LIVE REPORT: JoJo & Friends vol.4
Featuring Bambi L. & Saku Solin
Junk Y Vegan; May 15th, 2024
Helsinki Indie Live Underground
Before I take a little break from covering live music, there was a small handful of shows I still had to see, one of which was JoJo & Friends vol. 4 at Junk Y Vegan, for a number of reasons. First of all, it was meant to be the full-band edition and I’ve only seen Johanna von Hertzen with her full band once, so that was promising to be special (also, the past few days have really been the talented Finnish Johanna power hours for me, haven’t they?). Then, it featured Bambi L. and Saku Solin, the former who I met the same night that I met JoJo, and the latter I’ve been acquainted with for years and years through his work with Fear of Domination and more recently Turmion Kätilöt. To top it all off, it was Helena Haaparanta’s birthday, so this was one of those events that I just had to go to no matter how I was feeling or where my energy was at following a long weekend in the Netherlands.
Read the live report from JoJo & Friends vol. 1 here and Jojo & Friends vol. 3 here!
Samsung Galaxy S20
As mentioned, this evening was Helena’s birthday and I, of course, saw her performing for the first time on that same night when I met JoJo and Bambi (and Emmy June, whom I think I saw there but didn’t get a chance to say hi to). I also learned, quite shortly after arriving, that there had been some shenanigans, namely in that the band’s drummer had gotten sick and they had to completely change their set last-minute to a more acoustic rendition. Well, these guys are all true professionals, because if I hadn’t known that beforehand, I don’t think I would have known at all—spoilers, I guess, but they did a great job.
The show started as per fairly usual with an introduction to the event and a draw for more tickets to Tikkurila Festival before they proceeded to play some of the songs from JoJo’s 2020 album, “Kasuaali.” My partner, being a bass player sympathizer (he played bass back in the day), was really impressed with both Aki Pommelin and his instrument, the latter of which was very cool and the former for just being a stylish and fun player. If I recall correctly, they started this time with “Oispa Meil Siivet?” and “Valo Joka Pelkää Pimeetä.”
The first guest of the night was Bambi L. I confess that I was a little stressed out on this evening (I was juggling a lot of things all day), so I wasn’t really able to focus on the Finnish conversations in the interview segment, but I can mention that I’ve tried out Bambi’s singles and they’re nice, but very soft and gentle, so I was very surprised when she was recently on The Voice of Finland to hear her absolutely rocking the heck out. Of course, in this situation, the songs were somewhere in the middle between soft and rockin’, but Bambi has a powerful voice and she and JoJo paired well together. I didn’t know the first song they played, but I did recognize a sort of English/Finnish mash-up with adjusted lyrics version of “Jolene” (originally by Dolly Parton) that she had been singing on Instagram once, which was really fun to see in full live!
When it was back to the band, “Itsepähän Tyttösi Valitsit” was quite cute, as JoJo just spent her 30th birthday in New York with her guitarist/partner Taneli Rantala and they had gotten engaged while there. I am very much a geek for cute couples, so the extremely happy look on his face really warmed me right up from the inside out.
The standard intermission followed, lasting about 30 minutes, and then the band returned for a few more songs. This isn’t really related, but as I just spent a weekend with Johanna Kurkela’s arguably biggest fan, it was quite interesting to find that both Johanna Kurkela and Johanna von Hertzen have songs with the same name: Johanna K’s is “Riko Minut” and JoJo’s is called “Riko Mut,” which is the same thing, just abbreviated. So, who’s doing the mash-up?
One thing of special note was that there was an extra “friend” in the crowd this time, in the form of a very friendly fellow (AKA Helena’s stepfather, Juha) with a harmonica who started to jam out with the band. This was, as far as I know, totally unexpected, but JoJo seemed to be quite pleased and had him up on stage for one song to play along next to the mic so he could be heard. You see, it’s little things like this that make these local/indie shows so wonderfully delightful to me! You’d never see something like that in a venue or stadium show.
Well, I digress, they moved on to a couple more songs before Saku Solin was invited up to the stage and they had a chat, wherein the couch may have been named Tuukka after the absent drummer. I had gotten the impression that these two had actually met through Helena, who had, long ago, been a regular guest vocalist/vocal producer for Fear of Domination before they started having a full-time second vocalist in the band, but it seems JoJo actually knows him through a music video which she helped out with for one of Saku’s other acts, Stereo Terror. They played one cover from the local artist Ellinoora and then a HIM song. Yeah, in case you didn’t know because he spends most of his time shouting and growling, Saku actually has a really beautiful singing voice as well! I was really surprised to see him on the roster and he absolutely did not disappoint—they made a fun duo.
Low-key shout-out, but if you don’t know the song “Needle” by FoD, you should!
As we all know by now, these shows wrap up with one more song from JoJo and then all of the guests coming on stage to sing “All In,” which both got my partner a little soft because of the lyrics (which he paid attention to for the first time) and was extra fun because there were two more people on the stage this time around. Of course, eternal shout-out to Sampsa Pietilä for his rapping part and being just generally a very likeable human being—this world needs more of all these folks! I have no idea who the extra two were but my partner said they were other artists who were in the crowd. Helena was brought up too, so they really packed everyone together and made a great show of it! Before that, it’s worth mentioning that we all sang happy birthday to Helena and someone in the crowd named Jenny, because of course we did.
Once again, this was a wonderful evening of fun music and unusual surprises… exactly the sort of thing that I love in live music these days. We’ll have to see if I’ll make it to the next club since I do need a bit of a live music break, but if the lineups continue to be this interesting, I’m not going to be able to say no, again, now am I?
PS - JoJo has shirts now, if you didn’t notice from the guys in the photos, so if you’re interested, poke around for them if you see her performing somewhere!
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Enjoy my favorite music from the indie music scene in Finland here!
