It was obvious that it would be music in one way or the other already at an early age for Eva Eastwood, born in Örebro, Sweden 1967.
Eva Eastwood and daddy, 1969
Eva Eastwood was the youngest of six sisters and Brothers. Her mother played the accordion and her father had a touring trio in the ´50s. In 1973 Eva´s mother suddenly died only 34 years old. Eva and her sister Carina grew up together with an aunt outside of Örebro. The death of their mother affected Eva plenty. She became a quite serious young woman who spent hours in front of the record player daydreaming of another life. At the age of 9 she started to write songs which were, thankfully encouraged by her new family.
One of Eva´s first bands was "the sisters". Together with her sister and some friends she set up shows in the basement. In 1994 Eva Eastwood met with the Peak Brothers, a pretty popular rockabilly act from Hallsberg. That meeting led to a long and warm friendship and many musical projects over the years. One of them was backing Jack Scott on his first tour in Sweden 1989. It was very much Jack Scott who got Eva Eastwood into rockabilly music. "He was such a wonderful person and artist and I felt that I wanted to do something similar to him one day", she said later. Inspiration
During the ´80s Eva Eastwood tested a bunch of music styles. She performed acoustic and participated in talent contests in Örebro with her song "Thicker than blood". The music at the time was different but the feel for how it would be preformed the same: honest, rocking and energetic. Together with "The Blue Line" she made a music video. One of the members in the band was Eva´s older brother "Hansa" Karlsson as well as Ulf Hjelting (music writer for Nerikes Allehanda)
Eva Eastwood Grängesberg, 2007
It was her brother Hansa who taught her to play guitar. She looked up to him plenty and he was a tough teacher. He provided her with a piano and her first Gibson guitar. The lessons came naturally from hours of jam sessions between the pair of them. One of Eva´s first big idols was Melanie Safka. Eva says: "Everybody else was digging Noice or Kiss. My sister was a country girl and my brother played the blues. When I heard Melanie´s "Tuning my guitar" the first time, my heart just broke. She changed my whole world of music and I learned all her songs from listening to her records". Other sources of inspiration were Ruth Brown, Abba and JJ Cale, to mention a few. Warner Brothers and rockabilly
In the ´90s Eva played in a band called "Irene's Federation" together with some hard rock musicians from Nora. Eva insisted on doing her original material and Swedish Warner Brothers got the demo "Cry". They wanted to hear more but Eva was on her way to USA together with her new found love Jan Östlund, so the whole thing just wasn´t meant to be. At this point she also hooked up with the piano player Frank Snow from Örebro. They met through a Swedish radio show where Eva was looking for a great pianist to add to her band. Frank responded and got the job.
During this period, Eva also recorded her first rockabilly cut for Swedish Tail Records. Under the name "Bobbi Jo", backed by the Peak Brothers she did a cover of Barbra Pittmans "Starligt Starbrigth" that was released on a compilation album. Meanwhile, Jan and Eva´s music interest brought them together and in 1995 they got married and went to USA on a honeymoon. Record deal offer in Nashville
The first trip to USA in 1995 was followed by plenty of return visits, and those had a profound effect. She spontaneously felt at home and fell in love with the language, the people and the atmosphere. Besides that, she met a bunch of songwriters, just like herself, especially in Nashville. She was introduced to Tony Lane who wrote Lee Ann Womack´s No 1 hit "little past little rock". She also met with DJ Fontana and Scotty Moore and the former Starday Producer Tommy Hill
Eva Eastwood, 2006
Eva´s American friends were very impressed by her personal style and song-writing. They took her on to perform at various venues around Nashville such as the legendary Blue Bird and Tootsie´s Lounge. The feedback was overwhelming and she built up self confidence on stage. In 1997 she was offered a record deal in Nashville after being discovered at a songwriters café. Of course this was an exciting challenge but the thought that she could make music for a living had not occurred to her at this point. The five-year contract term and the fact that she would have to move to USA, made this seem like a too gigant step to take at the time so the contract was never signed. Instead she went back to Sweden, quit her job and seriously started to foucs on building a career in music. It was during the Stateside trips that she adopted the name Eva Eastwood - acctually a very close translation of her swedish name Östlund.
In the coming years, she wrote a crazy amount of songs and recorded new demo tapes, either with musicians from Örebro or by herself in the home kitchen. Songs like "Bells of Penny Bridge" and "Rosie" got top reviews in the local press.
A couple of her friends turned a brace of her songs over to super producer "Bob Johnston". Bob got so impressed that he contacted Eva in Sweden saying he thought her music was among the best he had heard in a long time. When he came to Stockholm he wanted to meet her, but again fate dealt a hand that seemed to indicate that the time was not right and the meeting never happened. Tail Records and The Major Keys
In 1999 she got the offer from Swedish Tail Records in Jönköping to do a recording. Together with Lasse Strandheim she gathered the musicians who would become The Major Keys. They picked out 12 of her songs that went on to be released on the debut album "Good things can happen" later the same year. The album was referred to as traditional country and authentic rockabilly and, as a singer Eva was described as a mix of Connie Francis, Wanda Jackson and Patsy Cline. That, ofcourse, was the whole idea: to try to capture the nostalgic feel of that whole era in music. In an interview some years later, Eva was asked why she was doing so many different music styles. She said simply that she could give no answer to that. "I guess it´s because i like so many different styles", she said.
Eva Eastwood & The Major Keys
From the swedish song-writer organisation STIM she got a scholarship for her frequent and unique output. She was also acknowledged by the Swedish Arts Grants committee Konstnärsnämnden. With that assistance, she returned to USA for the 4th time with a rough mix of the album "Good Things Can Happen" in her hand. This was the year in which the rockabilly artist Eva Eastwood that poeple are most aquainted with, emerged.
The original members of the Major Keys were Jyrki Juvonen" (guitar) and Tage Phikkanen (drums). Both Jyrki and Tage played with the popular rockabilly band Jack Bay-Moore & The bandits and Wildfire Willy. Frank Snow played piano and Eva´s husband, Jan Östlund played stand-up bass. Gigs and Records
One of the first gigs Eva Eastwood & The Major Keys played was at the Rockabilly Rave in England. In Sweden the band did both rockabilly festivals and Scandinavia´s biggest country festival in Furuvik. Another of their early performances was together with Dave Edmunds and The Refreshments at Nalen in Stockholm. "The guys in The Refreshments were among our first fans. They bought our CD and asked for autographs. I had no idea what the rockabilly crowd wanted, I came from a world outside. I remember Tage traded one of our CDs for a pair of rockabilly shoes that I wore at our show in England. I bought my stage clothes at flea markets and tried to fix my hair by looking at the album covers of women doing ´50s music. It took me a while to realise that people liked me no matter what I was wearing",,Eva says.
In 2001 Jesper Wihlborg took over as a steady guitarist with The Major Keys and in 2003 Mats Arnesen became the full-time drummer. Already, the band´s career was unique as, both radio and TV opportunities arose that were not automatically falling to others playing the same genre, and that took the music to the eyes and ears of many outside of retro/rock´n´roll circles. With a lot of energy on stage they built up an enthusiastic bunch of fans who followed them around. On top of that, they released almost one new album per year between 1999 - 2006.
"In 2001, "Hot chicks and cool cats" was nominated for the "American Swing Awards". Both "Wendy's Wedding" and "In trouble deep" reached the NO 1 slot on the American chart "Swing Top 40". Nisse Hellberg (Wilmer X) made the CD his "Best Retro Of The Year" in one of Sweden's biggest newspapers - Aftonbladet. Famelies and tours
In september 2001 Eva and Jans first son was born. Also Jesper and his girlfriend had a daughter. The band was touring more regularly and were topping the list "Rockabilly Band Of The Year" and "No 1 Nordic Album Of The Year" in Swedish Kountry Korall Magazine several years a row. Eva kept writing songs that did not fit in with Tail Records because they sounded different but never the less the demo "The Steep" gets the highest score, 5 out of 5 in a review by Håkan Pettersson in Nerikes Allehanda. "My music is so broad, maybe too broad", Eva says in yet another interview. "I have no intention when i write songs, I just take what´s coming to me. It´s kind of like picking apples from a tree and I would be stupid not to accept all the good ones even though i can´t eat them all at the same time.
Rockland, 2007
Eva Eastwood & The Major Keys have shared stages with Albert Lee, Mike Santchez, Jack Scott, Jerry Williams, Louise Hoffsten, Collin Kids, Narvel Feldts, Jill Johnsson, Spotnicks, Rednex, Mats Rådberg and Alf Robertsson. In 2005 they did a christmas tour together with the Refreshments and Geraint Watkins playing 21 gigs all over Sweden.
They open up for John Fogerty in Gothenbourgh on his tour of Sweden in 2006 but only do a few exclusive gigs abroad like in Holland, France, Germany, Spain and the UK. The reviews of the Swedish album "En ny stil I stan" (a new style in town) 2004 might have been lukewarm in the press but that didn´t count for much as the record became a huge success with fans. Swedish album and Tv success
The big break came with a performance on one of Sweden´s biggest television shows Allsång på Skansen in the summer of 2005. "Allsång på skansen" is broadcasted to over 1 million people watching - and a live audience of 10.000. Eva Eastwood & The Major Keys does a swedish rock & roll song "Vårt liv i repris" (our life in reprise) and during the same programme Carola Häggkvist get involved in that well-documented plant-throwing episode which had a young woman sitting in the audience on the receiving end.
The press describes Eva Eastwood as a mix of Siw Malmqvist and Gene Vincent. The record goes on to sell over 10.000 copies - no small feat for an emerging artist on a small label. Behind all this is Tail Record´s new distribution partner Border Music. They get their hands on the Swedish album and realising its full potential, promote it in a way that has never been done with roots music in Sweden before. And ofcourse all this makes a huge impact.
"The summer of 2005 became totally crazy", Eva says. "We were supposed to have some time off because my second son was born in February the same year. Instead we played more than ever. Whereever we went, venues were jammed-packed with people who had seen us on Tv. The press shouted out that this was our "big breakthrough" and everyone was giving us attention. It was hard grasp that 3 minutes on national TV would change so much, but It did".
By this time Eva´s music has also been discovered by the major labels, and in december 2005 she signs a contract with Rival/Bonnier. unique woman and major Label
Besides the fact that Eva Eastwood is in a minority of females on the roots music scene, she is also the only one within her country who is able to make a living out of her singing and song-writing within the genre, according to the book by journalist Josefin Ekman - "Rockabilly, the last enthusiasts" (2006). An article about her, published 2001 stated: "Eva Eastwoods modern stuff makes you think of Shania Twain or Faith Hill. Her rockabilly style would have certainly hit the charts if it had been released in the late ´50s or early ´60s
The 6th album "Ton of heart" (2006) was produced by Joakim Anrell, singer and frontman in "The Refreshments". On its release, the CD gets plenty of attention because of its change of musical style and direction towards more modern pop/country. The single "Like that no more" is played plenty on swedish radio. The band does Tv and radio shows and tour frequently both clubs and concert halls. At last, they are heading for the top but differences within the band have been developing and inevitably raise question marks bout the future.
Photo: Mikael Forslund Production
During a period of 7 years Eva Eastwood, Jesper Wihlborg, Frank Snow, Jan Östlund and Mats Arnesen had become (from being a fun hobby project) ,a full time touring package on a major label. "I wanted to spend more time with the kids but the guys wanted to take the chance to play professional. I was stuck with this bad conscience for not being able to give either 100% to my family or to my audience. We never rehearsed and we had never talked about what would happen if we got this far." The decision to go separate ways was taken in a friendly way in the spring of 2007. The news was made official together with a last tour in November the same year. 700 songs and Linda Gail Lewis
Over the years Eva Eastwood has written about 700 songs. The material for her band with The Major Keys was of course adjusted to the sound of the ´50s and ´60s. But she has also written material for Lalla Hansson who recorded one of her Swedish songs already in 2001."". Other artistes who recorded Evas songs are: Jesse Al Tuscan (Germany), Little Rachel (USA ). Dottie, Hank T Morris, Askersunds Manskör, Boppin Steve, Pat C Miller and Red Roosters (Sweden). Some of the more famous ones are Jerry Lee Lewi´s little sister Linda Gail and Johan Blohm from the Refreshments..
