Roots Music Report

Liner Notes:

About the Album

MICKE & LEFTY feat. Chef

Micke Björklöf and Lefty Leppänen together with Mr.Chef are forming one of the most exciting acoustic blues and roots bands in European blues scene today. One of their strongest trademarks is the powerful three-part harmonies as well as strong lead vocals sung by all band members. The band also stands out with their original material. It´s a rich mix of American roots music with influences from early delta- and country blues, spiced up with some bluegrass, rock, jazz and Hawaiian flavours, with emphasis anyway on Blues! All these key elements with explosive slide guitar, suitcase drum set and harmonica together make the band sound distinctive and authentic in the blues scene. 

Through the years Micke & Lefty feat.Chef have stirred up audiences with their entertaining and energetic live shows wherever they play, from small club stages to big festival arenas. The band has performed all from Memphis to Svalbard Dark Season Blues, the Worlds Northernmost bluesfestival! One of the career highlights has definatelly been when they opened for ZZ Top at 2010 with an audience with over 15000 people.

2010 Micke & Lefty feat.Chef celebrated their 10th anniversary with releasing a new album “Up the Wall” (Hokahey Records!). This was in the entire fifth album where Björklöf and Leppänen are collaborating. With the follower to the “Big Bag” album they took a huge step forward; hundreds of live shows had improved their unique band sound and made this trio very tight and groovy, which you really can hear on the album. The album was mainly recorded live in studio just to get as close as possible of the magic of a live show. Also bass player Chef has got his space as lead vocalist this time. Up the Wall album contains 11original tracks and 2 cover tracks, Tony Joe White’s “Polk Salad Annie” and Willie Dixon’s Big Three Trio’s “Come Here Baby”.

Key tracks on the “Up the Wall” album:

“You Better Me”, the first radio single is strongly soul and gospel influenced song with great harmony vocals. This song also has some real crossover potential. “Up the wall” the title tracks for the album, with Micke on lead vocals. This is a really authentic down-home blues song. This will also be the first ever-filmed music video for the band. “Clean up” is a tight Louisiana flavoured rock´n roll song with Chef on lead vocals. “Guitar man” is an up tempo blues song with lyrics from blues guy’s hard but rewarding life; it’s also Lefty’s showcase of his fantastic slide guitar playing. He also sings this track.

HISTORY

These two gentlemen started their musical collaboration in 1997 when the lead singer, harmonica player and bandleader Micke Björklöf (born –65) was looking for a new guitarist to his band, Micke Björklöf & BlueStrip (formed 1991) and asked Lefty Leppänen (born –66) to join the band. This world-class slide guitar virtuoso is also known from his previous work with Keystone Cops. After playing few years together, they started talkin´ about doing some acoustic duo shows while band wasn’t touring. They both shared a passion and love for older acoustic delta and country blues music; this would be great opportunity to play the music they both had strongly been influenced by. 

The first show was on when Micke and Lefty were asked by the festival organizer to fill up with an acoustic show due some cancellations. But a real kick-start came little later when they got a chance to open the show for Robert Plant and B.B King on the main stage at Puistoblues, the biggest blues festival in Finland, with audience over 10 000. In the beginning this was a just side project to the band, playing acoustic version of that material. Through the years it has developed to totally own band with original material and own repertoire. In the fall 2003 Micke & Lefty started to work on their forth coming debut album. “We thought it would be nice to get some upright bass on some tracks so we asked Mr. Chef Kivimäki to join us in the recording sessions”, says Björklöf. Those sessions were a blast! This talented young man has been cooking´ his bass rhythms and singing with Micke & Lefty since then. Nowadays Micke & Lefty perform mostly as trio with Chef but are still doing some duo performances every now and then. Their critically acclaimed debut album “Big Bag” was released 2004 by Bluelight Records. The album introduced strong original material among couple of unique performances of classic tracks.