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Blues, of course

DR. HELANDER & THIRD WARD

DR. HELANDER & THIRD WARD

SHINING PEARLS

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(Click on cover)

(Click on cover)

BLUE LIGHT RECORDS  BLR33225-2

RELEASE DATE : 01/27/2023

(FINLAND)

musicians

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Dr. Helander (Ilkka Helander) 
guitar, vocals

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Esa Kuloniemi -
bass 

Leevi Leppänen -
drums 

Tracklist:
01 I Don’t Wanna Wake Up From My Dream 03:17
02 Unwanted Person 05:00
03 War Is Starting Again 04:20
04 61 Highway 04:41
05 Cemetery Wall 03:01
06 Your Old School 05:05
07 Shining Pearls 03:43
08 Bridge To Freedom 04:06
09 You Don’t Care 02:53
10 Rollercoaster Riding 02:55

Listen to samples - Dr. Helander & Third Ward - Shining Pearls
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globetrotter blues (rock)

previous
albums

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previous
albums

2018

2020

more

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Ilkka Helander, doctor specializing in research in microbiology and initiated into the blues since the late sixties when he discovered John Mayall, is at the age of 70 the pioneer of blues music in Finland. This country experienced the blues explosion during the seventies, and in 1975 Helander joined his first band. Since then, the Dr has been at the forefront of the Finnish blues scene, has recorded a dozen albums and has contributed as a guitarist in numerous projects that have maintained the genre at levels of efficiency and diffusion without which blues in Finland could not have reached the projection it has today. Without a doubt, Helander has been a protagonist in the European country that has experienced the most effervescence in blues music in the last forty years.

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Two dr. helander solo  efforts

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2015

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2016

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Esa Kuloniemis  solo

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Born in 1956, Esa Kuloniemi, with almost forty years as a professional musician, is the bass player but most of his career has played the guitar as founder of the band Honey B & T-Bones with more than twenty albums released and a whole reference on the Finnish scene as well as the instrumental band The Hypnomen. His background as a deep connoisseur of blues music - he's called the "blues minister" - has also allowed him a long projection as a roots music radio programmer on the state station Yleisradio for more than thirty years and also his facet as a writer in which he has made a dozen translations of books on blues, soul and rock'n'roll.

2006

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Leevi Leppänen 

SELECTED APPEARANCES

honey b & t-bones

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1985

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1995

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2011

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1986

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1997

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2012

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1987

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2000

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2016

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1989

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2005

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2022

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1990

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2007

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2022

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1992

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2009

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Esa Kuloniemi

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1985

1990

2003

2007

2014

2017

Leevi Leppänen has been an all-rounder in recording studios as the best and most requested drummer in the country. Not only he has  participated in countless recordings and numerous bands, but he has also carried out dissemination work as a writer of several books on percussion techniques - his books Rokkaavat Rummut (1990) and Luovat Rummut (1996) have been fundamental - as well as requested by clinics on this matter in the whole country . Active as a teacher at the Pop & Jazz Conservatory in Helsinki, Leppänen is probably one of the most charismatic musicians in Finland and also a key player in the development of jazz and blues in the scandinavian country.

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We could classify Dr. Helander & Third Ward as a "supergroup" in Finland. The meeting of three musicians with an unquestionable individual projection, united by their devotion to music, their devotion to the blues and with the will to bring to light all their background kept in the suitcases with which they have traveled for forty years around the road of blues, jazz and pop in Finland, his country of origin. The power of Helander-Kuloniemi-Leppänen - guitarist/singer, bassist, drummer - lies in the viscerality of their music and the indisputable knowledge of the roots of blues music as well as their quality as instrumentalists. With three albums released, the band inhabits a reality marked by the idiosyncrasy of a blues musician in a country so distant and unequal to the blues origins, but which exemplifies the contemporary universality of the genre. The three musicians have been, over the last forty years, essential elements to understand the path that blues music has taken in Finland to become one of the European countries with the most production, tradition and diffusion of the genre on the entire continent. To know the trajectory of the three musicians until reaching this third album by Dr. Helander & Third Ward is a conclusive immersion in the not so distant emergence of blues culture in Europe.

about
the 
band

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