First time I saw Tobias Stenkjær at stage was at a Brett Perkins Songwriters Open Stage event on 20 August 2006 at Lades Kælder in Copenhagen. He performed along with other upcoming artists, one of them being the complete unknown Thomas Buttenschøn and the talented twins, Strawberry Blondes (see my photos from the event here).

In the beginning of December 2007 I got a request from British artist Chris Townsend to do a live photo series from Huset in Copenhagen. The supporting artist happended to be Tobias (see the series of Chris Townsend here, and the series of Tobias here). We had a talk after the concert and Tobias asked me if I would take some photos of him and his backing band as he was in the process of recording his debut album (if you count out his 2001 album under the name Toby).

As always, when asked that question, I ask the artist to send me a demo to hear what kind of music they make.
Tobias sent me a pre-mix of his upcoming album, Blissfully Unaware, and I was not in doubt one second that what I heard was great!
It's a really nice album with songs by the american tradition, -beautiful songs which make me think of Daniel Lanois, Johnny Cash and even Bruce Springsteen, when he's in his acoustic mood.
The album is scheduled for a 17. March 2008 release.

We did the shooting at the band's rehearsing studio at Rock Island and continued the session at Café Utopia at Vesterbrogade.
I've mixed the pics below to make a more variated presentation.

Be sure to be there when Tobias Stenkjær and his band performs at his album promotion tour in Spring 2008!
You can visit Tobias' myspace site here.

(Many thanks to Café Utopia for their kindness)

Photographs by Eric Klitgaard © 2008

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