Major news on the One Chord To Another scale. One of my favourite singer-songwriters Austin Lucas will be touring in Finland next week. I’ve been a big fan since his 2009 album Somebody Loves You and the last three albums have all ended up on my year-end top 10. Therefore I’m actually really ashamed that I haven’t seen Austin Lucas live before this current solo tour. He has been playing in Finland several times since that, but I’ve just been either too lazy or busy to drag myself to Helsinki. I’m really excited to finally see Austin Lucas perform at Dynamo, Turku next Saturday. That’s the last date of his current Scandinavian / Northern Europe tour. Earlier in the week, Austin will play in Maarianhamina, Jyväskylä, Tampere and Helsinki. Here are the Finnish dates.

Austin Lucas Finland Tour (10.11. – 14.11.)

Nov 10, Maarianhamina
Nov 11, Tampere, Telakka
Nov 12, Jyvaskyla, Lutakko
Nov 13, Helsinki, Bar Loose
Nov 14, Turku, Dynamo

There’s at least a dozen of Austin Lucas songs that I hold very dear, but I think I go with this most recent favourite. This is Splinters that ended his previous album Stay Reckless in perfect fashion. The video is from his Start A Scene Sessions earlier in the year.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvjuRJd5cuc]

Besides creating some of the finest and most captivating songs of the past ten years, there’s also more reasons to love Austin and that’s his bond with Sally. Actually, the only downside of Austin’s Euro tours is that I miss Sally photos. I’m pretty sure Instagram was created because of Sally & Austin and their mutual love and respect for each other that shines so brightly on the photos that Austin posts. Nowadays, my wife and I even often refer to Austin as “Sally’s dad” on our conversations. Every time I open that app, the first thing I do is that I check out what Austin and Sally are up to and I don’t think I’m the only one. Looking at a photo of Sally sitting in the guitar case while Austin sings his heart out. There hasn’t been a day when that hasn’t brought a smile on my face. And I’ve had some pretty fucked up days during the past year. Thank you Austin for the music and thank you for the photos of you and Sally.

Austin Lucas Website

Someone drag me back to surface. I’m getting over-excited. I’ve only heard two songs from the forthcoming Steven Lambke album out this Friday (Oct.30.) on the ever lovely You’ve Changed Records, but I’m already convinced that this is going to be a masterpiece. If the rest of the album will live up to Days of Heaven and especially Memory Forever, Barna Howard will indeed have a late contender for that album of the year title. I can’t wait to hear this one in a few days time. These two songs are just so brilliant. The songs remind me a bit of the late great Sparklehorse. Could be just me. Anyway, I’ll try to get back to this once I’ve actually heard this in full. Meanwhile check out the video premiere for Memory Forever at Exclaim (I didn’t embed the video, because I’m not sure is that allowed when someone has the premiere still going on, but I highly recommend watching it. The song is wonderful and the video includes some of my favourite people that I’ve never met, Steven, Ian Kehoe and Tamara Lindeman). This one is the other song that is already out there. The wonderful album opener and title track Days Of Heaven.

Steven Lambke at Facebook