THIRST:
"REHEARSAL TIMES" (July 2007)

No, it's not a real band. "Rehearsal Times" is not a real record. I have used the name Thirst whenever I have performed with a guitar (since 2007), with different people and in various places. And the songs are divided in two, they have nothing in common, except the undersigned and his lousy voice, of course.

1) We played cover songs (Leonard Cohen, Agustin Barrios and many others) with Ilkka Kosunen. We started in December 2005, but really began around 2007, and would be rehearsing together for a few very important years. Initially, Kosunen played classical guitar and I was chanting and mumbling on like it is the habit. But in early 2008 I took up the guitar, and we performed with two guitars after that. Both of us have fond-feel rambling memories from those days, and I sincerely thank Ilkka Kosunen for teaching me to play......

2) A fellow anthropologist Sampsa Heikkilä approached me in the summer of 2007 with a flamenco blues he had composed and recorded, asking me to do the vocals for it. He gave me a poem written by Eli Siegel, as the lyrics.

So, I went to the summer cabin in Ylämaa, South Carelia in July 2007, to test my new equipment. In an hour and a half I recorded vocals for Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat" and "Love Calls You By Your Name", and that flamenco blues called "Must I Wait All My Life (or, The Misery Song)". I used only solar energy while recording the songs. The sound is pretty much in old timer style rust-and-scratch.

Ilkka Kosunen played the classical guitar ("Etyd 1" by Heitor Villa-Lobos, "The Cathedral" by Agustin Barrios and the Cohens, of course) in July 2007, at the Alppila Cathedral studios in Helsinki. I (re)mixed the songs between October 2018 - February 2019, inverting or echoing some of their ways. Only a few percussion elements have been added to the original sessions, and though taken from elsewhere, these too were played around 2007.

Already back then I had realized I may not be recording music or even using electricity while performing. And that is how things have been ever since, more or less. However, I would like to add that I am not against any form of music in any way at all. It has been part of my work as an artist to speak for the good and therapeutic sides of live acoustic music. For well over a decade I have been playing and singing like that, and from March 2010 on my old and broken-hearted flagship, a half-broken Landola Maestro (made in 1988). The song goes: "baby, I wanna walk in the woods, with a six-string on my back" STILL, NO STRING IS TOO SHORT TO BE SAVED

-Antti Filppu