Good evening. How are you doing? Great. Greetings from Finland.
Thank you very much. Yeah, feels crazy to think that it was way over 20 years ago since we stood on
this very same stage the first time. It's been a while and great to be back here in Bloomington. We
were walking around in the town and
Today we had some spare time in the afternoon. And yes, we really like it here. Great to see you all.
We really like it here, for real. We started with the tune Tero has written. It's called Lemminkäinen
Tempelissä in the Temple of Lemminkäinen.
Lemminkäinen is one of the main characters in our national epic called Kalevala. A very stubborn character.
Everything tends to go wrong with him for some reason. And there was this eccentric guy in Finland who
was kind of a cult leader who had a lot of followers some time ago. And he claimed that he's actually
related to Lemminkäinen. And he was so serious about this.
that he actually told that there's a spot in southern Finland in a small town called Sipo and the temple
of Lemminkainen is there deep underground so we need to dig it up so him together with his followers
started to dig up the temple but for some reason they didn't find it I don't know why yet yeah but a
few years ago a group of international investors bought this very same piece of land and let's see if they're
going to dig some more dirt. Maybe they'll find it someday, you never know. We have the music ready
in case they find the temple. All right, we're gonna play some dance music. This is the type of music
that people in our home region in the valley of River Perho in Western Finland, this is the type of
music people like to dance to in the weddings. There's Polska and Flikuleeri.
Thank you very much. That was music from Kaustinen also, but it's composed by the most famous folk fiddler
in Finland ever so far, called Konsta Jylhä, and the tune is called Tähtisilmä valssi. But now we'll
play something we actually learned here. This is a Swedish tune, but I think that was our last time
here, which was
time before that I kind of remember exactly but it was over 10 years ago easily yes anyway and after
our concert we went to a jam session and and the people there played this melody which we didn't know
at that point and we learned to tune and we decided to make our own version next day we were driving
somewhere else from here and we're singing there the melody in the car and decided to do our own version out of it
And a few years later, we found out that it's actually composed by Roger Talroot from Wesson. And yeah,
here it is. It's called Come Hem, Come Home.
And that was 250 years old party music from Finland, two traditional Polskars. And we call this set
Spoof. Next we'll play something that I composed. This is called Loimu. And Loimu is a light that you
get from a fire when it's not burning anymore. From a fireplace, for example.
we play something I composed for a cooking video. My friend was doing a cooking video, and he was doing
a traditional Kaustinen dish from our region, Juusto Paisti, which is a cheese and meat stew. And he
wanted me to compose background music for the video that would remind him of Kaustinen Folk Music Festival,
so I did my job, and here's the Juusto Paisti Polska.
and we'll combine it with Esko's tune, A Bit of Shottis. Yeah, it's called A Bit of Shottis.
In many cases, it's much easier to write a tune than come up with a good name for it. There you go.
Jäähubäis poloneisi, a farewell poloneise that I composed after my dad passed away way too early.
Thank you very much. We've got time for one more tune. Before that, we want to thank Wayne, Tony, Eli,
all the people here in the house taking good care of us and doing the sound, the lights, everything.
Of course, all the volunteers of the festival who have been also taking really good care of us while
we've been here so far. Big thank you. And we believe it will continue.
We're gonna play a tune from Konsta Jylhä, who's the most famous Finnish folk musician ever.
And in fact, he was so famous that in the 70s, he went to places by helicopter so that he was able to
catch all the gigs he was ordered to play. Me and Tero, we're not quite there yet, but we believe that
the direction is correct. And in case someone is interested, we brought some CDs and also sheet music
books, so feel free to check out the merch.
shop. Thank you very much and see you around. Have a good festival everybody.