BAO on the roads again, after three years of residence

Helen and Kalle Moraeus before BAO’s latest tour 2016. Stock Photography. Photo & © Maja Suslin / TT

Österbottens Tidning 190721

By: TT / OSKAR CARLSSON

Helen Sjöholm and Kalle Moraeus, who tour with BAO this summer, share their best and worst tour memories. The duo also tells us about their unassuming demand lists before each gig.

Benny Andersson’s orchestra (BAO) jumps on the tour train and goes out in Sweden this summer. The tour will be the orchestra’s first in three years and it will include two of Sweden’s most popular artists – Helen Sjöholm and Kalle Moraeus.

What are your best tour memories?
– For me, it’s the meeting with the audience. I think we have the world’s best audience, Kalle Moraeus says.

– Every year when the gates open at Sofiero for the BAO concert and people run and stumble like madmen through the long park towards the stage to get a good spot, a lovely race to watch after soundcheck, Helen Sjöholm says.

When it comes to their worst tour memories, both rank stomachflu as number one.

– Or when three people showed up at a concert in Vännäs that I did there in the early 90’s, recalls Helen Sjöholm.

Always give encores

The summer tour kicks off on July 25 in Gothenburg. In addition to Helen and Kalle, BAO is also joined by Tommy Körberg. As usual, each concert will begin with the song Glasgow boogie.

– It’s tradition and a brilliant opening, Kalle Moraeus says.

If the audience would be able to chant “one more time” after the regular set, they will be heard, Helen Sjöholm promises.

– BAO always plays encores – always, she points out.

None of them have any special requirements for the organizers prior to a gig.

– Bottled bubble water, Kalle Moraeus says.

– So I’m bad on requirements lists, I have to organize and start asking for M & M’s – only reds, and other difficult fixes, haha. I want water during gig and whiskey afterwards, Helen Sjöholm says.

What is the best gig you have seen?
– Oh, there are so many things you have seen. What to take? You always learn something new when you check out artists, Kalle Moraeus says.

– It must have been when I heard Tommy Körberg at Skule song festival with a bunch of fantastic musicians: Stefan Nilsson, Mats Bergström, Teddy Walter and André Ferrari, Helen Sjöholm says and continues:

– It was crazy musically; cocky, tender, humorous, swinging, fragile, grand and touching at the same time.

TT: How climatesmart is your tour?
– We actually go by train and then everyone on a bus so you have to say that is climate smart, Kalle Moraeus replies.