Colors of Jealousy Micke Bjorklof & Blue Strip

• 1 Highway Highway 03:43
• 2 Feel It in My Bones 04:10
• 3 Colors of Jealousy 03:26
• 4 Missing That Woman 03:05
• 5 Are You Real 05:14
• 6 Long Ago 03:58
• 7 Thought You Were Mine 03:07
• 8 Good Times Somehow 03:07
• 9 Get Out 03:13
• 10 Into the Fire 04:13
• 11 It Takes Two 06:31
• Total Runtime 43:47

Info for Colors of Jealousy

Genre bending and award winning Finnish bluesrock band Micke Bjorklof & Blue Strip will release new studio album "Colors Of Jealousy".

This is the follow up to the critically acclaimed album ‘Let The Fire Lead‘ Bjorklof released 2020 with his acoustic power trio Micke & Lefty feat.Chef. His bands incendiary live performances have been mesmerizing audiences all over Europe. Now, with Colors Of Jealousy they´re poised to take the step to the next level. The edgy, selfproduced roots music album was recorded at bands headquarter BoomRoom in Kauhava, Finland and mixed by Finnish sound engineer legend Kimmo Ahola.

Boasting 11 original songs ranging from killer opening track “Highway Highway” classic blues rocker led by Billy Gibbons influenced riff with layered guitars and wailing Hammond organ to dramatic americana flavoured countryblues, resonator guitar driven title track “Colors Of Jealousy” with bit of Ennio Morricone vibes. You get a good sense of the range the album covers from these first two singles released.

The band flirts with tradition but pushes genre boundaries with their song writing and special instrumentation to create a sound that’s distinctly their own. “Good Times Somehow” persuasively straddles uptempo soul and deltablues mix with a touch of Rolling Stones groove. “Long ago” features Memphis soul backed up with Hammond organ and gospel feel by two female background singers. Bjorklof shows off his range with dark story of “Are You Real” and blues saturated “I Thought You Were Mine”. Dynamic “It Takes Two” starts slow with a fieldholler theme backed up with snaredrum groove, turning slowly towards funky Nawlins rhythms and ending with a bursting guitar solo. Their eight album is sure to establish Micke Bjorklof & Blue Strip as potent force in roots music.

The band flirts with tradition but pushes genre boundaries with their song writing and special instrumentation to create a sound that’s distinctly their own. “Good Times Somehow” persuasively straddles uptempo soul and deltablues mix with a touch of Rolling Stones groove. “Long ago” features Memphis soul backed up with Hammond organ and gospel feel by two female background singers. Bjorklof shows off his range with dark story of “Are You Real” and blues saturated “I Thought You Were Mine”. Dynamic “It Takes Two” starts slow with a fieldholler theme backed up with snaredrum groove, turning slowly towards funky Nawlins rhythms and ending with a bursting guitar solo. Their eight album is sure to establish Micke Bjorklof & Blue Strip as potent force in roots music.

”After several international studio projects we desited this time to record in Finland. Well, borders were closed so we didn´t have any other choice anyway”, Micke Bjorklof laughs. ”To make Colors Of Jealousy we chose this time to work at our headquarter BoomRoom with my longtime partner, Finnish engineer legend Kimmo Ahola. It´s a really good sounding room, specially for drums, although there´s no control room and it is designed more to work as rehearsal studio,” explains Bjorklof.

Album was originally planned to be released in 2021 to celebrate their 30-years Anniversary as touring band but then the pandemic started. That lead to domino theory kind of delays and rescheduling time after time. Specially arranging rehearsals is not an easy task when everybody in the band live across the country and are involved in other musical projects too. ”We started working on new material already in early 2017. We had most of the material written by 2020,”, Bjorklof says. At the end of the year he got a phone call from Ruf Records to join Ruf´s Blues Caravan tour the following spring, unfortunately that dried also out because of pandemic. So no impact to the album project at the end. The band finally got into studio in October 2021 to start the recording process. Only few weeks later a new wave of the pandemic hit and causing new schedule problems. ”There´s been so many obstacles to taccle on this journey and I must admit that the frustration kept sneaking in every now and then. Sometimes it was really hard to stay motivated when you had to find that creative spark over and over again. But here we are now with the new album in our hands. It took 6 long years so it sure has been a very long and heavy process all and all. But we are happy and really proud of the work,” Bjorklof says.

Micke Bjorklof, vocals, harmonica, electric guitar
Lefty Leppänen, electric-, acoustic and slide guitars, mandolin, backing vocals
Teemu Vuorela, drums
Seppo Nuolikoski, bass, backing vocals
Timo Roiko-Jokela, percussion, MalletKAT
Harri Taittonen, Hammond organ, keyboards (1, 3, 4 ,5, 6, 11)
Lena Lindroos, backing vocals (1, 3, 6 ,8, 11)
Veera Railio, backing vocals (1, 3, 6 ,8, 11)

Micke Bjorklof
is an award winning blues artist, multi-instrumentalist and bandleader from Finland. He has released 10 albums with his world-class bluesrock band Micke Bjorklof & Blue Strip and acoustic power trio Micke & Lefty feat.Chef. Bjorklof with his bands are a well-established name in their native Finland and throughout Scandinavia where they have been Ambassadors of Blues music for over 30 years. To date they have toured into closer 20 countries all from Japan, USA and Europe. He´s also known from his collaboration with Finnish Slide Guitar Queen Erja Lyytinen.

Micke started as a drummer at age of 12-years. Later adding vocals, harmonica and guitar to his musical tools. Early days of his musical path went pretty much with rock music even though blues and roots music has always been in there by ZZ Top, Rory Gallagher, Stevie Ray Vaughan etc. But the serious big blues wake up call came in the beginning of nineties after touring with Finnish Blues legend Pepe Ahlqvist.

“This is a hard hitting blues band with very accomplished and focused musicians”, Grammy Award winning producer John Porter

1991 he formed Micke Bjorklof & Blue Strip with bass player Seppo Nuolikoski. The band is known from their energetic live shows from smoky blues clubs to large festival arenas, where they have been stirring up audiences wherever they go. Micke´s powerful vocals, Lefty Leppänen´s worldclass slide guitarwork and tight rhythm section has become their trademark. After a few minor changes during the early days, the recording line-up has remained unaltered since 1998. Initially an acoustic Blues-Rock cover band, they have now grown into a full fledged electric blues band electric with mostly original material; roots & blues music becoming their primary muse.

“I wanna keep the musical future as an open road. Blues has been the red thread for us but we have always been flirting with other rootsmusic styles too. We´ve been taking influences from anywhere, it can be rhythmical, sounds or with pushing genre boundaries. It´s all the blues for me! We are five guys with very different musical backgrounds, I think that´s our strength also to our distinct sound. We try to do our best to follow the path of Muddy and Howlin, they did not sound like anything that had been done in blues before. You’ve gotta keep that kind of fire and spirit going. You have to be who you are and find your own voice to your music”, says Bjorklof.

“Dynamite vocals backed up with worldclass slide guitar work”, Bluebird Reviews, USA

”When we started this band in the beginning of nineties we never, in our wildest dreams, would have thought that we would still be rolling after more than a quarter of century on the road. Through the years our music has taken us to so many cool places, from Tokyo to New Orleans, and all the way to world’s northernmost blues festival in Svalbard”, says Bjorklof.

In the beginning of 2000 Bjorklof formed as spin off from the band an acoustic project with guitarist Lefty Leppänen called Micke & Lefty feat.Chef. That came basically from the need to play acoustic delta and country blues. The music they both had strongly been influenced by. Specially now when the band was moving more towards electric bluesrock.

“I like to do all kinda stuff and play music with wide range as well as play various instruments. These two very different bands gives me a possibility to fulfill my musical needs. It also gives you more possibilities what comes to performing and touring”, explains Bjorklof.

“I really like Bjorklof´s vocals throughout and Leppanens slide guitar, it´s a tough combo to beat”, Bmans Bluesreport, USA

This album contains no booklet.