Joakim Stiernspetz
on SK1
Joakim Stiernspetz was born in Stockholm, and soon became friends with the household red acoustic piano. He started his songwriting around the age of 12 and formed his first band, "The Rubber Band" with a couple of neighborhood friends. His first influences came from The Sweet, Nazareth, Sparks, E.L.O and The Beatles.
New influences came along: Santana, Frank Zappa, Supertramp, Kinks (their 'uncommercial' 70's period) to name a few. A new college band, Rockpuls, was formed with occasional gigs on local festivals, clubs and bars in Stockholm. As the members scattered into work life and family raising, the band eventually dissolved.
Joakim and Rockpuls guitarist Anders Hallinder kept collaborating as the duo "Output" and released the single "Kall natt" (Cold night) in 1986.
In the early 90's Stiernspetz joined Soundation and 9 years of gigging in clubs, bars and festivals followed, including a minor tour in Poland cities Stettin, Torun and Gdansk. They also released the 'EP Blue Hotel' in 1994. The band broke up 1999 and was followed by a long hiatus from music.
Eight years later Joakim joined Doctor Deo And His Soullotions, a soul band with a horn section playing soul á la The Commitments and Blues Brothers. Here he bought his very first Hammond, an XK-1. It provided Stiernspetz with a feeling he had never experienced up until then, he refers to it as 'the best investment I’ve ever made'. They gigged regularly on the legendary "Stampen" stage as well as night club ship Patricia among other Swedish Stockholm club and bar venues.
At this time Joakim also played with 'Bankers Paradise', a corporate act with a very fine line-up of musicians, containing among others of Chris Lynn (Kristopher Lind), former guitarist of Swedish rock stars Easy Action and Cecilia Blomberg, vocalist from world wide touring ABBA – The Show.
In the midst of simultaneously playing in three bands (the third being a retro punk/reggae group), he sold his stage piano and his XK-1, and replaced them with the smallest Hammond SK 1. 88 plus 73 keys (and a lot of wood and metal) had been replaced with 61 keys and a fraction of the weight. This made a huge difference and was a pre-requisite to cope with frequently gigging and rehearsing with multiple bands, at least when you have to carry the stuff yourself.
A plan of recording his first full length album took form. One year later, in August 2016, the album Cold Case saw the light of day. It was a fitting name to an album filled with the essentials of his unfinished 90's business, catalyzed by the Hammond SK-1 some 20 years later.Turn it up!" How often do you hear that from a fellow musician?""The Sk 1 is small but cuts like a hot knife through butter whatever context it's a part of. Made great impact on the sound of every band I've played with. – "