A West Side Fabrication

KFM

A singer/songwriter’s long and windy road to…what?

KFM, Karl Fredrik Mattsson, was born 1969 in Piteå, Sweden.

Music was always present in the Mattsson family. The Beatles, Rolling Stones and The Runaways were frequently spinning on the turntable. Most of this stuff were introduced to him by older brother Andreas. A few years later, Fredrik started to discover music on his own, and found people like Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Elvis Costello: all of them artists with strong melodies and great lyrics.

As a kid Fredrik loved to sing. He began playing instruments by the age of seven. From having piano classes, he moved on to the acoustic guitar, followed by learning how to play the bass.

Fredrik wrote his first pop song when he was seven or eight, and still remembers the euphoria. How he first came up with a melody, added a very simple lyric to it, and somehow managed to remember the song. Right there and then, he knew what he wanted to be, a singer/songwriter. What he didn’t know was how very long and bumpy the ride was going to be.

At 15, Fredrik formed his first band Hajk. A pop/punk band, (named after a nerdy Swedish TV show for kids), in which he and his band mates tried to create a sound like The Clash. The lyrics were political (left wingish of course) and in Swedish. When Hajk decided to split up, Fredrik immediately started a new wave band called Schwartze Hinrichtung, that later became Vatikanen.

During this period of time, Fredrik wasn’t especially impressed of the music scene in the small town of Piteå. Everyone seemed to play blues covers, contemporary music (like furious pop songs in Swedish) didn’t work at all. Therefore Fredrik and his band mates began to pay visits in the neighbour town, Skelefteå, where the music climate was completely different. In Skellefteå people showed an interested in Fredriks music, which was quite a new experience for him, and the band were suddenly able to book live gigs at dark dangerous looking venues such as Magasinet and Fabriken.

Meanwhile, Fredrik had started to skip school a lot and graduated with lousy grades, except in music, where he received a scholarship: A book about… birds!

1989, at the age of 19, Fredrik moved to Stockholm. After two years of working his ass off at various unfulfilling jobs, he decided to pick up studying again and moved north to Umeå. He met new musical friends and formed Concrete, a melodic grunge-sounding pop band with lyrics in English. The music didn’t feel totally right, but Fredrik noticed that his song writing skills had started to improve.

When the studies were over, Fredrik moved back to Stockholm and formed the alternative country band Pony, also singing in English. Pony had no problem finding gigs, and got popular pretty fast. Soon they were hyped in the press.

In 1996, Pony signed a record deal with EMI Music and recorded an EP produced by the famous Swedish rock star Olle Ljungström. This was the moment Fredrik had been waiting for. From now on, he thought, he would be able to write songs and perform for a living. He would finally become a pop star.

But the feeling of success didn’t stay long. One day, the band were being called up for a meeting with the famous EMI boss Kjell Andersson. Mr Andersson presented his message rather unsentimentally: “Start to write songs in Swedish or get the hell out of here”. Fredrik, who always had had great difficulties with male authorities, of course refused to change language just because of what this asshole might did think. But never the less, during that meeting, Pony died. After that, the band spend around three years trying to get other record companies interested, but didn’t managed to find one.

After this huge setback, Fredrik decided to try a career as a songwriter instead, writing music for others. He got a deal with Warner Chappell Music, but gradually found out that this kind of work wasn’t really for him.

Around 2001, Fredrik felt that he wanted to go back to the Swedish language again, and began working on new songs. He recorded demos and liked the way they turned out. He also did a couple of shows as a solo artist but felt somewhere that the timing wasn’t right for this. Not yet.

In 2006, the band Little Red Snapper was born, an alternative country group just like Pony, but with two lead singers and a lot of harmony singing. The band has so far recorded two albums, the first one released by Lovande Projekt, and the second by A West Side Fabrication. The latest album, the Jari Haapalainen produced “Morning Light“, came out 2008 and contained two hit singles: “Call Me on Tuesday” and “The Worst of The Best”, which were frequently played on the Swedish National Radio. The album was also released in the States. Little Red Snapper still exists, but is currently being put on hold. One reason to that was because Fredrik decided to become a professional copywriter.

In the year of 2007, Fredrik finally decided to try his wings as a solo artist and came up with the idea to release one song every summer, under the pseudonym KFM. The songs came easily, but writing in Swedish took time.

With KFM, this was the first time Fredrik got to work with his older brother Andreas, who’s a professional musician and a songwriter since many years. The working process usually begins with Fredrik writing four or five songs, for Andreas to pick a single from.

Interesting new musicians such as Niklas Frisk from A Camp appeared at the recording sessions, and it started to sound good. It also felt natural for Fredrik to follow the path that Little Red Snapper had walked, so he switched record label from Lovande Projekt to “West Side”.

At first, the KFM project was supposed to end up in a trilogy after three years, but after two summer singles Fredrik felt that this project was way too fun working with, it had to be extended. Fredrik decided to turn the project into a ten-year piece instead. In that way, he could gather all the singles on one album after ten years. What a brilliant idea!

Today on the 11th of October 2011, KFM’s fifth single is being released. A little delayed this year, but still. The KFM project is now halfways.

This year’s song is called “Försök att inte skylla på nåt”. Hope you like it.