In life, when push comes to shove people usually prefer abandoning ship to applying some extra elbow grease and making the thing work. A neutral spectator might then say that it wasn’t meant to be, or that perhaps the time wasn’t right. A stubborn person may then push onward regardless, only to get more and more disappointed, before finally admitting that perhaps the time was indeed not right.

Such was my experience with Lonesome Night, a band I was invited into but which then became mine before it became no one’s. Perhaps we were undisciplined, perhaps we expected too much, perhaps we lacked experience and finesse to deliver a project such as this one, but it was probably all three, and then some. Lonesome Night, the band who wanted to play serious music live but whose rehearsals always saw at least one bandmate missing and several unprepared, disbanded soon after delivering a humble promo CD, a patchwork of techniques and approaches and tracks, a monument to the Serbian proverb paraphrased as “to cut off one’s ears to patch up one’s ass”.

Fast forward from 2008 to 2019: following the disbandment of yet another SVARUN line-up I was searching for new collaborators. New challenges. A right post at a right forum – that is how I met Jon Einar Hektoen. As my backlog of never-recorded tracks and never-completed projects was bigger than I would like, I was determined not to write anything new (and hoped Jon wouldn’t mind). Out of the entire offering he chose tracks that comprised Lonesome Night’s never-delivered album. As I was disappointed more times than I can remember, I would contain my excitement. Moreso because Jon said he had a guitarist friend who would probably want to participate as well. Too good to be true.

Some time passed before either Jon or the guitarist friend wrote back. Jon then wrote and said that, due to family affairs he would be unable to commit for some time. Used to that kind of stuff, before wrapping up the chat I mentioned the guitarist friend who never got in touch. “Odd”, said Jon – in a few minutes I was talking to Mikael Aesnes Torseth.

In a calm and a matter-of-fact way he explained that he will be able to commit to the project in a week or so, as it was around Christmas 2019 that we got in touch. Well, fine, I thought… Hopefully I will have a track ready before August, but even December is fine. He completed the track in three weeks.

Then another in a week.

Then a few weeks nothing (due to work), then a track and a half in one week.

And so, after being dormant for TWELVE FUCKING YEARS the Lonesome Night project is RESSURECTED. So I guess that wasn’t weird enough… How to make it WEIRDER? I know, let’s record the album for such a project on the background of a CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC while being stuck inside for… Well, I will update this one sentence once we are let out.

So DECAMERON… Us four – Mikael on guitars, Jon on bass, my lady Viktoria behind the mic and myself on drums and computer – we sit in an online mansion, hiding from the fucking XXI century plague, telling stories and making stuff to pass the time. So DECAMERON. Or it will be HECTOMERON… Or KILOMERON… MEGAMERON…

We’ll see. Album in the works ▣