thats a great riff mann”.. And i bought the guitar on the spot. Sometimes I wonder if the Rastafari dude was hired by the shop to help them close the deal faster.

The Gibson guitar has a solid sustain and gave me more than what i put into it, and I guess that is what defines a good tool. When I play noisy parts and chords the noise gets full of melodic overtones and i love that. Thats why i chose that guitar. I remember the first time i had to play an intro on that guitar at a GIG and I had rehearsed for weeks to get it right. That was the intro to God Bye which ended up on the Racetrack Babies album “Love Sick”. Many mistake that song for having a spelling error in the title, but it does not. I wrote that song and intro in New York on the 33’rd floor, in an apartment overlooking Manhatten. The Guitar store had kindly lent me an amplifier. Did you know that there is a building in New York with the number 666 on top of it? Well there is and can you guess the reason for title now?

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The Recording of Racetrack Babies

When I had just returned from the US tour with Racetrack Babies back in 2006, Morten and Mingh left the band. I had never had so much desire to make even more music. So I immidiately started planning making another record. I liked the production idea from Summer Salt Santiago where we went into the studio with just faint song ideas and sketch recordings and then capturing them at once, while they were beeing conceived. You know the saying: it’s your first idea which is the best. I have heard long stories about and have experienced myself spending hours and days on just one track and then returning to the original first recording. I have also captured first time played songs on tape and then afterwards stuggled struggled on how to find that feeling again. I thought I would bring that idea forward with me to the new record, creating the songs while they were beeing played and recorded. I also wanted to introduce a new thing, which was a new “one sound” code idea. It is an idea where each song has a single unique sound once on each song. We recorded the basic tracks in 3-4 days. The 2 basictrack musicians Henrik and Hans were so skilled at their musical craftmanship, that I was afraid that they were going to play with the music and not play the music. I wanted them to work hard to get things to stick together and not play around.

The beginning of the band Racetrack Babies

In 1998 i started playing in the band Racetrack Babies. I reacted on an ad in the newspaper. Before that i had been trying to get a band called Teddy Bob Freddys working with a bunch of really good friends, but the others didn’t like the constellation of the band at that time. Bjarni the songwriter in the band wanted to sing his own songs, he was a really good songwriter but struggled with many problems. I had just returned from a 1 year stay in Stockholm and had written my first song. Cushion which is a song that ended up on our debut album with Racetrack Babies. I had a period trying out with a bunch of bands and musicians after that, which was a pretty cool experience itself. I meet many interesting people and music. The trials w. Racetrack Babies bunch were very good and we decided to keep working together, it’s like we shared the joy of playing the same music and there was a good drive in the band to take it somewhere. In the band at that time was Kasper on bass(I forget his surname), Mads Hvidt on drums and Jacob Aaby on guitar. Mads had a very steady beat on the drums. Kasper went out of the band pretty fast, he wanted to play something harder and he was replaced by Cecilie.
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Cecilie worked hard in the beginning and I think she only went to 8’th grade at that time, she joined the band at an age of only 14 years. Cecilie played a very “heavy” beat on the bass and thats what we liked and why we signed her in. Jacob and I were the main drivers of the band at that time and shared the passion for getting the music heard.
We got it going pretty fast, we recorded a demo only 3 months after we gathered, and started playing jobs. I have forgotten the names of the tracks on that demo, but I think there was a song called Heal and the demo was called QED.. The songs were the results of our jams in the rehearsal room in those first 3 months.
The name Racetrack Babies came to me, out of the blue. I think it is a much better name and says much more about the time and our work than I knew at that time. But I guess that is what defines art, you never get all of it from the beginning. It just feels like it’s there so you return to it again and again until you get it.