State Cows

Westcoast music has a big following in our small hometown Umeå. In the 90's we were visited by acts like Bill Champlin, Marc Jordan and the Jay Graydon All Star Band. Also, Umeå is a great musical community with a large band culture. We started out playing in many different bands, with genres ranging from latin jazz to hard rock, until finally meeting up while studying at the Piteå School of Music. We first formed a Beatles tribute band - "The Posers". The westcoast mini album "DP" (a joint effort by Daniel and bass player Peter Starefeldt) was recorded during this time and was the first step towards producing our own westcoast music. As part of the education we were sent as exchange students to Musician's Institute in Los Angeles. Being in L.A. was a tremendous experience musically. Through our close friends, Ian and Marylou Eales (whom we cannot thank enough), we were shown around and got to meet many of our musical heroes including David Foster, Jay Graydon, Jason Scheff, Jimmy Haslip and Jay Gruska (of Maxus). L.A. probably has the world's greatest live scene and there's nothing more inspiring than seeing great artists play. Also, the school itself was a very good place for musical happenings. One night, Stevie Wonder showed up and did a small gig at the school assembly room! Back in Umeå we continued working with "The Posers" doing lots of gigs. At this time we started working on Daniel's solo record "Days in L.A." which was subsequently released on the Zink label to unexpectedly good response. From that album sprung the idea of doing a full-fledged, no-compromise westcoast/AOR record as they had been done in the early 80's. In the meantime we had set up a Steely Dan tribute band called "2nd Arrangement" (taking its name of the legendary lost song from "Gaucho"). This particular outfit didn't last long for various reasons but it set up the framework for what was to become the "State Cows" project. We started writing new tunes putting much effort in both the musical as well as the lyrical aspect of each song. Recordings were commenced at "White Cherry Hill Studios" in early 2008 and stretched out over a period of almost 2 years. Living in different places (Stefan had moved to Stockholm) meant a lot of work had to be done remotely, sending files and ideas over the Internet. We were lucky enough to find some of the best musicians available in this country, they all contributed tremendously to making this record. Daniel Lindforss, who previously had worked on "Days in L.A.", then mixed half of the record and Stefan the other half. Today is April the 26th 2010 and we're very much looking forward to its release! Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.