Enok

After having a short career as a front man in the band Badmintons in the eighties, Tomas Enochsson disappeared from the spotlight, but never from the music.

For many years he ran the music business Keyboard City and later also distribution and sales of Nord keyboards both in Sweden and globally.

But he never stopped writing songs. He has regularly traveled to Nashville to write with various songwriters and some of his songs have also been recorded by, among others, Totta Näslund and Björn Skifs. With the exception of a few recordings from a short reunion with Badminton’s 2011, it will now be in the autumn of 2018 that Tomas makes a comeback as an artist.

This time together with the band Paradiset and a music that very clearly absorbed the dust from Americana, at the same time as Tomas sharpened further in his text language. – I have been writing songs all the time since Badminton, says Tomas. And there has always been a guitar near me. Tomas hesitates a bit to use the word “song” about his works. Sometimes the word slips out of him, but he really means that “song” is a better expression. It suggests a little more of durability and a little less of consumer goods, which is also a true description of the material he has recorded on the new record. – What I am most happy and proud of are my new lyrics and that the music on this album with Paradiset has landed in the Americana sound I love, says Tomas.

This is exactly how I want it to sound today – with pedal-steel and electric guitars along with violins, mandolin and acoustic guitars. – Not quite as before then, but it may have something to do with age, says Tomas and laughs. Work on the record has been going on intensively since the beginning of 2016, when Tomas first collected the songs, some musicians and started scratching for the first time in many years.

In the autumn of 2016, most of the recordings were made and 2017 has been devoted to mixing and mastering. It is clear that the record is a creation that is close to Tomas’ heart. There is no financial ambition behind releasing it, he points out, but he still has a clear hope that the album will mean something to those who listen. – It is an interesting time we live in, Tomas reflects. There is a lot of revival going on in the world and in fact also in Sweden. It is a new tone and a new humility in the relationship between the church and society and I want to be a part of that event in some way.

Tomas says that today he is not actively involved in any individual Christian congregation, but that he keeps his ear close to the ground and perceives that things are happening today that have not happened in a long time. – Our task as Christians is to decode where God’s spirit works and to support it. I think I’m looking for my context and if my songs can somehow be useful in the revival I hope they land in, I’m very happy about that.

Even during the Badminton era, it was often Tomas’ lyrics that made people both react and cling to his songs. There was a presence, a finesse and a sharpness, which was not always as clearly developed in contemporary free church bands where the musical and technical brilliance often had higher priority.

Maybe it is also the case that Tomas today has a less stressed language when it comes to faith and church, because he did not move exclusively in that sphere? – I think that my language is less characterized by church terms but that what I write is still very clearly colored by my faith in Jesus.

– In a way, my perspective has perhaps become more of a viewer’s observation than someone who describes something from within?

Discography