Although I say we all drove from East Finchley in North London to Finland, I in fact cheated, as I was invited to perform with Steven Wilson and his fab band, who are friends of mine, at the iconic London Palladium. This meant I needed to stay in London for an extra day and then fly out to meet the others in Malmo, Sweden. Playing again live with Steven and his band was fantastic. I loved it and it brought back memories of all the touring I did with them between 2011 and 2013 around the time of the album ‘The Raven that Refused to Sing (and other stories)’ which we had recorded in Los Angeles with Alan Parsons engineering.

I did not fly to Malmo as there are no direct flights there. So that would have involved changing planes, and experience has taught me that changing planes is a common recipe for luggage not actually reaching its final destination. Too many opportunities for things to get lost or not transferred. So instead I flew to Copenhagen and got the 40 minute train ride to Malmo over the famous 16 km bridge that joins Denmark and Sweden. A great train ride, and over the bridge that is the subject and location of the classic Scandi noir crime drama ‘The Bridge’. My journey went without incident and when I finally met up with the others, they had had their fair share of travel complications and they were pretty exhausted.

Our Malmo gig went well and we introduced into the set some new tracks from the recording we have just done, even though the new album will not be released for quite some time. The second gig was further north in Halmstadt where we were hosted by a delightful and super helpful promoter called Mikail who invited us to his lovely traditional house the following morning for Swedish pastries and coffee. The gig was very successful and everyone was happy with it. The ex Mahavishnu Orchestra bass player Jonas Hellborg came along, and we had a great hang with him and his wife afterwards. A very interesting guy as well as a phenomenal musician. Next day we drove further north to Gothenburg. A very enthusiastic crowd and cool city. For the first time on the tour I put away my sheet music as I now knew it by heart, and could just close my eyes and focus on performing the music. I do feel I can perform better if I don’t have to stare at a sheet of manuscript paper. It is as if a barrier between me and the audience has been removed.

Next was Oslo in Norway where we played at Cosmopolite, a legendary club where we played seven years ago. The large audience was pretty pumped up and they went nuts. I thought we all played particularly well that night and the two things are no doubt connected. I have been to Oslo quite a lot of times with different bands (Soft Machine, Gong, Anja Garbarek, David Sylvian, Steven Wilson) and it always feels special. Oslo is a major centre of contemporary jazz related music and I am always aware of that when there. The ECM record label has always featured and almost been defined by great Norwegian jazz musicians and the sound of Rainbow studio in Oslo. I am talking about musicians like Jan Garbarek, Arild Andersen and Jon Cristensen. Next stop was another legendary club, Fasching in Stockholm, a cool club that is a bit like the Swedish Ronnie Scott’s club. Another great night and excellent promoter. The band is getting tighter and tighter as well as more relaxed and powerful. For a change I set up my keyboards so that I was sitting rather than standing to play. Whilst this is more comfortable when playing the keys, there are about five times in the set when I have to change instruments from sax to keys or keys to sax in the space of one bar or even just two beats. This is tricky and I am never sure I am going to make the instrument swop in time. Sitting at the keys makes it even harder! Fortunately I did make the changes but after this gig I reverted to standing at the keys.

Our ferry from Stockholm to Finland the following day was an unknown quantity as it had been hard booking rooms online. It had been impossible to actually speak to a human being on the phone to try and sort it, so there was a strong possibility we would have to share rooms….argh! We don’t like sharing rooms. For this reason, John actually decided to fly rather than take the risk. Thankfully, we did manage to each get single rooms in the end and in fact I was able to purchase a large room that happened to be available. Phew. The journey, up through the many Swedish islands north of Stockholm, in the sunset, was rather glorious, especially on a clear and sunny evening. We also had an excellent and relaxed evening meal on the boat too.

The venue in Pori, Finland called Validi Karkia was a large concert hall, often used for orchestral or other classical concerts. Fred’s wife and son have flown out to join the tour and also meet some Finnish friends of theirs. The hall was rather grand and with its acoustics particularly suited the atmospheric flute tracks and quieter music. When we got stuck in to the heavier numbers, I thought the sound did not flow or gel quite so well as in some of the smaller club type venues we have played. But it was still fine.

I have been playing quite a lot of keyboards on the gigs recently and it means we can play the tracks that have important keyboard parts. It broadens the sound palette and opens up a lot more repertoire than we could do otherwise. However to be honest, I do not consider myself a proper keyboard player really. I am a sax and flute player - that is what I do and who I am. And some gigs more than others I really feel the difference in what that means.

Some curious things that I have noticed on this tour: in Scandinavia, hotel room doors open outwards not inwards; on the main roads between cities particularly in Finland, there are warning signs for wild moose on the loose, in case they run into the road. Unsurprisingly, I have never seen that in Britain or the rest of Europe. In Malmo, we passed a ‘Disgusting Food Museum’! You can see it on Google maps. How bizarre is that?!

In Helsinki, for the first time, our hotel had a swimming pool. I took advantage of this with a pre- breakfast swim and it was fantastic. With spending hours and hours in the van, and lots of time sitting around backstage or waiting for ferries, it felt really good to have the exercise of a swim. We are all getting our steps in, measuring how many we do each day on our phones (John always does the most) but it was very welcome to have a swim again. I enjoyed both the gig, which was in Espoo on the edge of Helsinki, and the soundcheck when we had time to play about half an hour of burning bebop…just to warm up our ‘chops’ and for fun.

We have now just come off a 31 hour ferry from Helsinki to Travermunde, north Germany for the final two gigs of the tour. The ferry was mainly full of trucks and truckers, so not so many regular passengers at all. Again and to our relief, we got individual cabins, and I managed to get one with a sea view. Nice! Interestingly, the Wi-Fi was very expensive so we made a communal decision not to get it. This meant we did not spend any time on our phones, there was no scrolling through social media, no bombardment by shocking and click-bait news stories, and we generally sat around talking over coffee or a glass of wine. A pleasant change from normal everyday life. These last two gigs are in Munster, Germany and Zoetermeer in Holland, at one of our most often visited venues, De Boerderij. It is somewhere we have all played a lot over the years and we always stay in the same hotel which is very familiar, welcoming and comfortable. So the Scandinavian part of our tour is complete and I have to say it was a real pleasure to perform there. All those countries are so blessed with beautiful cities, countryside (with so many trees!) and water everywhere. The people have been very welcoming and appreciative and the promoters super helpful. I am sure we will be back sometime. And now, Munster, here we come!

Photos by David Wiggins, Mats Westerberg, Dick Roland Nilsson, Carl Glover, John Etheridge and TT

He will be signing copies of the new Secret Island Vinyl LP at the record shop -

5pm. Fri 30 May 

Alan’s Records 
218 High Rd, London N2 9A

9 mins walk from East Finchley Underground station

Tel 020 8883 0234

He looks forward to meeting you there!