Backstage With NORMANDIE
As gigs are on pause, Home is the new Backstage. Get behind the scenes with Normandie this week.
Gearing up for the release of their third album, Dark & Beautiful Secrets, out on February 19th, we catch up with Stockholm-based trio Normandie to discuss their music making and producing process during lockdown, the “Normandie Inner Circle” community, and their hopes and dreams for 2021.
What advice would you give to your pre-lockdown self?
Go to every show, every dinner and every social event you can possibly think of. It might be too late for that soon. You’ll notice later how important these things are for you.
How, if at all, did lockdown impact your music making and producing process?
Well to be honest, it’s almost just been a good thing for us. We were supposed to release our third album this fall, but we took the decision to postpone the release till next year as soon as we “got the news” about the pandemic. We’ve spent every week since March evolving this album to something completely different from what we were supposed to release, and only in a good way. A lot of new songs have been made in lockdown, but the touring situation obviously sucks.
What has been the most unexpected/challenging part of lockdown, whether pleasant or unpleasant?
Even if the lockdown has been a “success” for us musicwise, we must admit that it’s been quite challenging to skip the touring part and replace that with a lot of hard work building the business around the band etc. Touring feels like a reward for hard work pretty much.
How would you sum up your 2020 in one sentence?
More creative than usual!
If you had a quarantine character, what was it like?
Håkan (guitarist) has this social media character called “Quentin Quarantino”, doing a lot of silly things dressed in a dressing gown, bandana and sunglasses. It’s basically the same person with different names.
Name 5 things that got you through lockdown.
Uber Eats, “Normandie Inner Circle”, Breaking Bad, balcony and the Swedish restrictions.
What’s the most interesting thing you discovered over lockdown (could be a revelation about yourself, a new TV show, a new hobby)?
That our fans are even more awesome than we could imagine! This summer we created a fan community on Facebook called “Normandie Inner Circle” (as mentioned as one of the 5 things that got us through lockdown) and that’s probably one of the best things we’ve done. Each day we get reminded by our fans that our music is important. Love having daily chats in this community to get to know our fans better!
What lockdown trend do you think we should take into the future, and which ones should we ditch?
We guess live streamed concerts will be more common after this. It’s a perfect way to please all your fans around the globe when you don’t have the opportunity to tour in every country on every tour. Would also be nice to keep the hand disinfection stations in bars, stores etc.
As soon as the pandemic is “over”, we should all stop that weird waving-greeting. Waving hello from 2 meters is never a pleasant feeling. Bring back hugs!
What are your hopes and dreams for 2021?
We truly hope the release of our new album will be successful. We’re so excited for people to hear it. Our hopes are also that our booked tours for 2021 will take place.
What does music mean to you?
Since we’ve created our lives around this band since 2013, music means a lot to us. Couldn’t live without it, no doubt about it!