Bio

Wasel & The Weasels was born in 2012 in the legendary jams of restaurant Ankkuri. We we're grooving so hard that we immediately decided to continue, and so we did. Our music comes from the roots of old American old-time, country and blues, rewritten in Finnish, rearranged and sometimes even recomposed. The stories tell about old time railways, loggers, miners and hobos, as well as old time addiction to food and drink. But... As we started with the originals in English, soon we started to worry that the Finnish audience couldn't relate to the many Americanisms in the original songs and that something should be done about that. Anything sung in "American" always sounds cool whatever the words and that would actually prevent some Finns from actually listening to the stories... That's why I came up with the idea of recreating the essence of the original stories from an entirely Finnish point of view. So, extracting from different sources, versions and variations, and writing my own, what came out was a bunch of completely new songs rooted out of the American tradion but transformed to the Finnish state of mind: Roots Music for the Finnish Sisu and Soul.
     —­— Wasel, 15.6.2022

Wasel Arar: vocals, mandolin, guitar, spoons
Marja Zilcher: vocals, fiddle
Klaus Hurskainen: clawhammer banjo
Juho Kyyhkynen: guitar
Jani Snellman: upright bass