Peter Boije is a swedish singer and songwriter who started to write songs during his last years in upper secondary school in Uddevalla on the Swedish west coast. During these years, in the late 1990s, he got to know bass player Peter Johannesson and together they formed the first setting of the band Peter Boije and folk. The following years the bandmembers varied and the band played on different stages and festivals in Bohuslän, before Peter Boije and some of his folk moved to Gothenburg after graduation.
In Gothenburg the band continued to play live and rehearse new songs and Karl-Oscar Hedberg, guitarist from Kungshamn, a friend Peter met in school years earlier in Uddevalla, also moved to Gothenburg and joined the band. In the bombshelter where the band rehearsed they started to experiment and make their own recordings, using an old Roland zip-disc recorder, but these recordings never really saw daylight. A few early recordings, made in a home-made studio in Karl-Oscars parents’ house in Kungshamn, were later picked up and remixed and remastered by Hedberg and Johannesson, released as the EP, “Good times”.
Becoming a father in 2009, Peter Boije and his new family decided to move to Östersund, 1000 kilometers north from Gothenburg and the opportunities to rehearse and to play live were reduced. As a way of keeping the band together even though miles apart, a new period in the bands’ history began: a period of album recording. By this time earlier drummer, Goran Abazovic had quit the band and Torbjörn Lorén had settled in behind the drums. The fact that Torbjörn was managing a recording studio opened up opportunities for the band and then, in 2011, the band released their first record “Stenen”, released on CD. “Stenen” is an eclectic album summing up all the years of rehearsing and playing live on a variety of stages in Gothenburg and surrounding areas. On this album the band borrowed musical references from Tom Waits, Dylan and Swedish rock-poet Thåström. The album was recorded on different occasions over a period of two years, whenever they had the chance to meet on weekends and holidays, which affected the sound on the record, with different songs telling different stories.
The work on the next album, “Dansmus” (2013), would come to be a milestone for the band. Deciding on one weekend to meet and initiate the recordings, Boije sent the band demos beforehand for the members to listen and get a sense of the new songs. On a friday they arranged the studio to be able to record the sessions live and before they knew, they had recorded 10 songs. Eight of them were released as the LP “Dansmus”, and two were later released together with three new written songs on the succeeding “Bränt mina stövlar, vägrar gå ut”. This time, on Dansmus, the band strived for a light sound, with only a few instruments on each track as in the album title song, composed only with drums, bass and Karl-Oscars twangy guitar thru a Fender Super Reverb and his favourite Fender Jazzmaster.
After a few years the band realized they had a good setup – met once a year for 48 hours to arrange, record, mix and master at great speed. 2016 came “Planlöst”, the bands attempt to break free from their comfort zone and try on the classic rock genre and a modern big sound. “Rysk lunch” came the year after and is a return to the bands roots of fifties and sixties country & western, rock ´n roll and blues. Yet another detour was attempted with “Innan mobilerna kom” which is a compilation of old songs (from as early as the high school years) in new arrangements. The sound is though clean, fresh and oozes of humour, and a dose of the 90’s irony. 2019 came the latest album from Peter Boije och Folk, “Rosa moln”, a crisp and swinging album, reminiscent of the nakedness of sound that the band indulged on, on “Dansmus”. Title track “Rosa moln” shows the bands unique ability to use simple instrumentation, depressing lyrics, and small means to create timeless anti-hits.
In October 2020 the band started working on a new album, this time recorded in Studio Explosion in Smögen. The album, ”Ett annat liv” will be released the 8th of January, 2021.