J. Karjalainen ja Veli-Matti Järvenpää, Paratiisin pojat

(FIN)
Finnish folk songs, blues

Armed with a banjo and a squeezebox this twosome takes old Finnish-American
songs and folk tunes, dips them into delta blues and spices them with some
zydeco and tex-mex. Root treatment of the best order!

J. Karjalainen has given Finns plenty of songs on his long career which may,
for a good reason, be called new folk songs. After many a great album with
his Electric Sauna band he heard the call of his deep roots via Harry
Smith’s American Music Anthology and Finno-American ‘polkabilly’. He made,
alone with a banjo, an acoustic solo album Lännen-Jukka that turned out to
be a hit against all odds. Paratiisin pojat was the second album in the same
vein, this time augmented by Finland’s number one cajun/tex-mex-accordionist
Veli-Matti Järvenpää, who has made fine albums also as a leader.