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Interview with The Winyls, by Margarita Khartanovich.
We spoke to James and HC of the Winyls, the Finnish band that is said to combine exciting tunes, live mayhem, blood, sweat and tears into their music and are characterised as ‘sweaty gentlemen with a twist of Horror Opera’.
The Winyls, rock and Tango Fatale: “We want to surprise ourselves”.
James: We don’t have any particular style of music. We want to surprise ourselves. We have so many songs that are different from each other, unique ones, not in any certain kind of a style. In our album you can find rock’n’roll, boogie, disco, tango, whatever!
HC: We are changing the perception of some styles giving them a different attitude. For example, tango is treated as music for old people. We change that – we use it in a rock type of a song. My personal opinion is that Tango Fatale is our best song so far! We are really proud of it as it is something that I haven’t heard that any other band ever did. We have Juhanna Juhola featured in it who is a Finnish accordion player and composer, one of the best tango players in the whole world, I should say.
James: Maybe it’s not that reasonable to make songs of all sorts of music styles as nowadays you must be very careful choosing styles and know your audience and stuff like this. But we just want to give the best to every song. We are a type of a band that makes music for itself. Making it big is not our motivation. And we are not trying to be “saving-the-world” kind of a band either. It’s just our view of the world: what is good and what is bad about it – it’s all in our songs.
The Winyls and The Killers: “That was the biggest band we opened up for”.
James: The story goes as following. There is one bar in Helsinki called Loose. It’s a kind of a rock place where mostly musicians and music-related people are hanging out. And once I went there and met up with some old friend that organises music festivals in Finland. And he was sitting there with some promoter and was like “hey, your band could be a great one to open up for the Killers”. The promoter listened to our music and said “yeah, guys, you will definitely be there”. And so we were. That easy!
HC: In that case we were just lucky. Usually it doesn’t work like that in music business: record companies send their other bands to open up for big ones.
The Winyls and Record Label: “You like our music, and we like you, in a way”.
James: We are working with HYPE records, the one that manages Negative. Some stories say that it happened in Berlin, others in Helsinki after the Killers. In any case it happened like “oh, I like your music” – “and we like you, in a way”.
HC: Tommi is a nice guy, and we like being in his record company. We share the view how music industry works.
James: And we know other bands he manages, Negative and Flinch, we know them all personally and see how they are progressing, not getting deeper but better. Though we have different styles, we really appreciate their music.
The Winyls, UK bands and guitar heroes of Finland: “In the UK they could have awful guitars and drums but the lead singer was always awesome”.
HC: In our bands we have so many different music tastes but we all like the Killers, Led Zeppelin, the Queen, Rolling Stones. And, of course, the Beatles! They were amazing songwriters. You cannot beat the Beatles. They were making music at the time when everything in music was just at its start. And it was them who created pop music culture.
James: Modern bands should be grateful to them for creating this whole industry. We’ve been to Liverpool staying there for a while. Actually, we started playing as a band there; our first gigs were in Liverpool. And we were scared a little bit of how we could be treated by the audience. But it turned out to be easier than we expected. We were there in our early 20-s and were learning how to do these things. That was a good school for us.
HC: We also went to Manchester and Leeds to play gigs. And it’s fantastic how many bands there are in the UK. You need to be really good. There was one curious thing that we have noticed about British bands. The lead singer was always awesome! They could have awful guitars, drums or whatever. But the frontman was fabulous all the time. Here in Finland it’s different. We have excellent lead guitars and drummers but not necessarily singers.
James: We have another culture. It’s a land of guitar heroes, you know.
The Winyls, teaching and touring: “We are all teachers in the band”.
James: We have to do other things apart from music. We are all teachers: I’m a music teacher at a school; HC is a history teacher; Leady is a kindergarten teacher; Sheriff is a guitar teacher in a music institute, and Pablo is a yoga master.
HC: We are busy all the time working and working. It’s natural for us already. When we are tired, we get a couple of weeks free but then we are back on track making music and everything. Sometimes it goes way too hectic.
James: We’ll be touring around Finland this year, and maybe Europe which depends on our record label and many other things. Of course, we would like to come to England again at a more professional level this time.
The Winyls, Moscow and LA: “You can walk naked and nothing will happen with them”.
HC: We’ve been three times to Russia, Moscow. And we’ve gone to the United States once. But our best audience was in Russia. It was crazy! In LA people have seen everything, all kinds of music, bands, shows, and they are more laid back. You can walk naked and nothing will happen with them.
James: Russians are different. It’s like an explosion when they watch you on the stage. And they are not drunk – they just enjoy the whole thing. In the USA we had a radio show. It was great fun and great memories. It’s another story how it happened. We were in Tampere at some music conference. There was one guy from United States who used to work with Kean and he said to us “you, guys, want to go to the USA?” And so we went to the States.
HC: Now we have our time, no pressure. So we will tour a little bit more but a whole new album is such a big issue.
James: We are not that kind of a band that will hurry to get things done recording like crazy. Of course, we will move on but we’d prefer to stay calm and realistic. We want to write music that we can be happy with and proud of! And creating such music takes time.
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