Teddy Bob Freddys

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 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.