TIMO TOLKKI: Interview for Hard Blast

TIMO TOLKKI (Revolution Renaissance, ex-Stratovarius) was interviewed for Hard Blast website by Maila-Kaarina Riippa. Couple of excerpts below:

"Maila: Revolution Renaissance has released a CD this year and since then we´ve been expecting for a tour. Why hasn´t it happened yet?

Timo: This is a good question. Actually our agents have tried to do it but somehow it´s been very difficult. They tried to book a tour for us even in South America but it didn´t happen actually. But anyway many things happened this year and we even had a line-up change. We changed the bass player and the keyboard player so the plans are to work on new material, record a new album maybe.

Maila: Yes, I´ve heard about the line-up change. But do you already have a new bass and keyboard player on the band?

Timo: A new bass player I do.

Maila: And who is he?

Timo: Well, I cannot tell you at the moment but I can say that he is a very famous person in the music scene. Anyway very soon everybody will know who he is. But if you are really curious you can try to call our agent and ask him, maybe he will tell you! :)

Maila: Since we´re talking about line-up, could you tell us how is it to work with musicians from different nationalities as you´ve doing with RR?

Timo: Well, I don´t actually think there are differences because of the musician nationality. Who ´s into music usually can deal with it very well and for me it really doesn´t matter where the person comes from.

Maila: Ok, and you have two Brazilians in the band. How has it been working with them? (Question sent by Daniel White, Magna Sina´s bass player through Twitter)

Timo:  Actually I don´t think Gus and Bruno are typical Brazilians...

Maila: Why not? What makes them different from the usual Brazilians?

Timo: Well, their aftershave sucks! (laughs). Just kidding. They are actually calmer than the usual Brazilians. Well, except Bruno, who is insane but in a good way. He is also a genius. I wans´t really expecting anything like that when he joined the band. It was a great and big surprise to me.

Maila: And how did it happen? How did you end up choosing two Brazilians to join the band?

Timo: Well, I put an add searching for musicians and got almost 2 thousand applications. When I saw those my first thought was: God, what am I gonna do now? It was a real hard work to listen to all of them. After analyzing them all I kept a hundred or something and they were in this set. Looking for a singer, which is the most important thing in the band, I wanted someone with a rougher voice, someone like Kiske and Gus has just this kind of voice, and at the same time he can do very soft vocals too. So I chose him.

You know, I am very picky on vocals. Not in an authoritarian way but in the emotional thing. I believe there must be a lot of emotion in the way a singer sings a song. There must be emotional exchange when interpreting a song and this is something that really matters to me.

Maila: You left Stratovarius and decided to restart everything. A new band, completely different people, it might represent a lot of change in your life. What kind of click you had in mind that made you take this decision?
     
Timo: It wasn´t really a click to me and I don´t feel as if I had changed everything in my life. I am actually the same guy, nothing changed in me. That was a very sick band and I just had to get out of there. This is what happened. I thought that wasn´t a place for me to stay and I don´t think it was a big change in my life. I left something that wasn´t good for me and went on making my music with different people. I know press and people say a lot of things but you shouldn´t believe in everything you read."

Read the whole interview at this location.