humboogie: the story so far...fast forward

we started playing together in august 1995. the original idea for the band came up when henry and jukka were looking for a guitarist and never really found one until ari and henry, during a cruise to sweden and back, accidentally came across and decided to reunite after a successful period of good military service performances in the navy band 1992-1993. henry's idea of the ambiguous band name got accepted and thus we started rehearsing. in a matter of weeks we also included our own compositions in our repertoire, and after a fairly active training period we decided we were ready for our first gig.

so we ended up in ventti pub, loimaa to perform as a supporting act for lowdown dudes in february 1996. after a few gigs in and nearby our hometown, turku, we decided to visit a studio to make an old-fashioned recording, using only one microphone. fairly satisfied with our effort, we almost made a vinyl single; however, the tape we sent to czech republic was never pressed there, oddly enough. despite the not so successful first attempt to release something, we continued with our new compositions all summer long, recording a total of fourteen songs eight of which were released.
after a longish period of studies, problems with cover design ( cf led zeppelin) and other activities, performed 'dead' (hr1) saw the broad daylight in may 24, 1997 and was released at a party at kc sound studio, our homebase.
by autumn, however, some of us were slightly keen on looking for winds of change, in terms of musical development. the needed change came in the firm presence of bassist/vocalist sauli. besides that, we decided to jump into the wonderful and mysterious world of cover music in a more specific way than previously. our development as a band therefore included performing the first and third albums by the texan rock trio zz top. the band was our long time favourite. the first humboogie mark II performance took place in the 30th birthday of our present day guitarist, mika, at hasse's pub december 27, 1997.

the next year saw some new own material, plus performances, the best of which was heard at taiteiden yö 'the night of arts' festival in turku in august 13, 1998. by this we had decided to make a tribute to another great rock band, namely free, which had been our influence from the early days of our lives or something. since the night of arts was perhaps our best gig so far, and since it was nice to play free based music (excluding toxification which we decided not to be influenced by, huh!), we recorded a demo based on free. and things got out of control, slightly.
the demo was ok; so were the live recordings of two songs at taiteiden yö plus the one taken from the ten-year-anniversary of kc sound.

the year was 1999, and we thought it was a good idea to make an album based on songs by free, only. fortunately, this effort was supported by the local press and the radio, which resulted a re-visit to taiteiden yö and the release of free pony ride (home braend hmmm2) at down town in august 20. the gig was broadcast in the local radio later on, as well as noticed in the press. nevertheless, the chemistry among the members of the group was the next challenge.

after a fairly obscure period of changing members and interests we decided to reunite. ari and henry made an interesting and refreshing period of harder rock in wow supreme with petri who had his own clear vision of how a rock trio should play. he also helped us with a few gigs in humboogie. so did juha, too, once. this is how we spent most of 2000 and 2001. it goes without saying that all through the history of the band, the two original members of the band were active in writing their own material, sometimes together, sometimes not.

one of the main ideas of humboogie has always been an original, different, free-from-too-many-restrictions-sound. this development lead to the point where mika, our helping hand(s) with the humboogie's 'covers only period' in 2001, ari and henry decided to go semiacoustic. february 2002 was fairly active with gigs, the material of which consisted of eight own songs as well as free covers. all this was performed with acoustic and electric guitar plus djembe, bassdrum and all sorts of percussions including glockenspiel. to perform in a semielectric way was a fascinating and resfreshing alternative. for a brief moment. but we longed for festivals, especially for the down by the laituri in turku in which we had been trying to get a gig over the years. still, we had no bass player. on the other hand, who needs one, and for what? as a result, ari (and mika occasionally) took up the baritone in spring, and things were looking up once again.

the two most important gigs so far happened to us in june 8 and 9, 2002 when we firstly performed on the banks of river aura on a hot saturday afternoon. everything went to plan. secondly, we were doing time in the soldout premises of kakola penitentiary, supporting maija vilkkumaa it was a privilege. the audience behaved themselves, too. the rest of the summer we made demos at kc, again. and discussed the future.

2003 began with the turku band stand contest in down town where we succeeded in the first round of the contest. it will continue with gigs and recording of our new songs for the forthcoming album tba. this story will continue, as well...