Well, now almost everything is in the proverbial can for my southern rock band Crossfyre‘s follow-up album to Southbound from 2010.  We had a very intense recording jaunt at Seawolf Studios, located off the coast of Helsinki at Suomenlinna sea fortress, with engineer Hannu Leiden (some of you might know him from his own band, Havana Black) over this past week.

Hannu Leiden (left) says I sound like Jim Mangrum from Black Oak Arkansas! (photo by Jarmo Katila)

From Tuesday to Saturday, we recorded all of the drums, guitars, bass and keyboards for our new Iron Horse album, which will be out next year.  We simply ran out of time before I could lay down all of the lead vocals, but I was able to amass an amazing total of eight songs yesterday … and considering the fact that I have been suffering from an extremely aggressive influenza virus for the past four weeks, it is an irrevocable miracle of Almighty God that my voice somehow sounded better than ever yesterday.  Even engineer Leiden had to admit that I did a helluva job, and Hannu really made sure that my best material made tape.  Think about that, folks — eight songs in one day!  Just like Leiden said, the most that any vocalist will reasonably perform in one studio day is four songs.  I did double that.

StarBuck lays down some of the best vocal tracks of his life for Iron Horse

The title track – music and lyrics – were written by Yours Truly, and overall this new album will be honest, classic southern rock in the vein of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Molly Hatchet.  Whereas the music for Southbound was written by and in large prior to my joining the band in 2010 – with much more in the way of raw blues – the material for Southbound was written for my vocal approach and in light of my strengths as a rock vocalist.  That said, I can honestly say that the material on Iron Horse does not take a back seat to the latest Skynyrd album Last of a Dyin’ Breed in any way, shape or form.  A bold statement, yes, but I am 110% certain that we can back that up, as everyone will hear once Iron Horse is officially released.

Jay Jay Asikainen lays down his solos while Jaakko Kinnari awaits his turn

Iron Horse was supposed to be released last year, in time for Crossfyre’s jaunt aboard the Rock Legends Cruise with ZZ Top and George Thorogood in December 2011, but we only made a limited edition pressing of the demo tracks for the new album to be sold at that gig.  The band decided to up the ante and hire Hannu Leiden, who in all honesty is the number one studio man for southern rock in Finland, to record the official Iron Horse album, which carries a slightly different tracklisting as compared to the Rock Legend’s demo version of the album.  However, I painted the cover art for Iron Horse last year, and this cover will be the one used for the official release of the new album also.

We are now headed next week on a tour of Germany, and our tour dates are as follows:

26/9 Meisenfrei Blues Club – Bremen, DE @ 20:00
27/9 TBA (updates at www.myspace.com/thecrossfyre)
28/9 UrBar – Magdeburg, DE @ 21:00
29/9 Barnaby’s Blues Bar -Braunschweig, DE @ 19:00
30/9 Rockkneipe Jungfer – Arnstadt, DE @ 22:00
2/10 Barnaby’s Blues Bar – Braunschweig, DE @ 21:00

Crossfyre’s German tour line-up (l-r): Jay Jay Asikainen, Jaakko Kinnari, Danny Cross, JJ Hjelt (filling in for Dan Rönnbacka) and StarBuck

Photographer extraordinaire Jarmo Katila (www.jarmokatila.fi) came out to Suomenlinna sea fortress to shoot the band line-up for Iron Horse, and below is one of the great shots from the photo set.

Crossfyre’s Iron Horse album line-up 2012 (photo by Jarmo Katila)