PEITERSEN (Denmark) 2001
By Steen Peitersen

SAYIT

Swedish guitar ace Tommy Denander has been very busy this fall. SAYIT (Sayit Dölen) is a personal friend of his and he has been producing this second coming called "Again".
On the record there are a bunch of ace guest stars like David Hungate, Jim Jidhed, Geir Rönning, Kee Marcello, Mats Olausson and many others!
Read on and the details from the man himself: SAYIT will tell you all about his past, present and future for his musical project!
The CD is available through Georg Siegl's AOR Heaven!

The Interview:
Q: What's the story of SAYIT ?, according to Tommy Denander you picked up the guitar relative late.

A: I picked up the guitar in '91 and started to play in a punk band!
A year later i thought that i was the best guitar player in the world so i recorded myself on a Roland 4 track home studio and discovered that wasn't the case at all:-)
So i started to practice and the more i played the more i discovered how little i knew...so i'm still practicing.

Q: Your second CD "Again" is out now - how would you describe this one compared to the debut?

A: When we did the first album i just asked Tommy if he could help me make a solo album, i really had no plan on what it should be so he wrote a lot of songs and i liked them so we recorded them with no budget at all.
When that "demo" was finished AOR Heaven heard it and liked it so much that they released it!!
It had many good songs and several cool guests but the sound isn't very good cause it was recorded on such small equipment.
On the new album we had a budget and i knew much more what i wanted to do and eventhough i only wrote one song on the new one i had a lot more input through the whole album.
It's hard to compete with a songwriter like Tommy who has written songs longer than Mozart:-) but i'm writing more and more and on the next album i will have many of my own songs i hope.
I hope that people will check out my new CD "Again" cause it is very good i think and the guests are pretty cool on this one as well!

Q:What is your main influences ? - I know Tommy has stints of jazz, westcoast, hard rock and AOR in his records...

A: I have to say Steve Lukather has been the biggest influence on me and second it's Tommy Denander cause all those nights on the phone jamming really made a big impression on me.
Right now i've been listening a lot to Michael Landau and a swedish guitarist Staffan Astner, great guys.

Q: You wrote to me earlier on that you were on tour with Geir Rönning - are you on a tour right now?

A: I've been on tour for the last 2 years!, i'm always playing somewhere.
I was in Finland doing a little tour of 8 gigs with Geir and i hope to play a lot more with him in the future.
In Febrary we have 2 gigs in Stockholm together and it's gonna be real fun!!

Q: Where can we expect to see and/or hear you in the near future?

A: I hope to play in Denmark with Geir, i've been to Denmark lots of times but that would be my first time playing there so if you want to see me play right now you would have to come to Sweden but if someone wants to book us in Denmark you'll be the first to know - and if so i hope to see every one in Denmark there:-)
I'm also playing on more and more albums which is great cause i love doing sessions as well, here are some of the albums:
Jason Becker Tribute part II, Kristoffer Lagerström's CINEMA project + a swedish all star song for an international charity CD for NY and there's 2-3 more that i will tell you more about soon.

Q: Both Denmark and Sweden had a lot of "big" band in this genres in the 80's and early 90's - how do you see the music environment on your side of the Öresund these days?

A: Sweden has come out with a lot of good melodic bands since the early 80's but these days there is really no place for this kind of music in our own country at all and it's strange.
There are so many fans of this music and just recently Toto released a new compilation album and it went to number 4 on the charts right away!
I hope this will change but right now it's almost only the boy and girl bands that work it seems.

Q:Your CD is available through AOR Heaven - how did you get in contact with this firm?

A:Tommy knew George and sent the first album to him and he did a good job with it and when he said he wanted to give us a budget to do a new one we didn't have to think twice.
It's a perfect label for this kind of music i think.

Q: Do you think the access to website based record stores will change the AOR/Melodic Rock scene in the future?
I myself don't use these sites very often - and I know that in Denmark several CD on-line shops had to close.

A: It seems like many fans of westcoast and AOR feel ok about buying the CD's through mailorder companies on the net, i guess most of them are so used to the fact that these albums are hard to find and they don't mind looking through the net.
I know that the whole industry have to start thinking in a new way because of the internet - so we can only hope that our music will still be available in an easy way in the future.

© Steen Peitersen 1999-2001