We met with Tero Vesterinen, the leader of Vesterinen Yhtyeineen, in Tampere right before their “grand concert” in Pakkahuone – one of the biggest venue in Finland. We spoke about last album “Faaraoiden aika”. We discussed some crazy moments in music business. And we agreed that Ville Valo is a cool guy 
Today Vesterinen Yhtyeineen show in Pakkahuone is titled as “Suurkonsertti”, “the grand concert”. What will happen? And what is the difference to “normal” concerts?
Tero: One is the choir, Teekkarikuoro, that we’ll have with us on stage. It’s the first time for us to do something like this. The also this is sort of a half way concert for the whole Faaraoiden aika tour, I think we’re somewhere in the middle of it, so it’s time for a celebration. And of course it’s this venue, Pakkahuone, which is probably the biggest venue we’ve played so far on our own gigs. Previously we’ve been playing at Klubi [Pakkahuone and Klubi are two clubs in Tullikamari complex]. So we decided to call it “Grand Concert”.
Why not Helsinki? Why Tampere? Are you based in Tampere?
Tero: We do live in Helsinki and surrounding cities, but Tampere has always been really good for us. We’ve been playing here a lot, in Klubi, and in Tampere-talo, which is excellent (and pretty big) concert hall. And for some reason people here at Tampere seem to love us quite much, since most of our shows here have been nearly sold out. And for today Pakkahuone is sold out, over a thousand people attending. It’s kind of a new situation for us.
So, tell me how did you grow from a small boy to the leader of the band, which sells out concerts in Pakkahuone?
Tero: I started to play guitar when I was five years old. My grandfather Viljo “Vili” Vesterinen was really famous accordion player here in Finland, one of the most famous musicians of his time. So, music has always been present in our home. I was around 7 when I started my first band, me playing guitar. And so it went, many bands later I was still playing guitar with Finnish heavy metal band “Blake” around 2003. But it was after a couple of us left the band that I realised I’m not that good guitarist after all even though I played it for such a long time. It was pretty disappointing, and I thought that making music was more or less over for me. But then the other guys who also left “Blake” were forming a new band and they said “Hey, if you don’t want to play guitar, maybe you could sing?”. And so I did even though I had no experience of being a singer. Before long I realised that by singing I can express myself way better than by playing guitar, and I was really anxious to keep on doing it.
Around that time my childhood friend was getting married, and he, being a singer of a cover band, didn’t want to sing at his own wedding so I was sort of covering up for him. The gig went really well, and guys from this cover band asked if I’d like to continue with them. So, few years later we were playing at Teemu’s (our drummer) wedding, and he was like “Wow, I didn’t know you sing that well! Maybe we should start a band”. And we did. *laughs*
Was it like 10 years ago? Was it such a big band from the beginning?
Tero: We started some 13 years ago, in 2006. In the first session we had at Teemu’s summer cottage we actually made first version of ‘Kukaan ei koskaan’ [one the most famous song of Vesterinen Yhtyeineen]. After that session we agreed that – yeah, this is definitely worth something. At the beginning there was five of us – me, drummer Teemu, keyboard player Janne Riionheimo, bass-guitarist Markus Piha, and Jaakko Murros (the guitarist who left the band before the release of ‘Jönköping’, our first album, and he was replaced by Mikko Enqvist). During the making of ‘Jönköping’, Pate (Petri Kivimäki, the guitar player) also joined us. After a couple of gigs we did without a horn player we realised that we need one for the gigs also, since on many songs on ‘Jönköping’ we had arrangements for horns. So, we asked Janne Toivonen (he is playing on “Jönköping’) to join us on stage, and after the first gig he played we decided he’s has to stay on our touring line-up. And after few years Leo Kylätasku did replace Martti Vesala (who was playing trumpet at the time). And Iikka Kotaja, the second keyboard player, joined the band also. So there we were with eight guys thinking that we definitely need some female vocalists to sing with us. We asked Heini Ikonen and Jepa Lambert to come along – and well, here we are with ten people on stage. It’s the way we want to perform our music. Many of our song have quite massive arrangements and since we don’t like to use machines running background it eventually comes down to have enough musicians on stage.
Who is that genius who composes all the songs?
Tero: Teemu has been the main composer from the beginning, and Mikko also has composed a lot of our songs. Me and Janne have also done composing thru the years, and for ‘Faaraoiden aika’, there was songs composed by Iikka and Pate also. For the lyrics, we’ve been doing them mostly with Teemu, Janne joining us occasionally. And some lyrics we did with the whole group. It’s really nice to have a real band with everyone involving. There’s no barriers, no restrictions, everyone can bring an idea or a song and that’s what is the foundation of our music.
If you need 10 people on stage, does it mean you can play only at big venues? How do you manage to play on small stages, which are typical for Finland?
Tero: Well, we manage somehow. Sometimes it’s pretty hard to fit in but since we don’t have a kind of poser attitude we deal with different situations and stage sizes as long as they are playable and we can deliver our music the way we want. But yeah, it’s great to play in big venues like the one today. It’s also great for our technicians since it’s really tricky to make great mix in smaller venues since the amount of information and volume coming from stage is pretty massive. In these bigger venues our sound guys are able to focus delivering on the details and nuances of our music for the audience.
The band exists for 10+ years. You just mentioned that it’s a new situation that Vesterinen Yhtyeineen gigs are sold out. So what happened?
Tero: I think it’s sort of a “jungle drum” thing. People who’ve seen our gigs and felt impressed are attending again, bringing their friends with them. And since we’ve been touring for many years, playing hundreds of excellent gigs, the amount of people has reached a sort of tipping point and suddenly we have sold out venues like today. I talked few years ago with Samuli Putro of this phenomenon, he told me that they had something similar with “Zen Café”. During the past I’ve noticed this happening also for many other bands here in Finland, but of course it requires a lot of stamina to keep on touring and believing in what we do. And then, maybe it’s the new songs and the people we’ve been working with, especially on our latest release. Before ‘Faaraoiden aika’ album we produced, engineered and mixed our albums by ourselves, but for this album we had a producer, Jonas Olsson, bringing in his vision of combining our band’s sound with elements of modern pop. And I think that is one of the main reasons for us to get quite a lot of air time on radio stations at the moment.
Maybe Vesterinen Yhtyeineen recorded a song which became a super hit?
Tero: No, at least I haven’t noticed! And it’s a funny thing. A couple of last years it’s been quite quiet for us on radio, but at the same time the gigs started get bigger and be sold out. And now the radio stations are like “well, these guys seem to be popular”, and started to play us again. But yeah, maybe we’ll get that super hit eventually? The whole music industry is pretty weird stuff.
Anyway, you have new very good album “Faaraoiden aika”. You mentioned you had a producer…
Tero: Yeah, we did. And it turned out to be excellent decision to have Jonas making the album with us. Now, for the next album, we just made a deal with Universal Music Finland even though we were planning to release the next album by our own company, as we did with previous three studio albums, one compilation and live-album. But Universal offered us such a great deal that we decided to sign it. One of the main reasons for signing it was to be able to make music with Martti Vuorinen (A&R) again. We’ve been working with Martti a lot over the years and he’s just excellent guy, on the same level with us musically and lyrics-wise also.
And the title of the album… Pharaohs…?
Tero: No, no. *laughs* Faarao is character, sort of “kylähullu”, one of these lovable weirdos living among us. Like sort of a nut case but still appreciated by the community. The character started to evolve presenting the bigger idea of communities and families, their meaning and importance to all of us. Without others we don’t survive. And I think we need these weirdos to remind us of it. We all have a right to live the way we want, no matter what. As long as we behave though *laughs*. If communities break apart, we have nothing left. And this started to become one of the main themes for “Faaraoiden aika” album. After every album we made, looking back what’s done, we’ve realised that we did a theme album with lyrics dealing with sort of same issues for each album. For “Faaraoiden aika” many songs are dealing with the importance of other beings you can trust, or lean on, giving or receiving help when needed. I think it’s more and more missing in todays society. It’s too much like me against you, we against them and finally everybody against everybody. Oh, and yes, the album has nothing to do with Egypt… *laughs*
And what about Indians in the song “Intiaanit”?
Tero: The song and lyrics are sort of our pretty free interpretation of the spirituality of indigenous people. The idea that it doesn’t matter if you die as long as you’ve lived a good life. It’s about allowing yourself, or your partner or close one, to let go, just to give up and die when the time has come. It’s sort of a dark lyrics, but we tried to make the song include a great deal of relief and hope.
And I want to ask about the song “Reppana”. Is it so beautiful. What is it about?
Tero: It’s about two brothers who inherit their father. One gets the land and money while other one, ‘reppana’, gets a caterpillar. And of course, it breaks down *laughs*. ‘Reppan’ in Finnish is sort of a lousy person, the guy who never gets anything done properly. Not actually a loser, but quite near. In the song we present this “loser” in a lyric way. “Ah, ok, I’m a loser, but who gives a fuck. I got a caterpillar, it broke down. Thanks dad. But still, I’ll carry on.” This dude is pretty common character in Finland *laughs*.
That is what amazes me in Vesterinen Yhtyeineen music. You sing about sad things, but music is so beautiful, and your performances are so energetic, and people look so happy at your concerts.
Tero: Yes. It’s one of the greatest things with this band, and with our music. Even though some lyrics are dealing with pretty dark stuff or depressing issues, the way we are writing them, and then performing them is to turn it around. Like “Ok, this is really bad thing. But you can deal with it. Or you can get over it and continue living. Or if you can’t, at least you can die happy!” *laughs*
Many popular bands from Finland sings in English. Why did you choose Finnish language?
Tero: Actually, English wasn’t even a choice. We want to make lyrics knowing exactly what every word means and to play around with language. Me, Teemu and Janne are pretty interested in words and the structure of our language. Finnish is really rich. It’s pretty hard to make lyrics in Finnish, because everybody understands them very clearly. If we’d make lyrics in English, it would give us a lot of freedom like “Well, I think I get what their singing, but… well, it doesn’t matter that much”. When we write in Finnish, it’s really serious stuff. People are listening every word, digging in the details and nuances. And that’s what makes it so great and at same time challenging to make good lyrics.
How would you describe your music to someone who never heard you before.
Tero: It’s a mixture of pop and rock. Basic stuff combined with some film score moods. And also some pretty black humor in the lyrics. I hope we make somehow original stuff combining music styles that we like ourselves. And also our music appreciates the long legacy of bands. We’re really serious about our music. It’s not like playing around for just for fun. We’re really concentrated and focused on music. Something like that.
What do you do aside the stage?
Tero: I live in a countryside, outskirts of a town. Mostly staying at home with my kids, chopping wood and building or fixing stuff. I’m planning to build a log cottage in our yard to get a nice small studio and sauna there. And of course I’m doing all sorts of things considering music. Besides that I think I live pretty normal peaceful life.
I like Vesterinen Yhtyeineen page on Facebook. It’s nice and funny. Do you run it yourself?
Tero: Yes, we do it by ourselves. These funny backstage pre-show streams are from the girls – Jepa and Heini. They make Live streams on Facebook before the concerts to show all the mess behind the stage. It’s really great and funny, and we’ve noticed people like them.
My last question. Are you friends with Ville Valo?
Tero: No, but sure I know him. He is great. I’m a big fan of him and also of HIM. We are friends with the drummer from “Agents” though, Kepa Kettunen, he is using the same rehearsal place as we do. I love old “Agents” stuff with Topi Sorsakoski and Rauli “Badding” Somerjoki, and now with Ville singing. I tried to meet with Ville when we played at the same festival, it would’ve been nice to have a chat… He’s definitely a great singer and a performer.
So, I’m glad to tell you that I knew about Vesterinen Yhtyeineen because once Ville wore “Faaraoiden aika” hoodie. I googled it, and I became in love with your music. So, it seems like Ville is your fan too. Congratulations!
Tero: I didn’t know! Wow!
By Melamory, CrimsonCrown
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