YLE Pohjois Karjalan Radio, Sept 17. 2007

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Nightwis-drummer Jukka Nevalainen is a busy man

Interviewer:
Nightwish drummer Jukka Nevalainen, what kind of emotional rush will be waiting for you when you'll fly to Israel for the first gig, when the intro tape starts playing; how do you think you'll feel at the very moment?

Jukka:
I'd like to know myself. It's been two years since the last gig I played - the last gig of the Once tour in Helsinki and it'll be interesting to see how it feels after such a long break. The other guys have played gigs with other bands more or less but for me the routine has gone a little rusty which maybe will cause a slight exitement but nothing serious, and I think it'll keep going ok after the first song has started up.

I: How is your knee now? You previously said you had some problem in it.

J: At the moment my knee is in OK condition, but I can't go jogging or doing jump exercises yet and running is still out of my daily schedule, but I'm able to play drums and all usual activity is possible.

I: How has the past time with rehearsals been. How much Nightwish did practice and are all the training done yet?

J: Yeah, we started training around mid-August and have had three sessions now, three-four days each and we have a couple of more sessions ahead before we will move on to present our "products" at gigs. Training have gone well. Of course in the beginning after a long break our playing together wasn't too tight, and when adding the new singer, it takes some time to fit everything together, but now it looks good at the moment and I'm waiting with positive feeling to get to play the gigs.

I: How do you think about Anette? How has she adapted herself in the band?

J: Extremely well. As a person Anette has fit in the band really well, we have similar sense of humour and we haven't had any large arguments yet, but that will be weighed on the tour when we'll sit in a tourbus watching each others' faces and listenign to each others' stories for weeks, that'll genuinely weigh us and show how well we'll come along together. Until now we haven't had a single problem.

I: This interview is made at your company, Scene Nation is the name. There are eneourmous amounts of T-shirts and all possible band products, others than Nightwihs's, too. Tell us what is all this about?

J: Right, see, under our company Scene Nation we have the sub-branches Fanzone, More Music and Nightwish Shop and we have a small storehouse from where we run our own web-shops and also are growing to manage other bands' and companies' web-shops. At the moment we have 20 different web-shops to run and more is coming all the time. Here we do the packing and mailing and take the feedback from our customers.

I: This storehouse looks quite new, was it actually built for your business?

J: Eh, this place had been started to build when we were looking for a storehouse, then we contacted the builder and convinced him to sell 2/3 of the building to us. Now we've got a new and perfect storehouse where to enlarge our business.

I: How large is this place and how many employees you have here at Scene Nation?

J: This hall is 300 sq meters. It's enough at the moment but if you take a look around us there are boxes on top of boxes so there isn't too much spare space any more. We'll see, while the business keeps growing, then at some point this place may turn too small. Along the growth, we had to... umm, had the priviledge of hiring more staff, and at the moment we have three full-time workers along myself and two more doing part-time when we need them. Approximately the web-shops employ 4.5 people at the moment.

I: The work would be mainly packing and sending these products everywhere in the world. Where do you sell your products?

J: Everywhre. The fans of these bands are eagerly ordering these products, especially the smaller bands' products are not available anywhere but at the bands' gigs and if a band can't go doing gigs, let's say in New Zealand, the only way will be buying them from the band's web-shop and we will be pleased to serve.

I: Jukka Nevalainen you will be soon heading to a world tour with Nightwish. How about your work in here? Are you feeling busy right now and will you give your duties to someone else for the time of the tour.

J: Yeah, right now we have quite a hullabaloo going on. We try to organize things so that when I'll be away everything will run smoothly, especially when the high season in web-sales will be just before the Christmas. But it will be all a question of organizing. I can do my jobs conveniently from anywhere where I have access to internet, were it at a hotel, an airport or at a venue we'll be playing. Just the laptop up and running and a dive into the mysterious world of the internet to take care of my job. I have planned to move some of my duties to others when the tour begins. We will also hire another person from beginnig of next year, so we will have four fulltime employees in the company.

I: Your main job still, how do you think, will it be the drummer in this relatively famous band?

J: Yeah, the music is my main job, I'm in the lucky position in taking care of this hobby called business when we have breaks in our tour schedule. But making and playing music is the main thing. But since I like running webshops, what would be more convenient that combining my work and hobby.

I: How about your family life?

J: Family life runs well. Now I've been able to stay two years at home save few weeks visiting here and there, but mainly home. I've been able to see my children grow, but now when we start the tour it may be even harder compared to the previous ones, because there are now two children waiting at home and possibly crying after me when I'll be leaving. It's turning more difficult but we have to live with these things.

I: How about your new house?

J: Under construction. I'm hoping to get home by Christmas. The classic wish.

I: Jukka Nevalainen, how have the fans reacted to this highly debated change of your vocalist? Now a couple of tracks from the upcoming CD have been relesed, how are the fans commenting them?

J: Basically I have the image that the comments have mainly been more positive than we ever dared to expect. The majority seem to have accepted our decision and the fact that we had to do it and we wanted to do it the way we did and now we'll proceed with a new, quite different vocalist than previously. Of course there will be the die-hard Tarja fans who'll never accept the new vocalist. Would she have been classical or any other style there would still be comparisons to Tarja and everybody knows who'll be the winner in such a case: the original. But all in all the feedback has been good. I'm eagerly waiting for the tour to begin.

I: What kind of fan mail you're waiting from the gigs? You have told in some previous interview that you've got some very exotic mail and gifts from your fans.

J: It's been quite quiet on that front lately. The fans bring gifts to the meet and greets aside gigs. One of the most exotic gifts was from a Hungarian girl. A bottle of home distilled moonshine which her grandmother had cooked. It was quite exotic and also maybe quite a pleasant gift, I think.

I: How about your personal expectations on the new CD. Do you want to tell us how many copies you think it will sell?

J: Well, of course I'd like to see it selling well, but we haven't set any official goals. We rather just release it and go on tourimg, then afterwards will have a look what happened with the sales. Nobody can really know about the sales, especially now with all hullabaloo what has been going on and the change of vocalist and so on. We just keep waiting and hope the best.